By

C. A. Chandraprema

The reason why Indo-Sri Lanka relations were on a particularly good footing during the Bandaranaike era between 1956-1965 and 1970-1977 is because under the Bandaranaikes Sri Lanka had a foreign and domestic policy that was identical to India’s. During that period, both India and Sri Lanka had the same friends overseas. Both countries associated more with the socialist camp than with the capitalist camp.

Last week, thanks to the Chinese President’s visit to Sri Lanka and India, we entered another phase in Indo-Lanka relations which should in all respects be similar to the bilateral relationship that prevailed during the Bandaranaike era. By visiting Sri Lanka and then going to India, the Chinese president has cemented not just Sino-Lanka relations but Indo-Sri Lanka relations as well.

One of the sticking points in the bilateral relationship between India and Sri Lanka in recent times was the ever increasing Chinese involvement in Sri Lanka with investments in various fields. While Chinese investments in Sri Lanka were increasing exponentially, China was considered to be a nation that was hostile to India.

Ten years ago, when Sri Lanka badly needed to buy an air defence radar system from China, we were not able to do so because India objected. But last week, things changed radically. If President Xi arrived in Sri Lanka with deals worth a few billions, he provided ten times that amount to India. In the recent past, prophets of doom were predicting a nasty Indian reaction to China’s growing role in Sri Lanka and indeed that seemed a possibility. According to Reuters Chinese investment in India over the past 14 years, was just $400 million. The Chinese had invested much more than that in Sri Lanka.

Now however in one fell swoop the Chinese have reached out to the Indians, and pledged $20 billion in investments over the next five years, made deals for the modernization of the Indian railway system, Shanghai and Mumbai have been declared to be sister cities, Modi has been invited for a reciprocal visit to China, and an agreement has been reached between the two Asian giants on the development of nuclear energy among many other things. Since India herself is now closer to China that she had ever been in the past, there is no reason for any suspicion about the Chinese presence in Sri Lanka.

In many ways, this is the latest surprise to be sprung on the world by Narendra Modi. Before he came into power, everybody thought that the cosmopolitan, ‘open to the world’ political party was the Congress and that Modi and his saffron revolution represented an inward looking nationalism. But Modi has proved all his critics wrong. He has made the Congress Party look like narrow-minded peasants! What we are seeing now is probably the final break of India from the Nehruvian foreign policy model.

Nehruvian foreign policy discarded

From the moment Modi assumed office, his foreign policy initiatives struck a different chord. He reached out to Pakistan and to Sri Lanka by inviting the leaders of both countries to be present at his swearing in. The presence of the Pakistani prime minister at that event was a new thawing of the relationship between the two countries. This went hand in hand with a new realization in Pakistan too that the main enemy of the Pakistani state was not India but the various internal insurgencies by Islamic extremists in that country. Indo-Pakistan relations have not been smooth by any means as the recent furore over Pakistani ISI spies in Tamil Nadu showed. While the India-Pakistan relationship may take time and effort to repair, one sees that at least the Indo-Chinese relationship is well on its way to mending.

A sudden increase in tensions on the disputed border between India and China in the eastern state of Himachal Pradesh even as the two leaders met in New Delhi did not spread gloom over the talks. Both leaders seem to have reached the understanding that a sparsely populated border region need not be an impediment to normal relations between the Asian giants. Since India is also going to be a recipient of Chinese investment just like Sri Lanka, any reason for friction between India and Sri Lanka on account of the Chinese presence here is now absent. This is why we can look forward to another Bandaranaike era like relationship with India. It is undoubtedly the policy shift that took place with Modi’s assumption of power that made all this possible. He appears to have consciously and deliberately eschewed the old Nehruvian model of foreign relations where India has a list of traditional ‘enemies’ with whom she refuses to deal or allow any neighbouring country to have dealings with either.

One of the reason why Mrs Gandhi turned against Sri Lanka in the 1980s was because of our association with countries like the USA, Israel and Pakistan. There was a shift in this policy when Rajiv Gandhi took over and India moved closer to the West. During the last Congress government we saw the Nehruvian policy being applied with a somewhat different set of enemies. Now the USA was a ‘strategic partner’ of India and she was running with the West even against neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka. In this latter phase, for Sri Lanka to have close relations with the West was not a problem as we saw during the ceasefire agreement of 2002. The USA, Norway and the EU were virtually running this country but the Indians did not seem to mind. But if Sri Lanka tried to buy a piece of badly needed military equipment from China, the Indians would protest vehemently.

This Nehruvian foreign policy attitude rubbed off on the Indian public as well. After the turn of the millennium, China assumed the role of India’s principal foreign adversary and this situation lasted till the end of the last Congress Party government. The Australia based Lowy Institute for International Policy in a poll conducted in May last year during the last stages of the Congress Party government in India found that just 31 percent of Indians surveyed felt China’s rise had been good for India while 65 percent felt India should join other countries to limit China’s influence. Some 73 percent of Indians surveyed thought war with China was a possibility and 70 percent thought China’s aim was to dominate Asia.

That can be portrayed as the classic Nehruvian attitude. Modi seems to have moved away from all that. To him, the USA is not a ‘strategic partner’ nor is China a traditional enemy or rival. One senior member of the BJP speaking in Sri Lanka earlier this year stated that the Modi policy was to be ‘equidistant’ to both the USA and China which meant cordial and useful relations with both without being particularly close to either. That policy is now obviously being put into effect more rapidly than most of us expected. Indeed if that ‘strategic partnership’ between India and the USA had continued for a few years more, the leaders of both the Indian government and opposition may have found themselves in American jails doing time for human rights violations committed in India! In previous columns we explained how Sonia Gandhi managed to flee from a cancer hospital in the USA before her ‘strategic partners’ got her on allegations relating to the anti-Sikh riots in India in 1984. To this date she is a fugitive from American justice.

