Book Review

Cultivation of close relations with India

Domestic politics and diplomacy

Author: Shelton KODIKARA

Shelton Kodikara one of the few great intellectuals produced by this country in the field of Political Science and its sub-field International Relations. His forte was Indo-Lanka relations.

Despite the fact that India is perhaps the one country with which we need to have the closest of relationships, it is most unfortunate that we do not have academics or political scientists of the calibre of Shelton Kodikara who have made the study of Indo-Lanka relations, their life occupation.

President Chandrika Kumaratunge described the relationship in the following words: ‘India is our immediate neighbour, with whom we have been inextricably linked ties the origins of which have long been lost in the mist of time.

We have with India the broadest and deepest interaction that we as a nation could have with another state. India therefore possesses the capacity, given her vastly disparate strength and influence, to help or hinder to a great extent. In a word the India factor is crucial to the existence of our nation.

Forging and sustaining a mutually trusting and supportive friendship with India must therefore be for us, not just a conscious and soundly judged policy, it is a natural and vital ingredient for our national well being.

It is not a definition that could be improved upon for it captures all the elements of the relationship between our two countries. India has many intellectuals and also ‘practitioners’ including a number of Think Tanks who have made the study of Indo-Lanka relations a special area of interest. There is no doubt that they make a significant input into policy making.

In stark contrast is the situation in Sri Lanka where we do not have a single academic who has specialised in India studies, we do not have a Chair for India studies in any of our Universities nor do we have a single Think Tank that has its focus on Indo-Lanka relations.

The India desk at the Foreign Ministry is manned by officers between postings and it could be safely stated that the intellectual input into policy making is significant by its absence.

The above scenario serves not only to indicate the lacuna that exists in this all important field of study but also the value of Shelton Kodikara and the contribution he has made to an understanding of the compulsions that have determined India’s and Sri Lanka’s policies towards each other and the history of our relations.

Prof. Kodikara has written two books relating to Indo-Lanka relations, and a third book on Strategic factors in interstate relations in South Asia, he has edited three more books relating to Indo-Lanka relations. His is indeed an outstanding contribution to our understanding of India’s concerns and compulsions in her relations with Sri Lanka.

Relations with India

Dr. Kodikara passed away many years ago but thanks to the efforts of his son Dulip, who had found the manuscript in Professor Kodikara’s library partly handwritten partly typed, Professor Amal Jayawardena, Dean of the Faculty of Arts who suggested that it be published and Prof. Dorakumbura who undertook the Herculean task of editing the manuscript of which some pages had not been numbered. Our thanks are also due to the BCIS which has eventually published it.

We are indeed fortunate that this last contribution of Prof Kodikara has been made available in book form is a concise history of our relations with India in the period 1948 - 1988.

The book which comprises of nine chapters together with the Introduction is a must-read for anyone interested in our relations with India. As stated earlier former President Kumaratunge described or rather defined the relationship in the following words:

‘the India factor is crucial to the existence of our nation. Forging and sustaining a mutually trusting and supportive friendship with India must therefore be for us, not just a conscious and soundly judged policy, it is a natural and vital ingredient for our national well being.

She herself it was who should be given the credit for having reached out to India, first, in a damage limitation exercise and thereafter in a positive manner to restore relations with India after the damage inflicted by two successive Presidents.

This book would certainly help students of International relations, the academic community and policy makers to learn of the manner in which the relationship which was developed under the two Bandaranaikes was ruined by the UNP administration that followed and take lessons from it.

Professor Kodikara, in Chapter one, (in the words of Professor Doarakumbure), analyses the linkage between domestic politics and foreign policy; ‘Each state decides on foreign policies according to its internal compulsions but final decisions are determined by the interaction of other states’.

This fact, particularly the impact of the interaction of other states, in this instance, India and the need for a small vulnerable country such as ours to be aware and sensitive and to be proactive has been emphasised by Professor K, who traces Sri Lanka’s foreign policy changes from 1948 to 1988 in an extremely readable manner.

As stated earlier he covers the period of the first UNP administration (1948-1956) when fear of India consequent to statements made by Shri Nehru’s Advisor KM Pannikar necessitated the defence agreements with Britain; the second period was when Sri Lanka embraced Non Alignment (1956- 1977) the change of policy was initiated by Prime Minister SWRD, continued under Mrs. B and also by UNP Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake, who was in the administration that reached out to China and entered into the Rubber-Rice Pact, which has been the foundation of our close relationship with that country, and finally the period between 1978 and 1988, the years of the Jayewardene Presidency, which saw our foreign policy shift from Non-Alignment to one tilted towards the West during the period of the Cold War, giving rise to fears in India for her security resulting in the de-stabilisation of Sri Lanka.

Professor K refers to the close and abiding friendship that existed between Mrs. Bandaranaike and Mrs. Gandhi and the hostility that existed between JRJ and Mrs. G. It gave rise to the perception, in the words of Professor Kodikara that ‘a State’s security interests can change due to personal identities’.

Security ambit

The author discusses the ethnic conflict and India’s role leading up to the Indo-Lanka Agreement and of how India sought to secure its interests.

He refers to the manner in which India incorporated Sri Lanka within its security ambit and sought to ensure that Sri Lanka did not obtain military or related assistance from extra-regional powers.

The author discusses the induction of the IPKF and their failure to disarm the LTTE and their departure from the country at the request of the Premadasa Government.

In his final chapter he refers to the improvement of relations between our two countries with the advent of the VP Singh Government and the refreshingly new approach of Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral to relations with Sri Lanka and with India’s smaller neighbours. A policy unfortunately abandoned in later years by Delhi.

As stated earlier the book is an absolute ‘must read’ for all those interested in the cultivation of close relations with our big and powerful neighbour, to study the ups and downs and the pitfalls that need to be avoided in our own interest.

It is indeed a pity that we have not had a book by any Sri Lankan academic to cover the period after 1990 to the present day.

Yet another regret of mine that we do not have a Chair for India studies in any of our Universities, in this regard I wish to state that the late Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar sought to establish an India Studies Centre in Colombo and had Professor SD Muni of JNU prepare an excellent concept paper, but with the demise of the Minister the matter fell into abeyance.

Subsequently I have pursued this earnestly but without success. I even wrote to the Madanjeet Singh Foundation, the Sri Lanka Chapter of which was established by the late Minister himself but I did not receive even an acknowledgement to my letters.

I do hope that someone in authority would take the initiative to establish the Kodikara Institute of India studies as a tribute to the tremendous contribution made by this Doyen of the study of International Relations in this country.

- K. Godage