By

N Sathiya Moorthy

By inviting SAARC Heads of Government for his inauguration, prime minister-designate Narendra Modi has demonstrated a firm grip over the emerging foreign policy scenario(s) and his vision of and for an India of the future. With the much-hyped Pakistan conundrum taking a shape of its own, more so in the so-called national media, centred near-exclusively on India’s northern land borders, nowhere else will the new government’s approach to foreign and neighbourhood policy be more visible and immediate than in the case of southern Sri Lanka.

Considering that the Mauritius leadership too would be present at the swearing-in, the emerging Indian view on the scope and possible expansion of ‘South Asia’, if not SAARC, too may have become that much more visible. Only months back, the outgoing Manmohan Singh Government had restructured the divisions in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), to club together Mauritius and Seychelles to Sri Lanka and Maldives after shifting the un-related Bangladesh and Myanmar from the original division, to form a new one for the southern, Indian Ocean neighbourhood.

On Sri Lanka, it’s not as if Modi the politician would not have anticipated reservations from his poll allies from Tamil Nadu, or the even more vocal friend and State’s AIADMK Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, to any continuing initiative of the predecessor Congress kind on the Sri Lankan front, if it involved the Government and leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Modi the Prime Minister is proving to be different from the more difficult Modi the politician.

By declaring that India could not help the Sri Lankan Tamils to live a life of dignity, honour and equality in that country without New Delhi engaging with the Colombo leadership of the time, his BJP leadership is now reiterating what had been known all along. Whatever Modi’s BJP leaders in Tamil Nadu would say, such an approach is a continuance of the outgoing Manmohan Singh Government’s policy.

The medium and long-term Indian policy became clearer particularly after the West unilaterally provided the safety-value in the UNHRC resolution draft of 2014 for India to dis-entangle itself from the UNHRC process that was harmful to India and the region as a whole. Earlier, the US-led West had got India entangled in two earlier UNHRC resolutions by keeping the phraseology within limits of India’s traditional position on external inquiries into internal affairs of sovereign States.

At UNHRC-2014 (March) the US sent out a clear message that it did not need India any more on Sri Lanka. India has always needed its neighbours, just as the neighbours have all along needed India. It may be difficult with Pakistan, but has to be different with and in the case of other South Asian neighbours and SAARC members, starting with Sri Lanka, the current Commonwealth Chair, to boot – despite clamour to the contrary from Sri Lankan Tamils, their Diaspora, and backers in the south Indian State.

All these are over and above the traditional Indian geo-strategic and security concerns, which had involved the US at one time, China in the early years of the post-Cold War, both the US and China since. Yet, there is also al need to de-mystify the motivated belief – both in Tamil Nadu, and Sri Lanka, and not just among the Tamils there – that Indian concerns on the ‘ethnic issue’ are centred near-exclusively on geo-strategic considerations.

Even without China or the US or any other extra-regional players in the shared Indian Ocean neighbourhood, peace, now starting with ethnic peace and political stability in Sri Lanka is a desirable pre-requisite for India at all times. This would be equally so in the case of all other neighbours, including Pakistan. Conventional wisdom would have to desired an unstable and violence-ridden Pakistan but in the contemporary Indian context (from Partition and Independence onward), it’s in India’s greater and continuing interest that Pakistan too remained stable and progressed. Sri Lanka is not an exception thus to the rule. It’s all part of the same rule as far as India is concerned — Manmohan, Modi or whoever is at the helm.

In all this, the Tamils of India, starting now with leaders of the State BJP, now ruling the Centre, also need to demystify their own beliefs that the Tamils of Sri Lanka are exclusively and exceptionally friends of Sri Lanka. It’s not so. The Tamils of Sri Lanka, almost from the times of ‘Sinhala Only’ law, are friends of themselves, and none else – and rightly so.

It will do a lot of good if the Tamils of India learnt from their ‘blood brethren’ from across the Palk Strait. At present, the ubiquitous and equally over-used ‘umbilical cord’ is known to facilitate fluid-flow only in one direction. The terminology does not describe or stand for the ‘responsibilities’ of a child to a mother.

‘Indian nationalist’ or ‘Hindu nationalist’?

The temptation in Sri Lanka for close to a year now, if not more, has been to see India’s Modi either as an ‘Indian nationalist’ or a ‘Hindu nationalist’ – but not something together and more. The ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist’ hard-liners, both in the Sri Lankan Government and outside, put him in a mould of their own, and want to believe that they have already made eye-contact with him.

