#dnaEdit: Cultural diplomacy

The leader of right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) known for its credo of cultural nationalism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quite at home praying at the Mahabodhi Society in Colombo, bowing to the senior Buddhist monks and then participating at a traditional house-warming ceremony in Tamil-dominated Jaffna. Modi does not fight shy of participating in cultural and religious functions which can be an ice-breaker in many ways. By doing what he did, Modi sent out the message that India respects the Buddhist identity of Sri Lanka and is sensitive to the problems of Hindu Tamils in Jaffna. The Sinhala-Tamil conflict is a language problem at one level, and it erupted in that form in the linguistic riots in the 1950s and for a long time after that. The influential Buddhist Council had turned the linguistic issue into a larger one of culture and faith as well. Modi’s gestures might appear to be a risky attempt to deal with cultural identities of an important neighbour, whose internal politics have echoes in India.

Sri Lanka’s attitude towards India has been ambivalent at the best of times. While Colombo — at times — regards New Delhi as a benign neighbour; other times it sees India as an intrusive Big Brother. India cannot be indifferent to the situation in Sri Lanka, especially with regard to plantation Tamil workers, who went to Sri Lanka from India during the colonial period. Nor can India be indifferent to Lankan Tamils in the northern parts of the island. It is true that the Tamil Nadu political parties had tried to rake up the Lankan Tamil issue for partisan reasons, but there are genuine and legitimate Indian concerns about Tamils in Sri Lanka. Undeniably, Lankan Tamil refugees had swarmed Tamil Nadu when trouble erupted in the island-nation. India-Sri Lanka has a complex relationship. There have been times when India was indeed overbearing, and times when Sri Lanka responded in a peevish manner. 

The end of the ethnic conflict with the decimation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, prioritised the issue of the internally displaced people from the north living in refugee camps. In the last few years, India had been contributing to the rehabilitation of Tamils from the northern part of the island. The situation seems to have stabilised now following the provincial elections in 2013, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the formation of the government in the Northern Provincial Council. 

During his recent visit, Modi dedicated 27,000 homes built with Indian assistance for the displaced Tamils. And the Indian Prime Minister urged the Sri Lankan leaders to implement the 13th amendment of the Constitution of 1987, legislated after the aborted India-Sri Lanka agreement that year, ensuring provincial autonomy. He has also assured that India is committed to the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, dispelling doubts about India entertaining any idea of a separate Tamil state in the island. 

Sri Lanka and India will have to avoid treading on each other’s toes because they have no choice but to reckon with each other as neighbours. For example, there is the case of Indian and Lankan fishermen getting caught in the crossfire between the coast guards of the two countries. There will be posturing from both sides. Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe’s off-the-cuff remarks of shooting Indian fishermen, is a case in point. These are issues which have to be handled with maturity by the two sides. The interpretation that Modi’s visit to Colombo was an attempt to wean away Sri Lanka from China has been rightly dismissed out of hand by the Chinese themselves.