The foreign policy directions of countries often respond to domestic interests, including security and economic stability.
When leaders change foreign policy directions, which at times are likely to go through changes, some follow their predecessors.
In democracies, we see more consistent policies, but they may undergo changes depending on geopolitical and domestic political concerns.
Sri Lanka, a small country astride the Indian Ocean, may have gone through occasional changes following the end of the Cold War. It mainly necessitated being non-aligned to stay afloat as a neutral nation.
Sri Lanka is a small country hoping for the best in Indo-Lanka relations. They occasionally dipped to the lowest ebb, although never hitting rock bottom, which caused anxiety among policymakers.
Given the geopolitical concerns of the regional players and their stakes in the Indian Ocean region, the ups and downs were not surprising. They are more or less a part and parcel of our daily policy antidotes.
In the present geopolitical context, Sri Lanka is in a dilemma trying to explore ways and means of improving relations with its immediate neighbour India, while continuing healthy relations with other countries in the Asian region such as China and Pakistan.
It is no secret that India is at loggerheads with China and Pakistan on issues concerning security in the region and border disputes.
India has had border disputes with China for decades and a continuing conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir.
Relations between India and Pakistan deteriorated further following the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh.
From the time of the Jayewardene-Gandhi fallout in the late seventies, India-Sri Lanka relations also had their measure of disagreements.
However, Sri Lanka was resilient in its approach to regional politics. The country’s involvement in regional issues is not new, dating back to the period starting 1954 when Sir John Kotelawalawas Prime Minister.
At the start, Sir Kotelawala convened the Colombo Conference, a meeting of leaders of neighbouring countries including Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and Myanmar. It was described by many foreign policy experts as a precursor to the Bandung conference, scheduled to be held in Java, Indonesia.
The core principles of the Bandung conference were political self-determination, mutual respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, and equality. These issues were of central importance to all participants in the conference, most of who had recently emerged from colonial rule. The governments of Burma, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka co-sponsored the Bandung Conference, and they brought together an additional twenty-four nations from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Because the de–colonisation process was still ongoing, the delegates at the conference took it upon themselves to speak for other colonised peoples (especially in Africa) who had not yet established independent governments.
The delegates built upon the five principles of peaceful coexistence, worked out in negotiations between India and China in 1954, as they sought to build solidarity among recently independent nations.
At the close of the conference, attendees signed a communique that included a range of concrete objectives. These goals included the promotion of economic and cultural cooperation, protection of human rights and the principle of self-determination, a call for an end to racial discrimination wherever it occurred, and a reiteration of the importance of peaceful coexistence. The leaders hoped to focus on the potential for collaboration among the nations of the developing world, promoting efforts to reduce their reliance on Europe and North America.
The Bandung conference and its final resolution laid the foundation for the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War.
Sir John Kotelawala had to face a no-confidence motion in the House of Representatives after he made a statement regarding the Bandung conference. However, the no-confidence motion failed because it was not passed by the House.
From there on, Prime Minister SirmavoBandaranaike took over and added new impetus to the Non-Aligned Movement.
Barana Waidyatilake, a research fellow in a policy paper presented to the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies states that later, under Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Sri Lanka played a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Mrs Bandaranaike’s diplomacy led to her attempt to mediate between India and China in the border war of 1962. Later, her stature in NAM led many member countries to support a proposal by Sri Lanka at the 1971 UN General Assembly to declare the Indian Ocean a ‘Zone of Peace’. Sri Lanka also chaired the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1973 and the 1995 Non-Proliferation TreatyReview and Extension Conference.
In addition, Sri Lanka was a founding member of several regional organisations, such as SAARC, IORA, and BIMSTEC. All this make it clear that Sri Lanka played a significant role as a normative leader, both at the regional and international level, a function which unfortunately diminished due to the civil war. However, in the post-war period, Sri Lanka had to come to grips with security threats beyond its borders, which largely centered around the disruption of Indian Ocean maritime traffic owing to either great power naval competition or non-state actors’ activities.
A peaceful and stable Indian Ocean marked by freedom of trade and navigation is essential forSri Lanka’s continued growth. Given that it lacks the military or economic clout to assert itself, the only option for Sri Lanka is to make a clear stand for a regional rules-based order.
Sri Lanka should work towards clearing the air to have trading partners from the length and breadth of the globe sans discrimination.
For instance, trade between India and China has increased tremendously in the past five years, despite border issues between the two countries and other security concerns within the region.
Sri Lanka is more like a pendulum between the two countries, swinging to and fro in a simple harmonic motion, trying to wade through rising tensions between the two regional powers.
