A former India Today Editor’s take on the India
foreign policy debacle viz Sri Lanka:
Himalayan Blunder
Inderjit Badhwar
In voting against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC for a second time, New Delhi
made a pusillanimous display of Pax Indiana’s opacity in a region
crucial to its geopolitical stability and security. And New Delhi has
missed out on or deliberately ignored crucial home truths.
http://asiantribune.com/sites/asiantribune.com/files/images/2012/Inder%20Badhwar_3.jpgInderjit
Badhwar
First of these is that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is a
diehard nationalist who so far resisted the terrific pressure he has
been under from the JVP and JHU for “being an Indian stooge.” His base
of support is now rock solid within his own country and he enjoys great
relations with Malaysia, Indionesia, Vietnam, Russia, China, Argentina,
Uruguay, Bhutan, Pakistan, (!!), Nepal etc.
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Hugo Chavez |
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President
Mahinda Rajapaksa |
Whatever the human rights abuses, he may be accused of, he is no Pol
Pot or Idi Amin, and SL is NOT a Banana Republic no matter how
autocratic the Rajapaksa brothers may be made out to be by their
detractors try to be.
Any R2P (right to protect) ideas that the US/NATO may have in Sri
Lanka are not going to wash after the miserable experiments in Libya,
Syria and Mali that have wreaked mayhem and threaten to spread anarchy.
Regional superpower
I think Rajapaksa would be far more sympathetic to Indian concerns in
his country and respond dramatically and positively if India behaves
like a regional superpower and display some independence rather than
appearing to be a new satellite of the US/NATO interest. India has an
overriding interest in ensuring that Sri Lanka is not converted into a
region for big power rivalries and there is no better person to ensure
that than Rajapaksa. Had the US not backed Batista and sided with the
Cuban Revolution instead of alienating Castro -- he could have been the
best friend America had in that region and Castro’s Communism would have
been more benign.
We don’t want another Cuba in our backyard. Rajapaksa is hard boiled,
earthy like Kamaraj, with the fiercely independent streak of Hugo Chavez
and Castro and Allende. Do not misjudge him. He is still a true friend
of India but getting angrier by the day.
Our bilateral trade has now crossed US$5 billion -- the bulk of the
business coming from Tamil Nadu. Amma Jayalalithaa is only hurting her
local economy by calling for boycotts and the like.
Already Gujarati and Odisha businessmen are reaching out to Sri Lanka
in an effort to hog the emerging markets and exploit the improving
economic climate. I’ve talked to several up country Tamils and others
and they seem to express the unanimous view that the renewed Eelam
agitations in Tamil Nadu and India’s domestic, competitive political
one-upmanship is not helping but hurting the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka
because it is vitiating the peace process and the goodwill generated by
the resettlement and jobs programmes in the erstwhile war torn North and
causing Sinhala resentment against the local Tamils to rise again.
This possible backlash is neither good for the peace process, the
LLRC movement, for the Tamils of Sri Lanka, or for New Delhi,
particularly when the demilitarization of the North is TRULY proceeding
at a healthy gallop and auxiliary forces could be replacing the police,
and elections are due in September.
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Fidel
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Salvadore
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Please remember, however critical you may of Rajapaksa, he NOT and
will never be a Sinhala Chauvinist. But India’s insensitivity towards
his problems and predicaments and India’s sympathies towards what he
considers “propaganda” by LTTE sleeper cells could well push him into
the hands of Sinhala chauvinists.
True friend
We are already surrounded by neighbours who do not exactly love us --
we’ve lost Nepal, alienated Bangladesh, fought wars with Pakistan and
China who are breathing down our necks, alienated tiny Maldives with its
Muslim population vulnerable to fundamentalist groups from Pakistan and
the Middle East, and now New Delhi seems to be doing everything in its
power to alienate our remaining true friend in the Indian Ocean-- our
neighbour Sri Lanka whose leaders call India, “Elder Brother.”
It is true that Rajapaksa hasn’t moved forward of the 13th Amendment.
It is even truer that, secretly, he has believed with Premadasa and most
Sri Lankans that the 13th Amendment was forced down the throats of a
Democratic Country by an “imperialist-dictated” Rajiv-Jayewardane
treaty. (Isn’t it ironical that even Prabhakaran felt the same way about
it, and after initially announcing support, violently rejected it and
even cooperated with Premadasa to meet that goal).
A year ago, before the first anti-SriLakan vote in the UHHCR in 2012,
the 13th Amendment was at least “negotiable” from a Sri Lankan point of
view.
Today, because Sri Lanka feels India is part of an international move
to isolate Sri Lanka, opposition to the 13th Amendment has become a
national rallying point for Sri Lankans.
Any Sri Lankan President can ignore this reality only at his own
political peril. The more we try and impose Constitutional “solutions”
on Si Lanka from outside, the harder will be their opposition. Rajapaksa
is committed to devolution, but not any formula dictated by India or
outsiders.
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NATO Forces
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A softer, more sympathetic line, a shift away from repeating slogans
raised by the human rights industry, a more open appreciation for
Rajapaksa’s unique feat in becoming the first nation to annihilate an
entire internationally listed and banned terror outfit, may produce
better results on the devolution from him than simply preaching the 13th
Amendment to him and that too by a country like India which advocates
bilateralism in settling controversial issues with its neighbours -- a
principle solidly enunciated in The Indira-Bhutto Shimla Pact.
Devolution formulas
Rajapaksa says that forcing devolution formulas from outside is akin
to foreign powers asking India to accept solutions such as splitting
Kashmir into three -- Ladakh, Jammu and the Valley, with the Valley to
be “independent” or jointly administered etc.; or NATO or the UN
suggesting greater autonomy for Bodoland, Manipur, or creating a
separate autonomous tribal central state to solve the Naxal problem.
Would India stand for it? No, because no elected government in a
democracy would brook such interference.
That’s how Rajapaksa feels. Unlike his predecessors he is nobody’s
stooge. And nor does he want to behave like one. Gone are the days when
Indian High Commissioners to Colombo a la J.N. Dixit could act like
Viceroys and even threaten to “dismember” the nation with military
intervention when the Sri Lankans at one point balked at accepting the
13th Amendment.
Today, in Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka has a leader who, in 2007 openly
abrogated the Norwegian-brokered Cease Fire Agreement of 2000 when he
became convinced that the LTTE was using the hiatus to step up terror
bombings and increase its weapons caches.
Similarly, if countries use the bludgeon of the 13th Amendment to
badger Sri Lanka to accept outside interference that hinders the peace,
reconciliation and reconstruction process, he may well publicly disown
the 13th Amendment as blight on Sri Lanka’s newly found sovereignty
following the defeat of the world’s most ruthless terror army.
Inderjit Badhwar is an Author, Adventurer and former Chief Editor
–‘India Today’
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