Certainly as far as India is concerned, China will be a much more congenial partner. Even though China was until very recently considered a rival if not an enemy of India, still the Chinese will never dream of trying to serve court summons on a visiting Indian leader or cancel a visa granted to an Indian chief minister! During the period that Modi was banned from entering the USA, he made several visits to China without any problem. So he was right to lay aside the Nehruvian attitude and to mend fences with China. To Modi it appears that even Pakistan is not an implacable enemy with whom no dealings can be had. What Modi seems to have learnt from his visits to China is that economics and trade have to be placed first with politics and military strategy coming second. If India is strong economically the rest will follow as a matter of course.

Does China need SL any more?

The question that now needs to be asked is whether China still needs Sri Lanka given the thawing of her relations with India? To answer that question, one has to ask why were the Chinese present in Sri Lanka in the first place? If one assumes that China was wooing Sri Lanka so as to gain some kind of a military advantage over India by ‘surrounding’ her with states friendly to China, then certainly with the thawing of relations between China and India, Sri Lanka would become redundant. But the reason why China came to Sri Lanka was not to surround and isolate India. On the contrary, the Chinese need Sri Lanka to protect their sea lanes in the Indian Ocean – a perfectly legitimate desire which however they cannot fulfill by improving their relations with India. They need Sri Lanka to watch over their sea lanes because it is this island that provides the best access to those sea lanes. To protect their shipping, China should have Sri Lanka on its side. If they had good relations with India without a foothold in Sri Lanka, they would still be exposed and vulnerable. If they can have both India and Sri Lanka on their side, so much the better. But even if India is not cooperative, at the very minimum, Sri Lanka should be on their side. Above all else, the top priority would be not to allow Sri Lanka to fall into the hands of the Americans. If Sri Lanka became a stooge of the West, Chinese interests would still be endangered even if India was to become their best friend.

Robert Kaplan, an American defence expert (who has visited Sri Lanka) in a journal article written earlier this year titled “China’s Unfolding Indian Ocean Strategy”, pointed out almost presciently that even though the US was trying to rope in India into a strategic alliance, China tends to believe that India will always maintain its strategic autonomy and will not ‘gang up’ with the US against China and that therefore wooing India will be one of China’s long term goals. That appears to be what we are seeing now.

Kaplan also observes that the Greater Indian Ocean region will be the centre of global conflicts, because most international business will be conducted through this route, and that the interests of India, China and the United States are beginning to overlap and intersect in this region. He observed that as of now, Beijing’s principal interest seems to lie in the need to protect the sea lanes along the Indian Ocean, vital for the country’s energy imports. But in the meantime China’s naval objectives have undergone a shift from conducting coastal defence activities to offshore defence and finally to far sea defence. He points out that China’s 2013 Defence White Paper refers to her armed forces being able to providing ‘reliable support’ for China’s interests overseas. Such statements make it clear that China intends to expand the capabilities of its Navy to operate abroad in order to secure its growing global interests.

The Chinese Navy was already involved in joint anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia and have carried out ship to ship replenishment exercises in the Eastern Indian Ocean. Earlier this year, they carried out a ‘counter-piracy, search, rescue and damage control drill’. Despite this beefing up of the Chinese Navy, Kaplan also points out that according to a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences publication released in June 2013, while China would play a more proactive role in the Indian Ocean region, Beijing’s interests will be driven only by commercial, and not military, objectives. The Chinese assessment was that no single power whether it be the USA, India or China, can control the Indian Ocean by itself and after some jostling among powers, a balance of power might be reached in the region. Kaplan points out that the Commander of the East China Sea Fleet speaking at the Galle Dialogue (International Maritime Conference) 2012 stated that the Chinese navy will actively maintain the peace and stability of the Indian Ocean through ‘maritime security cooperation’ with the navies of various countries, and will seek to establish a maritime security ‘code of conduct’ between them under the ‘premise of respect for each country’s sovereignty and maritime interests’.

Explaining further, Kaplan observes that China lags far behind the US in terms of maritime power and does not enjoy India’s geographic advantages in the Indian ocean so it follows a practical and less strenuous course aimed at ensuring a ‘harmonious sea’ viewing the Indian Ocean as a vital energy and trade route and not a battlefield for power struggle! Indeed such a power struggle in the Indian Ocean would be a waste of resources for both China as well as India and will be counterproductive in terms of what China actually expects to do in the Indian Ocean. In contrast to China, the US seeks to be a hegemonic maritime power that is not only dominant in the Atlantic or Pacific, but also in the Indian Ocean. That cannot be the path that China seeks to tread. Kaplan expected that instead, China would concentrate its efforts on wooing nations bordering the Indian Ocean through economic and other means so as to keep them away from US influence – which is exactly what they have been doing in Sri Lanka and now India.

The US State Department should perhaps sit back and contemplate how they have aided the Chinese in their endeavour to win friends in the Indian Ocean region. First the Americans antagonized Sri Lanka with unnecessary interference in her internal affairs and made SL look to China for protection. Then the Americans humiliated India and created a situation where the much spoken of ‘strategic partnership’ was beginning to look like a strategic blunder. The sheer stupidity of the Western powers and particularly America is hastening the demise of Western hegemony. Last week’s coming together of India and China will give the shift of world power to Asia a turbo boost.

Courtesy:Sunday Island