Sri Lanka, Relations with

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SRI LANKA, RELATIONS WITH

SRI LANKA, RELATIONS WITH Relations between India and Sri Lanka have been shaped by a variety of factors. The close proximity of the two states has encouraged the exchange of people, culture, trade, and hostilities over several millennia. Sri Lanka has also long served as an entrepôt for Indian Ocean commerce extending to West Asia, Africa, and Europe to its west, and Southeast Asia and China to its east. The mixture of diverse cultural influences in Sri Lanka, the relatively greater significance of maritime trade, its small size, and its geographically insular existence gave the island society a distinctive character and complex identity. This situation was reinforced by Sri Lanka's separate experience under British colonialism from the early nineteenth century. The British system of indirect rule through local notables created a commonality, which from the late nineteenth century gave way to nationalist demands by the Westernized elite in both India and Sri Lanka for increased access to representation and power. In Sri Lanka, the establishment and dominance of a colonial plantation export economy contributed to the emergence of a propertied elite with a conservative and accommodating attitude to British colonial power. The Sri Lankan nationalist movement and transfer of power, led by D. S. Senanayake, who was to become the first prime minister of Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was called until 1972), were carried out with little involvement by the masses. The more radical mass movement of India, led by the Indian National Congress under Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, backed by the relatively more developed and independent Indian business class, aroused admiration among the more liberal and progressive segments of Ceylonese society while creating great anxiety among the latter's elite. This situation was expressed in the post-independence period in Ceylon by the foreign policy orientations of the two major political blocs that came to dominate Sri Lankan politics. The center-right political party, the United National Party (UNP), remained wary of India, preferring a closer relationship with the capitalist West. In contrast, the center-left party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) founded by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike in 1952, favored a more independent, nonaligned stance that was pro-India and the Third World.

Citizenship and Voting Rights of Indian Tamils

A major subject of dispute between the two states in the early post-independence years revolved around the formal status and rights of Indian immigrants to Sri Lanka. The large majority of these immigrants were poor Tamil workers who had come as indentured labor starting from the early nineteenth century to work on Sri Lanka's famous tea plantations in the island's central upcountry. The South Indian Tamils had become the largest ethnic minority on Ceylon by 1911, when they were categorized separately for the first time. Their numbers peaked by 1939, declining thereafter due to discriminatory measures taken against them; by 1946 the census reported there were 857,329 persons of recent Indian origin (PRIOs/PIOs, officially referred to as "Indian Tamils"). They began to participate in the island's politics in the 1920s by supporting the growing trade union movement and leftist political parties. Though Sri Lanka was bound by agreements with India from the early 1920s to treat the immigrants in a "nondiscriminatory" manner, the competition for votes and power induced Sinhalese political leaders to target immigrant Tamil labor in an exclusionary fashion after 1930, barring them from eligibility to vote and from economic programs. This culminated in the passage in 1948 of the citizenship and franchise acts that stripped the Indian Tamils of their citizenship and voting rights. The Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 created two types of citizenship: citizenship by descent and by registration. Citizenship by descent was restricted to persons who could prove that at least two generations (primarily on the male side) had been born on the island. Citizenship by registration would be available to those residents who could prove that either parent had been a citizen by descent, and that the individual had been a resident of Ceylon for seven years, if married, or ten years, if unmarried. The minister in charge could also register twenty-five persons a year for "distinguished public service." Opposition members of Ceylon's parliament belonging to the left and to the Tamil parties denounced the legislation as having a clear racial and class bias, since it required documentary proof that simply did not exist for the overwhelming majority of poor Tamil workers. In contrast, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had suggested a far simpler set of provisions, requiring residence of seven years prior to January 1948, along with a voluntary declaration of the intention and desire to settle in Ceylon. The Indian and Pakistani Residents' (Citizenship) Act of 1949 allowed for citizenship through satisfaction of a more complicated set of conditions: residence of seven years for married persons and ten years for unmarried persons to have been completed by January 1948, applications to be made within two years of the legislation, with proof of adequate means of livelihood and conformance with Ceylonese marriage laws. As events demonstrated, these requirements provided ample scope for the rejection of most applications on technical grounds. The Ceylon (Parliamentary Elections) Amendment of 1949 made the status of citizenship mandatory for franchise rights, stripping most Indian Tamils of the franchise that a number of them had enjoyed in the late colonial period. With India taking the position that all Indian emigrants to other parts of the British Empire were equal "subjects" in, and hence citizens of, their host countries, unless they voluntarily chose Indian citizenship, the Indian-origin population of Sri Lanka were rendered stateless. Not surprisingly, as a vulnerable population, their economic and political situation declined in the following period.

