Sunday, July 13th 2014
by S Venkat Narayan,
Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, July 12
The bonhomie that has existed between India and Sri Lanka for over 2,500 years appears to have staged a quiet comeback, if the mood here is any indication in the aftermath of Prof GL Peiris’s visit New Delhi and Hyderabad last week.
To begin with, the stage appears to have been set in Geneva in March this year, when India voted against Operative Paragraph 10 of the Human Rights Council Resolution on Sri Lanka. Dr Manmohan Singh of the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power here at that time.
For once, he chose to ignore the unrelenting pressure from political parties in Tamil Nadu and acted in the country’s national interest.
That single act of Dr Singh’s appears to have led to the beginning of a dramatic change in Sri Lanka, particularly the hardliners’ perception of India as being behind the US-sponsored anti-Sri Lanka resolutions in the UNHRC. By voting against the most crucial paragraph in that resolution, India promptly neutralised the hardliners. This, in turn, appears to have made things easy for President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his dealings with India.
Things began to change thereafter. The general election here in April-May brought the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister.
Rajapaksa telephoned Modi within minutes after his party’s sensational victory became clear on the day of counting, May 16. Modi reciprocated the gesture by inviting Rajapaksa along with leaders of other SAARC countries to his swearing-in on May 26. They got along well, according to those who saw them during the interaction.
Modi enjoys such a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha that he does not need to depend on the likes of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa for support. For a change, Modi can act in India’s national interest without bothering too much about Jayalalithaa’s fire-spitting rhetoric against Rajapaksa for not doing enough to rehabilitate the island’s Tamils after three declades of a bloody civil war.
In any case, Jayalalithaa appears to be more concerned these days about the Tamil Nadu fishermen’s problems in the Palk Straits than about the Sri Lankan Tamils. Rajapaksa has responded to this with compassion. From January this year, he ordered the release of as many as 805 Tamil Nadu fishermen who got into trouble for fishing in Sri Lankan waters. This is more than during any single year since 2009.
"They have been repatriated or are being repatriated to India through a ‘fast track’ approach," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin points out. Since Modi assumed office on May 26, 249 Indian fishermen have been released in six weeks. And Mrs Swaraj profusely thanked President Rajapaksa and Prof Peiris for this.
"Both Ministers felt that the fishermen problem needs to be addressed as an issue of livelihood and we need to work on solutions on a longer term basis. Of course, there is no solution right now available on this," the spokesman added.
Prof Peiris made a detailed presentation to Mrs Swaraj and her delegation about the initiatives that Sri Lanka is taking, about their own national efforts for reconciliation and accountability, and indicated the steps being taken currently by Sri Lanka to continue and strengthen local mechanisms. He briefed her on the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) process in Sri Lanka and the need to ensure its inclusivity.
Asked about India’s stance on a UN team visiting Sri Lanka to probe "human rights violations" during Eelam War IV in 2009, Akbaruddin recalled that India not only abstained on the Resolution at the UNHRC but also voted against that specific paragraph seeking to send a UN team to Sri Lanka to probe excesses committed by the Sri Lankan security forces and the LTTE during Eelam War IV.
"So, our views are pretty clear on this. This is not about a country-specific issue. This is a matter of principle that we have always held. We have articulated why we feel so in terms of our approach to human rights. We feel that international bodies need to address human rights through a cooperative framework, not a punitive approach," the spokesman declared.
Prof Peiris invited Mrs Swaraj to Colombo for the next meeting of the Joint Commission, which she accepted.
This was his third visit to India this year. He came in January to meet his then Indian counterpart Salman Khurshid. He came with President Rajapaksa to attend Modi’s swearing in on May 26. And he had met Mrs Swaraj in 2012, when she led a delegation of Indian parliamentarians as the then leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. The two Ministers appear to have established a healthy working relationship.
The two sides discussed Indian development projects in the island and bilateral trade, which now stands at $4.8 billion. They agreed to discuss ways and means to enhance this by removing hurdles coming in the way at present.
On Thursday, Prof Peiris was in Hyderabad to meet Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu to explore fresh Sri Lankan investments in the state. Naidu welcomed the idea and warmly greeted Brandix Lanka’s CEO Ashraf Omar, whose company wants to take its investment in the Brandix India Apparel City in Vizag or Visakhapatnam to a billion dollars.
After some hiccups these past few years, India-Sri Lanka relations are now moving forward in all matters such as defence cooperation, education, culture, tourism etc. So, one can look to the future of Indo-Lanka relations with some optimism.
From : http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=106687
