EDITORIAL

Delhi's Dilemma

For all the success of the first five years of the J.R. Jayewardene government, one failure stood out like a sore thumb: the failure to appease India. Breaking the shackles of the far-left socialism of Sirimavo Bandaranaike's despotic regime of 1970-77, Jayewardene looked to the west, not the north, for Sri Lanka's future. Big mistake.

Mind you, who could blame him? India was still in the clutches of the Nehru Dynasty, with Jawaharlal's daughter Indira edging out the geriatric Moraji Desai, a man never happier than when taking a swig of his own urine (a beverage that soon came to be known as the Desai Punch) to take India back into the fold of the Soviet-aligned, so-called non-aligned world.

JR's break with India had greater ideological significance than that. It was a break with Gandhian socioeconomics. The Mahatma's veneration of India's peasantry had stamped a political ethic on India from which it was hard to break away. The economy of the ox cart that Gandhi propounded was likely to keep India from industrialising for decades to come. Rightly, JR opted to shake Sri Lanka free from this stranglehold and move the country towards a market economy based on capitalist principles.

In that sense, JR was a breath of fresh air. Foreign aid flooded in, and efficient ministers like Ranasinghe Premadasa, Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali were jumping through hoops pouring concrete into housing, power, irrigation and ports. Boom time had come. Sirimavo's excesses were remembered only through the commission that was appointed to investigate her, that would eventually recommend the removal of her civic rights. Sri Lanka had broken out of the orbit of Delhi and was hurtling towards Washington. And it took only months to demonstrate to everyone that JR was right: the grass was indeed growing greener on this side of the Palk Straits. And to rub salt into the wound, Foreign Minister A.C.S. (All Countries Seen) Hameed was far more often in New York and London than ever he was in Delhi.

These slights did not go unnoticed by Mother India. Indira Gandhi knew how to grind an axe, and grind it exceedingly well. Her intelligence services fed her paranoia to the full with stories of UNP plots to make Sri Lanka the American equivalent of Cuba: a US aircraft carrier permanently anchored off the southern tip of India.

The euphemistically-named RAW burned the midnight oil on how to throw a spanner in the works of their upstart neighbour to the south, and it did not take rocket science for them to succeed. Demands for Tamil emancipation had been growing ever since independence: RAW spat on its hands and gleefully began arming and training a Tamil rebellion that would bring Sri Lankan ambition to its knees.

A decade hence, RAW's dreams came true. Even though Indira died at the hands of rebels on her own soil, her son Rajiv was able to claim victory over Sri Lanka, in which all-out anarchy and civil war was breaking, by sending the IPKF in as a peace keeping force under threat of an all-out invasion if Colombo demurred. Together with this signal triumph, Rajiv was able to extract an odious 'accord' from Sri Lanka, in effect giving India the right to interfere in important aspects of Sri Lanka's sovereignty.

Premadasa's premature ejection of the IPKF is now history. On his appointment as prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe lost no time in shooting off to Delhi to pay his salaams. In the 20 months since, it is not insignificant that he has visited India more than any other country. RAW might not have won for Delhi a satellite state in the south: but it has won a neighbour with a new respect for all things Indian. And now it is India's turn to rub salt into the wound. It has shaken off the shackles of Gandhian social engineering and taken off on a capital-driven industrial boom of its own. Several Indian states are now registering economic growth rates 50% higher even that Wickremesinghe targets for Sri Lanka. The window of opportunity Sri Lanka had to service India's growth as Hong Kong does China's, was lost.

It is now looking increasingly as if the Norwegian initiative to bring the LTTE to the negotiating table has stubbed its toe. Having looked to the West for solutions, Sri Lanka has learned the lesson once again that the West is in this not for any love for Sri Lanka, but its own ephemeral interest.

The Norwegians have been little more than a rubber stamp for Tiger excess. True, the ceasefire has held: but the Norwegians have stood idly and cynically by even as the Tigers liquidated, in cold blood, more than a hundred alleged 'civilian spies,' abducted upwards of 1,000 children to serve in their militia, established camps in government-controlled areas and continued to smuggle arms into Sri Lanka with impunity.

Nothing expresses the cynicism of these 'donors' better than the dozens of luxury 4x4 Land Cruiser Saharas in the parking lots of Kilinochchi, with the bullet-ridden secondary school and the war ravaged hospital for a backdrop. The school and the hospital could both have been completely restored for the price of 10 of those vehicles.

The Norwegian honeymoon in Sri Lanka is drawing to an end, with the public coming to realise that one party to the honeymoon has presented himself on the nuptial bed sans the apparatus with which to consummate the marriage. The brokers of the peace are gradually distancing themselves from the process: new stones are being turned and new avenues explored. One of those avenues is India.

Having been ignominiously kicked out from Sri Lanka in 1991, the Indians are unlikely to put their foot in a cowpat a second time. What is more, Velupillai Pirapaharan is a wanted man in India. There is no question of Indian public opinion permitting its government to truce or parley with the Tigers. What is more, Tamil Nadu itself has turned against Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka, obsessed as it is with its own economic development. When the fields are ripe with corn, few have time for politics. Nevertheless, stability in Sri Lanka is very much on the Indian agenda. Delhi has run with the hare and hunted with the hounds for a quarter century, and found both these pastimes irksome. It is now time for something different.

Next week's visit to Sri Lanka by Indian Foreign Minister Yaswant Sinha is therefore significant. One hopes that India will revisit the issue of peace in Sri Lanka, though one would hope in vain for a material intervention this time around. The likelihood is that Delhi will let Colombo sweat a while longer, and even then offer little more than advice and 'influence.' Anything more is likely to bring the JVP on to the streets, as it did in 1987. But even then, there were wheels within wheels. For all the strident anti-India protests the JVP engaged in, it turned to RAW to smuggle out of Sri Lanka its leader, Somawansa Amarasinghe, to escape slaughter by Premadasa. One wonders whether there was a similar agenda behind the JVP protest outside the Norwegian Embassy last week.

Sri Lanka seems to have gone a full circle: we are back to the wall, with nowhere to turn to except Delhi. Norwegian half-heartedness and LTTE intransigence has left no choice. With the Tiger Leader on Delhi's most wanted list however, it is unlikely that the Norwegian paradigm can endure also with India. Delhi is rather more businesslike in its dealings with separatists than tolerant, liberal Europeans are, and fresh Indian involvement would be welcomed with mixed feelings by everyone concerned.

Nevertheless, the writing seems to be on the wall, and Delhi's dilemma is real. What remains to be seen is the price India will demand for fresh engagement with its troublesome southern neighbour.