With several rounds of talks failing, and pressed repeatedly by Sri Lanka to help resolve the dispute, India reluctantly stepped away from its earlier position. Under the Sirimavo-Shastri Pact of 1964, signed by Sri Lankan prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Sri Lanka agreed to accept 300,000 persons and their natural increase, and India 525,000 persons with their increase. The status of the 150,000 who remained would be decided later. These numbers were arrived at by the Sri Lankan government without any consultation with its sole appointed Indian Tamil representative and trade union leader in Parliament, S. Thondaman. Nor did the Indian central government seek input from any of its Tamil representatives, arousing strong resentment in the state of Tamil Nadu.

In direct contradiction to the agreed-upon numbers, over 630,000 Indian Tamils applied for Ceylonese citizenship by the end of 1974. Fewer than 439,000 applied for Indian citizenship, many of them reluctantly, after having been rejected for Ceylonese citizenship. A follow-up agreement in 1974, recognizing the nonviability of the proportions in the earlier agreement, decided that each country would accept half of the remaining 150,000, but this agreement was never implemented. By the end of the period of the 1964 pact in October 1981, only 162,000 Indian Tamils had been registered as citizens of Ceylon, while 373,900 had been given Indian citizenship (of whom 284,300 had been repatriated to India). The rest remained stateless and voteless, with few individual and political rights.

In the following period, the Sri Lankan government gradually reversed its previous positions and belatedly granted citizenship to the remaining persons—a process largely undertaken by the UNP as a reward for the political support given by the Tamils in elections in the post-1977 period. The Citizenship (Special Provisions) Act of 1988 granted citizenship to the remaining persons of Indian origin who had not previously applied for Indian citizenship. This benefited 231,849 stateless persons. Further legislation, enacted in March 2003, gave citizenship to a further 200,000 Tamils.

Kachchativu Island

Another subject of dispute between India and Sri Lanka after independence related to the maritime waters and boundaries between them. For the most part, the demarcation of boundaries and areas of countrol over adjacent waters were settled amicably through negotiations in keeping with international law. Kachchativu, a barren island in the Palk Strait, which had traditionally been used by fishermen of both countries to rest and dry their nets while on fishing expeditions and annually for festival observances, acquired importance due to the extended maritime boundary and access to fish, prawns, and other marine resources they would give the possessing country. In the interest of improving relations, India agreed to concede the issue in favor of Sri Lanka's ownership of the island, on the condition that Indian fishermen and pilgrims would be allowed to continue to visit the island as they had in the past.

The Sri Lankan Tamil Separatist Movement

The major issue that has dominated relations between India and Sri Lanka from the early 1980s is the Sri Lankan Tamil movement for the creation of a separate Tamil eelam (homeland) in the northeast quarter of Sri Lanka. Differences between the Sinhalese-dominated central government and the Sri Lankan Tamil leadership were rooted in the colonial period. Sri Lankan Tamil fears of marginalization and subordination in the post-independence period grew in reaction to successive discriminatory state policies, including the deprivation of the Indian Tamils of citizenship and representation, the consequent disproportionate representation of Sinhalese, and the declaration of Sinhala (the language of the Sinhalese) as Sri Lanka's only official language in 1956. The allocation of development funds and projects by Colombo's Sinhalese-led government to majority regions in the southwest, as well as official support of a pro-Sinhalese university admissions policy in the early 1970s, further frustrated and alienated the Sri Lankan Tamils. Militant Tamil youth groups ("The Boys") were soon ready to fight for a separate Tamil state by any means. Efforts by the state to repress these groups through coercion further polarized the situation, culminating in major bouts of ethnic violence in 1977, 1981, and 1983, and ultimately led to civil war.