In retrospect, Sri Lanka had its best times with India during the time of Mrs. SirmavoBandaranaike as Prime Minister. She effectively led the country from 1964 to 1970 and from 1970 to 1977.
She cultivated a close rapport with India, especially with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, due to the personal family bondage they had during the Nehru-Bandaranaike time.
Mrs. Bandaranaike, during her tenure as Prime Minister, reached an agreement with Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri on the stateless people of Tamil origin.
The agreement helped resolve a long–standing issue regarding the citizenship status of almost a million people of Indian origin who came here to work on the tea and rubber plantations in British colonial times.
During her visit to India in October 1964, the two Prime Ministers signed the Sirima-Shastri Pact, where 525,000 people of Indian origin were to be repatriated to India while another 300,000 were to gain citizenship in Sri Lanka.
During British rule, the British planters recruited Tamils from Tamil Nadu to work in tea, coffee, and coconut plantations in Sri Lanka.
By 1921, Indian Tamils constituted 13.5 per cent (602,700) of Ceylon’s (as it was known then) total population due to continuous recruitment and population growth. By 1936, this percentage was 15.3 (1,123,000) and many of them were non-citizens of this country.
Sinhalese nationalists resented the growth of the Tamil population and pressured the government to send them back to India. In response, the government introduced the Ceylon Citizenship Bill. It came into force in 1948 and granted full citizenship to about 5,000 Indian Tamils. However, more than 700,000 people (about 11%) were either non-citizens of Ceylon or became stateless. The Indian and Pakistani Residents Citizenship Act (1949) also failed to solve the issues.
In 1954, the Nehru-Kotelawala Pact came into force to deal with the same problem. The issue, however, remained unsolved.
In 1962, nearly 975,000 people who were in the hills and elsewhere, were classified by Ceylon as Indian nationals and by India as stateless. Although India denied any legal responsibility for these people, it acknowledged a sentimental interest in them.
In 1964, both countries had newly elected prime ministers and agreed to initiate a new round of negotiations. Both countries agreed to set aside four days for the negotiations, which took six days to reach finality. On several occasions, they came close to collapse, but both countries agreed to a pact after negotiating a formula which satisfied both governments.
The central part of the pact had been to grant Ceylonese citizenship to 300,000 of the Indian population in Sri Lanka, while another 525,000 would reach India.
In 1971, when the Sirimvo Bandaranaike government faced the first JVP insurrection, the Prime Minister received prompt Indian help under the guidance of then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
While this was taking place, the Bandaranaike administration allowed the re–fuelling of Pakistani aircraft at the Colombo airport, to the chagrin of the Indians. Pakistani aircraft could not fly over India to reach West Pakistan, now Bangladesh, so the help extended by Colombo was much appreciated.
Many Indian analysts have described the actions of the Sri Lankan government as contradictory, but India remained without resorting to harsh reactions since they did not want conflict on many fronts.
Some say Mrs. Bandaranaike had the ability and stature to act independently and maintain Sri Lanka as a sovereign nation despite Indian help to guard strategic locations.
In later years, when a high-powered Indian delegation including Nirupama Rao and the Pakistani High Commissioner for Sri Lanka, Seema Ilahi Baloch were visiting Sr Lanka, this fact was highlighted during a speech delivered during a Sri Lanka-Pakistan friendship council meeting.
In her speech, Baloch said Sri Lanka’s help to Pakistan during the 1971 war could never be forgotten.
“We in Pakistan cannot forget the logistical and political support Sri Lanka extended to us in 1971 when it opened its re–fuelling facilities for us,” she said.
Interestingly, during the same time when Pakistani aircraft were filling their fuel tanks inside the airport, a limited contingent of Indian army troops was deployed to guard the periphery of the airport against an attack by extreme-left insurgents.
Mrs. Bandaranaike was quick in her uptake. She then proceeded to reason out the claims to Kachchaitivu’s disputed territory.
The maritime boundary agreement of 1974, under which the two countries resolved the Kachchaitaivu issue in favour of Sri Lanka, remains in force without much hullabalooalthough there are occasional hiccups coming from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Foreign policy analysts thus hail the tenure of Mrs. Sirmavo Bandranaike as being the best era where Indo-Lanka relations flourished and blossomed.
Even now, India can leverage its strategic partnership with Sri Lanka to strengthen and expedite its journey to be a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, but it dithers owing to domestic compulsions. China is waiting in the wings to fill the vacuum.
However, the fact that India was there for Sri Lanka in its hour of need proves India’s characteristic feature of helping its neighbours.