The Tamils suddenly want to recall the Hindu religious background of many of them and their leaders, to be able to identify themselves with the ‘Hindu nationalist’, which alone they think Modi is – and will continue to be. They draw parallels with the late Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray pointing to the Hindu religious background of many Tamils in Sri Lanka. But Modi is both, and more. So is India of his times.

No different

Like the Abrahamic faiths, Sri Lanka’s ‘hard-line’ Theravada Buddhism is obedience-demanding and hence structured – or, is it the reverse? Like Europe of the Middle Ages the religion controls the State without having the collateral responsibility of having to ‘run’ it. Suffice is to point out that this very month, a criminal court in Colombo found it proper to order an Islamic (fundamentalist?) group to apologise to the three Buddhist prelates after concluding that their leader had made remarks against the Buddha – rather than proceed against him under the criminal law of the land.

Politically aware and alive Sinhala-Buddhists want India to remember their Indian origins, but would themselves keep pointing out that they have only ‘Sri Lanka to call their own’, mixing religion with language. More recent efforts seem aimed at trying to make India beyond southern Tamil Nadu to find its Buddhist roots too, and not for all Sri Lankans to seek out South Asia’s common sub-continental cultural roots that’s otherwise steeped in the political India of our times.

The Tamils are no different. Among them are ‘Hindus’, but religion does not control the polity. Hindus among the Sri Lankan Tamils, the polity, whether moderate or militant, has always controlled religion – not the other way round. They used, misused and abused their Hindu temples as much for political and military purposes as for cultural revival — as lecture-theatres and bunkers. Sri Lanka Army (SLA) often took the blame for targeting Hindu places of worship after their heat-seeking missiles would target the source of LTTE bombs.

Fewer churches went that way compared to Hindu temples, schools and hospitals, the Christian denomination of the Tamil party, deriving inspiration and social leadership for the ethnic protests from the Church, straight. In doing so, the ‘Tamil Church’ in the North seems to derive its authority from none else in the religious hierarchy going up to the distant Vatican. It’s all more in the inherent religious structures of Sri Lanka’s Buddhism and Tamil-Catholics, which anyway the Hindu religion does not have and does not believe in – concluding in the process that “Hinduism is a way of life”.

As is known, beside the ‘Hindu Tamils’ and the ‘Christian Tamils’, there are Tamil-speaking Muslims, whom the LTTE alienated for good and purposefully with a single act of societal terror in the North, by asking a hundred thousand of them to vacate the Province with just four hours’ notice and SL Rs 200 in pocket. It was worse for the Muslims of the East, where the LTTE unleashed terror and violence, again in the same year, 1990. No Tamil has apologised to any Muslim even five years after the LTTE’s exit, just as none has apologised to the innocent Sinhalas that the LTTE massacred.

The less said about the Tamils of recent Indian origin, or the subaltern classes and castes among the Northern Tamils, the better. A parallel can be drawn only with the caste and region-centric society-driven, hierarchy-ridden politics of the Sinhala-Buddhist – both of which are worse in many cases than prevalent in various regions of political India. Up to a point sociologically, the JVP/LTTE militancy in the Sinhala/Tamil communities of the past decades were often explained away as an uprising of the under-privileged under-dogs. It was true of the JVP mostly, and the LTTE at least up to a point.

Suffice is to point out that unlike what Indians, including the Tamils in India, generally believed, Sri Lankan Buddhism and the dominant Saiviite belief in the Tamil-speaking Hindu community of the country, do not preach vegetarianism as a creed. The mental comparison thus with Emperor Ashoka’s Buddhism and Mahathma Gandhi’s ahimsa, derived from that religion, should stop there. The parallel belief of the Tamils in India, particularly the southern Tamil Nadu districts, that ‘Saiva Vellalars’ in Sri Lanka should be following absolute vegetarianism as a faith too is equally misplaced.

Blame-ball in other’s courts

Almost since the advent of militancy among their youth, the Tamils of Sri Lanka have not run any government in the country, nor would they have wanted to take up the ‘responsibility’ if circumstances had not thrust it upon them in the post-war Northern Province. Through the three decades, the LTTE ensured that the Tamil leadership would hold itself responsible for nothing, accountable to none else. The trait cannot be expected to fade away overnight, war or no-war, victory or defeat.

