Katchatheevu row storm in a teacup

K. P. Nayar

Strategic Analyst

WHEN Katchatheevu burst upon the Indian election scene a week ago, my mind went back three decades to evenings spent with JN Dixit, who had just retired as Foreign Secretary in January 1994. Dixit, who earned the moniker ‘Viceroy’ during his stay in Colombo as India’s High Commissioner from 1985 to 1989, was a pioneer of sorts. He was the first Indian Foreign Secretary to start a regular political column in the national media on diplomacy at a time when most of his colleagues took external affairs secrets to their graves.

The India-Sri Lanka ties are now excellent, even though the Rajapaksa family is in the political wilderness.

I spent time in Dixit’s Gurgaon study because he wanted to write a book on his years in Sri Lanka. His tenure was the most explosive period, both literally and figuratively, in the India-Sri Lanka relations. It was nothing like the current storm in a teacup over the uninhabited Katchatheevu island.

Those were the years of the ill-fated Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka, marked by rapid ups and downs in bilateral relations. Such volatility in ties eventually led to the tragic assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then President Ranasinghe Premadasa within a two-year period. Dixit was unsure of writing for the public and he gathered many journalists like me to bounce off his ideas about stepping into an author’s shoes. Dixit’s revelatory book on Sri Lanka, titled Assignment Colombo, took four years because he wanted to write it from memory to avoid getting entangled in the stipulations of the Official Secrets Act. Meanwhile, he published three other books, which were far less controversial.

One evening, he told me about a reception he hosted for a high-level visiting Indian delegation at which the world’s first woman Prime Minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was the High Commissioner’s special guest. The mood was light and one of the Indian visitors, slightly inebriated, asked Bandaranaike the cheeky question what she would have done about LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran if the island’s civil war had erupted when she was in power. Without even a moment’s hesitation, Bandaranaike shot back: “I would have called my sister in New Delhi and asked her to look the other way while I sort out this Prabhakaran fellow and his kind of solution to our Tamil problem.” The ‘sister’ she was referring to was Indira Gandhi.

Unsurprisingly, Nirupama Rao, whose life was at risk during a posting as India’s First Secretary in Colombo during Sri Lanka’s ethnic strife, went on X (previously Twitter) — within hours of the Katchatheevu controversy breaking out on April 1. Rao had to be evacuated from Sri Lanka in 1983. Quoting historians and researchers on the Katchatheevu settlement to buttress her argument, Rao wrote that “the personal equation between Indira Gandhi and Sirimavo Bandaranaike played a decisive role in the conclusion of the 1974 Agreement.” She said Bandaranaike made a personal appeal to Indira to come to her rescue in the Katchatheevu negotiations, as it would otherwise spell political disaster for her — just as Dixit recounted decades later, in a completely different context. Rao later served in Colombo as High Commissioner from 2004 to 2006.

Prof Partha Ghosh of Jawaharlal Nehru University has pursued this story in his research. He wrote: “Indira Gandhi appreciated Bandaranaike’s predicament and manipulated the situation in such a way that it became a fait accompli even before the Indian delegation could react. Bandaranaike remembered this gesture as late as 1990 with immense gratitude.” Ghosh ought to have written the year 2000 instead, i.e. till Bandaranaike completed her final term as Prime Minister. Her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sri Lanka’s only woman President for over a decade, did not forget India’s 1974 gesture either.

In South Asia, with the exception of Pakistan because of the historic baggage, personal equations among leaders have guided policy. This brought peace and tranquillity, settled disputes amicably and ensured that the region remained in India’s sphere of influence since Independence. This is truer of Sri Lanka compared to other nations in India’s neighbourhood.

The BJP’s Lok Sabha poll candidate from Amritsar, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, can attest, as the Katchatheevu controversy rages, to the reality that little has changed in this regard from the time of his predecessors in Colombo — Dixit and Rao. Sandhu is a Sri Lanka veteran of Indian diplomacy as Counsellor at the Mission from 2000 to 2004 and later as a laser-focused, result-obsessed High Commissioner in Colombo.

When Sandhu took charge of the Indian High Commission in 2017, Sri Lanka had fallen to Beijing’s charms and had ceased to be in India’s sphere of influence. Notwithstanding Mahinda Rajapaksa’s pro-China policies as President, Sandhu argued for an invitation to Rajapaksa to visit India, not once but twice, when he was the Leader of the Opposition. The chemistry between PM Narendra Modi and Mahinda during the first of those two visits turned Sri Lanka’s tallest politician at that time into an India supporter. Two years after that first visit, when Mahinda became Prime Minister, as India calculated, his first external engagement was a virtual summit with Modi. His brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, made India his destination of choice for his first state visit after being elected President.

There is a lesson in all this for those who may want to prolong the recent resurrection of Katchatheevu as a bilateral issue even after its limited political shelf life beyond voting in Tamil Nadu on April 19. The India-Sri Lanka ties are now excellent, even though the Rajapaksa family is in the political wilderness. These relations are not a zero-sum game for Colombo vis-a-vis China. India can hope for no better friend as Sri Lanka’s President than the incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe. This is equally true of the present PM, Dinesh Gunawardena. Few Indians are aware that his father Philip Gunawardena was imprisoned by the British in Bombay for joining India’s freedom struggle after coming under the influence of Jayaprakash Narayan, his classmate in the US. India must make the most of these favourable conditions.

According to Rao, who later became Foreign Secretary, “India cannot unilaterally rescind the (Katchatheevu) Treaty under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The abrogation of the Treaty... will ensure the country loses face in international politics when it is staking its claim as a rising power.” 

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