This trend of events led to an internationalization of the Sri Lankan Tamil issue and drew India into a more active role. India had expressed diplomatic concern in 1977 and 1981 at the impact of the ethnic violence on Indian Tamils, many of whom were Indian citizens. The operations of the Sri Lankan army against the militant Tamil youth groups and the ethnic violence in 1983 sent some 150,000 Sri Lankan Tamils fleeing to seek asylum in Tamil Nadu, the South Indian state in closest proximity, and with which they had the closest historical and cultural ties. The press, people, and political parties in Tamil Nadu, which had its own history of secessionist movements, provided sympathy, support, and funds to the refugees and militants, and demanded action by India's government in New Delhi, led by Indira Gandhi and her Congress Party. This sequence of events coincided with larger concerns in Delhi that had been raised by the growing closeness of the UNP government in Colombo with Western powers, as evidenced by its growing economic dependence and indebtedness, military aid and training to put down the Tamil insurgency, and other concessions having strategic implications. Given the U.S. funds and arms flowing into the region, through the military dictatorship in Pakistan, to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan, India's sensitivities to the presence of an external superpower were exacerbated by the deteriorating situation in neighboring Sri Lanka, a country from which India had traditionally never felt any anxiety and with which it had generally had cordial relations.

India adopted a two-track policy toward Sri Lanka in the subsequent period, under Indira Gandhi and later Rajiv Gandhi. On the one hand, it provided support, training, and funding to Tamil militant groups to help them create pressure on the government in Colombo to desist from its increasing identification with Western interests. On the other hand, India actively sponsored repeated rounds of negotiations between the government in Colombo and the Sri Lankan Tamil parties to further reconciliation, compromise, and the recognition of minority ethnic rights to establish a system of regional Tamil autonomy for Sri Lanka's northeast. The bilateral talks that ensued from 1983 to 1986 compelled a growing recognition and delineation of Tamil rights and demands, providing the basis for the provisions supporting provincial autonomy incorporated into the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987. Those efforts to effect a reconciliation did not, however, materialize. The many militant youth groups seeking to represent Sri Lankan Tamils suffered from serious individual and political differences among themselves, with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) maintaining the most militant and intractable separatist position.

Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987

The Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, signed by Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan president J. R. Jayewardene on 29 July 1987, sought to solve the exploding ethnic conflict by declaring Sri Lanka "a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual plural society" consisting primarily of four main ethnic groups. It recognized that the northern and eastern provinces had been areas of "historical habitation of the Tamil-speaking population." Tamil and English were also proclaimed to be official languages of Sri Lanka, along with Sinhala. The Sri Lankan government promised to devolve power to provincial councils and to allow the adjoining northern and eastern provinces to form one administrative unit, or to remain separate, their preference to be determined by referendum in the Eastern province. As a temporary measure, the two provinces would be merged into a single unit, the North-Eastern Provincial Council, until the referendum could be held. India promised to send a contingent of troops as a peace-keeping force (IPKF), at the invitation of Sri Lanka's president, to be deployed in the northeast of the island to oversee the cease-fire, receive arms to be surrendered by the Tamil militants, and serve as a guarantor of the agreement. In an exchange of letters following the accord, Jayewardene assured Gandhi that specific aspects of Sri Lanka's foreign policy would be modified to accommodate Indian regional security concerns.