The Tamil leadership(s) too has mastered the fine-art of putting the ‘blame ball’ in somebody else’s court all the time, whether it’s that of Sri Lanka, India, Norway, or now the UNHRC and its international backers. They have no responsibility to themselves and their people. They own nothing, yes, they own up nothing, either. And like the Sinhala leadership, political or otherwise, they won’t want to recognise their acquired and contemporaneous historic traits even decades later, want to acknowledge it either. The question of applying correctives does not apply.

Competing CBMs now

In the Sri Lankan context, the Rajapaksa leadership lost the script so very completely after winning a war that the world thought was unwinnable anywhere in the world. Even the mighty US could liquidate Osama bin Laden only years later. Today, the Sri Lankan Government is mired in UNHRC kind of controversies after taking reluctant false-steps forward on finding a political solution to the ethnic issue.

The Tamils, and their TNA political leadership, too have continued to take one step forward and two backward – constantly being egged on by their conscience in the first but the super-imposing and even more contentious Diaspora for and when on the back-foot. They have now entangled themselves in demands for de-militarisation, which may be prima facie unacceptable to the security forces until they see a permanent political solution on the ground, defending the otherwise indefensible Diaspora groups and their leaders – and what has been reduced to ‘official postings’, nearer home.

Today, South Africa as the international interlocutor of sorts will have to begin talking about confidence-building measures (CBMs) of the kind that India and Norway had attempted in their times. The TNA would want de-militarisation, land-restoration, de-listing of Diaspora groups from the Government’s list of banned organisations under the anti-terror UN resolution, and re-posting of the Northern PC Chief Secretary, among others.

In turn, or independent of the TNA’s CBM demands, the Sri Lankan Government could want guarantees, local and international, that the rump LTTE does not get a foothold anywhere. With SLT Diaspora-driven Sri Lanka policy of Canada, for instance, already opposing any cooperation on the UN terror-list, Sri Lanka would want visible cooperation on that very issue – which is at variance from the TNA’s demand nearer home.

South Africa would have been tired out even before it might have begun the long odyssey towards lasting peace in distant Sri Lanka. Against this, the newly-elected Indian leadership may have an initial edge at the very least, to try and side-step the competing CBM-demands from either side of Sri Lanka’s ethnic-divide for them to return to the negotiations table for reviving the political dialogue. Having tasted Tamil Nadu’s collective opposition, the Modi Government cannot falter on the track.

Having demanded the extradition of 21 terrorists from Pakistan since the days of the BJP’s Vajpayee Government, the Modi leadership cannot be seen as helping with the de-listing demand of the TNA now. If anything, the outgoing Government had banned the LTTE for another five years, only days before the Modi Government took over. There is no way the incumbent would want to review that decision, either.

Honeymoon with the voter

From within India, the goodwill for the Modi Government on the Sri Lanka front has already evaporated in Tamil Nadu, where alone it mattered. That’s as much an opportunity as a challenge, considering that his Government can plough along without having to count on parliamentary support from the State. Manmohan Singh demonstrated the same after the DMK quit the Government a year ago — it decided to abstain from the UNHRC vote this March – though supported by very valid reasons.

That way, India has a small window of opportunity, only until Sri Lanka goes back on the ‘election mode’, possibly next year but most definitely the year after. There will only be windows of opportunity in between, as they would be interspersed with the half-yearly sessions of the UNHRC, where everyone wants to take a hard-line – and be seen as doing so. The Modi leadership too would have an additional extension or contraction of opportunity, depending on how long the voter’s honeymoon lasted.

‘Tokenism’ all the way

By declining to join President Rajapaksa’s delegation for Modi’s swearing-in, Chief Minister Wigneswaran (dictated by his TNA, and possibly its Diaspora backers) may have lost for the Tamil community, one of those rare opportunities to meet with a foreign leader alongside the (Sinhala-Buddhist) President of the Sri Lankan State. It would have been the most unforgettable moment for the incoming Indian Prime Minister, who for any overseas leader, may have had the rare occasion to meet with the two under the same roof, and bring them together to the negotiations table.

Chief Minister Wigneswaran has dubbed President Rajapaksa’s gesture ‘tokenism’. Yes, ‘tokenism’ it was, and it is. So is the Indian invitation for the swearing-in. No one expects anything substantial discussed by any side in the series of meetings that Prime Minister Modi will have with his visitors from across South Asia on his first full day in office. Yet, why did they all accept the invitation, which particularly in the case of Pakistan was also a difficult decision to make.

