Don’t Kowtow To New Delhi

Nirupama Rao, the charming Indian diplomat did effuse her charm all round during her three day visit to Colombo and may have even stifled some patriotic voices emanating from the Deep South. While on her departure the usual refrains of ‘the warm and cordial relations between the two countries and strengthening of historical ties’…. blah, blah were heard, what exactly was the message she was carrying from New Delhi’s South Bloc?

Nirupama Rao

English then and now

Surely not initiating a course of studies for Sri Lankans to speak English the  Indian way  as implied in official statements? Those of us who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s had immense fun in imitating ‘Yindan Yinglish’ of Indian cricket commentators such as: ‘Man chasing bawl, bawl chasing man,  terrific race to the boundary between bawl and man, bawl wins’. Indian English has improved during the past four to five decades while Sri Lankan English has dropped from Oxbridge standards to ‘Yakko’ tutory standards after the great Bandaranaike Revolution.

However, a point to ponder will be how Lankan standards of English improved from the days of the Raté Mahattayas and Redda Assay Mahattayas — who could hardly speak a few English words — to the time we got independence. This is not the column to discuss this issue of ‘How English is Spoke’  and with apologies to our readers for our divergence, we will return to regional affairs.

Big Brother challenged

While Ms. Rao was making front page news here and the main story on prime time TV, a story that did not make the headlines was that China through its Export-Import (EXIM) Bank had  provided Sri Lanka with a concessional loan of $ 190 million for the construction of a second airport in Mattala  and another $100 million for the Sri Lankan railways. The signing for the loan was done during a three day visit by a Sri Lankan delegation led by our inimitable Treasury Secretary P. B. Jayasundara.

The timing of the two events within one week may be pure coincidence but many analysts see these Sino-Indian power projections as extensions of their influence in the region. India and China are of course having good relations, despite occasional glitches on the Sino-Indian border such as in Arunchal Pradesh but the two governments play down these events although some Indian media take them up quite seriously. A notable development has been the burgeoning volume of trade between the two countries.

China’s contribution to Lanka

The sudden thrust of Chinese influence into Sri Lanka must indeed be galling to New Delhi which has for long considered Sri Lanka to be in its sphere of influence. The Chinese diplomatic blitzkrieg followed by colossal military and economic infusions have been so decisive and effective in eradicating LTTE terrorism that it has resulted in the ruling UPFA government and the majority Sinhalese community being committed to the hilt to China.

Some Sinhalese express the opinion that while it was India that nurtured Tamil terrorism, trained, armed and financed the terrorists, only the massive outpouring of military assistance backed by firm diplomatic support from China that helped Sri Lanka to end the form of terrorism which  experts the world over said was invincible. This may be too simplistic an explanation but India’s wavering attitude towards Sri Lankan terrorism — blowing hot and cold — left only the committed Indiaphiles thinking of India’s genuine commitment to an independent and sovereign Sri Lanka.

History

Perhaps it is in the Indian psyche to consider Sri Lanka as its backyard and even its neighbouring countries as well. As far back as in the 1940s Indian leaders’ political strategists were thinking aloud of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) being essential to the ‘strategic unity of India’ and even being an autonomous part of  India. Nehru in 1945 speculated that Ceylon would inevitably be drawn into a closer union with India ‘presumably as an autonomous unit of the Indian Federation.’

The late Prof. Shelton Kodikara who made this reference to Nehru adds: ‘Such views however were soon repudiated by Nehru; indeed in the post-independence period, he repeatedly tried to convince Ceylonese that India had no designs on Ceylon. The fact remains, however, that such views were once held by prominent persons in India and are believed by Ceylonese still  to be representative of certain sections of opinion on the sub continent’. Prof. Kodikara made these comments in 1965 but subsequent events till as late March last year when India expressed concern about the final push of the armed forces against the LTTE, reinforces past fears.
Dilly-dallying

New Delhi in the past three to four years was caught in a vice — one arm, its new found friends, the Western Powers wanting to nail down Sri Lanka on human rights violations and the other arm, Karunanidhi of Tamil Nadu threatening to bring down the Sonia Gandhi government, if Pirapaharan was not saved. China saw the opening and moved in fast.

China in May 2007  signed an agreement with the Sri Lanka government to build the Hambantota Development Zone estimated to cost 1 billion dollars. The first phase of the project is estimated to cost $ 450 million and it is a deep water harbour that could provide facilities for Chinese flagged ships, container vessels, gas tankers,  military vessels and even nuclear submarines. Its defence and military capabilities will be immense such as monitoring all vessels passing the Indian Ocean through the Straits of Malacca and even transmissions from the US Diego Garcia base.

Of course both Sri Lanka and China maintain that this port — only about 10 miles away from the shipping routes with one of the heaviest navigational traffic in the world — will be used only for commercial shipping. New Delhi  has not shown much concern about Hambantota because it cannot do much about what has happened. There have been off the cuff remarks such as from Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram: ‘China is fishing in troubled waters’. But the Chinese thrust into the Indian Ocean seems unstoppable, its forays ranging from Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, North Korea, Burma including other smaller nations such as Mauritius and the Maldives as well.

Pilgrimages to New Delhi

But coming back to our first issue:  What did Nirupama Rao want? The only positive request made was: President Mahinda Rajapaksa should visit New Delhi. Strangely during Ms. Rao’s visit, some of our usually perceptive analysts failed to point out that she was just one in a line of New Delhi bureaucrats that have called on Colombo. Indian political heavyweights give a wide berth to Colombo. The last visit of an Indian Prime Minister was by Manmohan Singh last year to attend the SAARC Summit and on that occasion too he stayed only for a few hours!

Sri Lankans crawling to New Delhi on all fours and ‘salaaming’ the Sahibs has been a sycophantic practice developed after the death of President Premadasa. Even to settle internal party squabbles many have been running to New Delhi or even to Tamil Nadu. This is a definite symptom of a developing client state.
It is time we stopped kowtowing to New Delhi and behave as an  independent, sovereign nation that our leaders never cease claiming to be.

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