The accord set out a tight schedule for the completion of commitments by the various sides but ran into trouble almost immediately, and soon became derailed. Its opponents included a rival faction of Colombo's ruling party, led by Prime Minister Premadasa; the other major Sri Lankan party, the SLFP, and its leader Sirimavo Bandaranaike; the influential Buddhist clergy; and the radical militant Sinhalese youth group, the People's United Liberation Front (JVP). Nor did the accord have the open support of either the leading moderate Tamil party (TULF) or the most militant Tamil Tigers (LTTE). Only several small parties on the left, members of the progressive intelligentsia, and several of the Tamil militant groups supported the agreement. The surrender of arms was rejected by the LTTE. This and other deliberate actions by the LTTE compelled the IPKF to engage in open armed conflict with them, while the Sri Lankan government withdrew its own armed forces from the northeast.

After Premadasa came to power as president in 1988, he called for a cease-fire with the Tigers, began talks with them, summarily asked the IPKF to leave Sri Lanka (before the accord had been fully implemented), and even clandestinely supplied the LTTE with arms to fight the IPKF, which had already lost 1,500 soldiers. New Delhi began to withdraw all its troops in December 1989. Eight months later the LTTE resumed hostilities against the Sri Lankan government. The LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in Tamil Nadu in 1991, then Premadasa in Colombo in 1993.

While political opinion in India was divided about the wisdom of sending the IPKF to Sri Lanka, it had remained sympathetic to the Tamil cause. This changed sharply after the LTTE's assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by a suicide bomber in the midst of his campaign to come back to power in India's midterm elections in mid-1991, as demonstrated by popular opinion in Tamil Nadu. India proceeded to try those charged with conspiracy to murder Rajiv Gandhi. It indicted Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Tigers, and three of his closest associates to stand trial for the murder. Request for Prabhakaran's extradition continued to be pending over a decade after conclusion of the trial, given the inability of the Sri Lankan government to catch him in his jungle strongholds in the island's northeast. The LTTE was banned as a terrorist organization by India in 1993, a course later adopted by other states, including Sri Lanka, the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Post-accord relations

After withdrawing the IPKF, India continued to stand by the accord, asserting the need for all parties in Sri Lanka to work out a solution among themselves, within the parameters of a united sovereign democratic and pluralistic Sri Lanka. Another round of cease-fire occurred after the changeover of power to the SLFP-led People's Alliance government of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge in late 1994. In an effort to compel the LTTE to negotiate a compromise, President Kumaratunge escalated the fighting against the Tigers on the one hand. On the other, she sought to restore trust by working to improve Sri Lanka's record of human rights, offering a package of constitutional reforms instituting a generous degree of regional autonomy to resolve the ethnic conflict. The opposing UNP refused to support the reforms and thereby strengthen Kumaratunge's political position. Rejecting Kumaratunge's peace overtures, the LTTE fought the government forces to a stalemate by 2000, drawing on the globalized network of support, arms, and funds it had built up in its diaspora communities, as well as through overt and covert economic operations.

By December 2000, Sri Lanka's civil war had taken over 65,000 lives and had displaced over a million and a half people. An international coalition, including Norway and other Western powers, Japan, and India, supported a cease-fire and called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and were willing to back the effort with funding for reconstruction and development. Sri Lanka's new prime minister, Ranil Wickremasinghe, accepted the offer and the cease-fire was maintained for the next two years, while six rounds of talks were held by representatives of the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE in various capitals in Asia and Europe. The government made numerous concessions to the LTTE in an effort to engage it in the peace process. Over time, these served to enhance the control of the LTTE in the northeast, but the Tigers remained largely unresponsive, raising fears in the south that the unity and security of Sri Lanka was being dangerously compromised. This exacerbated serious political divisions on the issue between President Kumaratunge and Prime Minister Wickremasinghe, a development which only strengthened the separatist leverage of the LTTE.

The deepening political divisions caused opinion on the island about India's role to come full circle in favor of it adopting a more active, and even outright interventionist, role to resolve Sri Lanka's political impasse. India had resisted demands by members of the Sinhalese community and clergy to return in mid-2000, when the Tigers launched a particularly threatening attack on Jaffna. However, by the beginning of 2003, the coalition government led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party exhibited a greater willingness to take a more active role in fashioning a compromise between Sri Lanka's two major parties in the south, while asserting that only a "homegrown" solution with the Tigers themselves could prove durable.

Amita Shastri