In international politics and diplomacy, ‘tokenism’ or ‘gestures’ of the kind also make a difference, particularly at ice-breaking sessions of the kind. Officials on every side can be expected to record in institutional memory as to who held whose hand for an extra second more, or who possibly tweaked the non-existing thin-lip on a flat and expressionless face for a blinking moment – in and into history. Volumes have been written on both. Having been in power for six months now, the TNA has a long way to go in talking, understanding and acknowledging the diplomatic language, if they have to go far. Defending their ‘hurt’ ignorance cannot equal depending still on perceived innocence.

Needless to point out, if only Justice Wigneswaran was on President Rajapaksa’s team, the Indian Government too would have extended a separate invitation and the required courtesies, as well. In a way, it’s yet another ‘missed opportunity’ for the Tamils and the TNA. Having written a congratulatory message to Modi and also sought an early meeting with him, TNA’s Sampanthan and team would have to wait their turn in the normal course. Would protocol provide for the Northern Chief Minister joining that team, if the TNA wanted it and the Sri Lankan Government too cleared it remain to be seen.

‘Iron Man’ all the same

By inviting SAARC leaders to his inauguration, Modi may have also begun taking a pot-shot, if not more just now, at re-orienting the nation’s foreign and security policy, when they have anyway become due. Coupled with his ‘domestic image’ and self-motivation to be acknowledged as the ‘Iron Man’, not of India, but also from India, for him to shape himself after his fellow-Gujarati icon in ‘Sardar’ Vallabhai Patel, he will have to look beyond India, at the immediate neighbourhood.

In contemporary global and regional context in the world after the two Great Wars and the abrupt end of the ‘Cold War’, India can only delay being closer to South Asia for prospective allies, who are made to feel as sub-continental Indians at heart and mind, but with an independent political existence of their own as individual nation-States with individualist traits, ambitions and problems. Their aspirations are diverse and united at the same time. India as a nation that has successfully practised Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Unity in diversity’ is at the right place at the right time. So is Modi and his BJP-NDA government.

For starters, Modi has extended a firm hand, for a firm handshake with all neighbours. It’s a velvety touch that he has naturally begun with. Though velvety gloves, as with every other Indian leadership’s hand, does not have any iron-fist to hide, as has often been wantonly and mischievously misunderstood elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Pakistan may be an exception, for specific reasons, but that exception is not the Indian rule. Neighbourhood interlocutors actually understand the truth, but want to acknowledge the same only selectively.

Modi has already proved to his nation that his velvet glove and firm grip needs to be taken seriously and should go both ways. By inviting Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his swearing-in, fully aware of the domestic political fallout – in Tamil Nadu in the case of President Rajapaksa, and some in his own party at the national-level on Pakistan – at one stroke, he has demonstrated that he is getting onto a firm grip of things nearer home.

Working with ’em all

Given the complexities of the relations with individual nations in the neighbourhood, South Asia as a region, and SAARC as an unaccomplished institution, he has also demonstrated his need and willingness to work with them all, individually and collectively, to take not only India but also the entire region to greater heights, again collectively. It’s again a demonstration of his emerging understanding and existing realities of his time, of things foreign and security policy, beginning with an in South Asia but not ending there, however.

As coincidence would have it, neighbourhood interlocutors now want India more than ever. India wants them even more than ever in the past, given the existing and emerging realities in this larger neighbourhood – be it in the domestic context of individual South Asian nations, or in the regional political, economic, geo-strategic and security contexts. None of them is devoid of an element of the other, none of these nations can do without one another – though the temptation to play extra-regional powers to irritate India at times, coax India at other times.

Unlike his predecessors over the past decades, Prime Minister Modi is a man in hurry. He has years ahead of him, both as a man and as a national leader. Like his nation just now, he too is at the right place at the right time, leading a nation with coalescing temperaments, to trust him, and trust him with the nation and the individual — and the shared future of both. He has ‘promises’ to keep, and he has ‘miles’ to go to keep those ‘promises’ – as Prime Minister Nehru had said in his time, quoting poet Robert Frost.

Modi may or may not have read Frost. Nor is Nehru his favourite leader from the past. But the ‘promises’ and ‘miles’ are there for him too – as much as they were for Nehru, and much more than all those leaders who led India between them. Modi would understand diplomacy and foreign policy in good time, he understands people(s) even more, and marrying people and policies has been his USP in and for the India of his times. The rest should and would follow!

(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)