Will Katchatheevu Regress Into a Situation Akin to the Maldives or Nepal?

MEA S Jaishankar. Image used for representation only. 

(Photo: PTI)

Domestic politics have a direct and immediate bearing on external perceptions. Winning domestic politics does not necessarily lead to winning perceptions internationally. It is an unavoidable relation and reaction given the global highway of interconnectivity. Therefore, the recent calls of concern on the state of our democracy by the United States, Germany, and even the United Nations are only natural outpourings.  

But the consequences of the tenor, optics, and insistences of Indian politics are most sensitively imagined and reacted to in its contiguous neighbourhood, given its overarching size and impact. If it gets perceived to be overbearing or intimidating, then it gives rise to what they call on the Nepali streets as the ‘Big Brother’ syndrome. It’s not a healthy phenomenon to linger on, as it can germinate a sharp and vocal ‘anti-India’ constituency.  

Disconcerting Noises in the Neighbourhood

India’s role in the run-up to the framing of the new constitution of Nepal, accompanied by the purported ‘blockade’ in 2015, may have galvanised electoral prospects in its border districts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, but it did incalculable and irreversible damage to the perception of New Delhi in Kathmandu. Subsequent (in)actions like not changing Indian currency notes in the Central Bank of Nepal (during demonetisation) or the Agniveer scheme, added to the unsavoury bilateral narrative. The imagined wounds have deepened to such an extent that it has gone beyond the simplistic narrative of only consuming Communist/Maoist parties supporting China owing to ideological considerations, as the traditionally pro-India parties like the Nepali Congress too get forced into assuming a strident posture against a ‘Big Brother’!

Recent times have seen an unbelievable national election in a neighbouring country i.e., the Maldives, that was held under a brazen ‘India Out’ campaign. While the Maldives’ own internal and competitive politics (along with a baiting China in the wings) had more to do with the same, rather than any substantial missteps by New Delhi (unlike in Nepal), India’s dominant air of domestic majoritarianism would not have helped perceptions. 

Similar (and unprecedented) hashtags like #BoycottIndia and #IndiaOut are now trending across Bangladesh. The principle accusation of the opposition parties is of an interfering and meddlesome New Delhi in its internal affairs. Bangladesh’s principle opposition party, the Bangladesh National Party, accuses New Delhi of taking sides and supporting an undemocratic Sheikh Hasina and the Indian saree has become the metaphorical face of animosity.

While it is true that Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League was generally seen as pro-India and Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh National Party (BNP), not so – but the trending of such sharp anti-India sentiment ought to concern the foreign policy mandarins in Delhi. From disconcerting noises in neighbouring China, Pakistan, Nepal, the Maldives to even Bangladesh – to the wishy-washy double-speak in Bhutan and Myanmar, the neighbourhood situation doesn’t look good. 

And Then Katchatheevu Happened

India can ill-afford triggering any more controversy than what is already raging in the neighbourhood – yet that is exactly what it did by wading into the choppy waters of the Palk Strait, by invoking a small (285 acres), uninhabited, and strategically insignificant island of Katchatheevu.

Seemingly, the compelling urge to score political/partisan brownie-points against local parties in election season is simply too much to ignore, despite the previous experience in say, Nepal.  

Stirring the hornet’s nest, an effectively dormant issue (certainly, not non-existent) was fished out, raked, and ingeniously posited for public reaction to suggest partisan diminishment for one set of political parties and one-upmanship for the other by suggesting concern. In doing so, the larger principle of the sovereign bind by way of timelessly honouring signed agreements by successive dispensations was conveniently forgotten, and even more importantly, the issue of Sri Lankan reaction and emotions was put on the back burner.

It is such disdain for the opinions of ‘others’ in the gambit that wounds the neighbourhood and also undoes the positive work that New Delhi may otherwise be doing for the economically strapped Sri Lankans.  

While the interest of the Indian fishermen ought to be paramount and indeed there are parts of the agreement, including fishing rights for Indian fishermen, that need to be taken up, the issue is not so straightforward. There have been credible counteraccusations of illegal overfishing (including using trawlers) by Indian fishermen that need to be accounted into the matrix. It is not as simplistic, as postulated by wily politicians. 

India Must Tread Forward in a More Honest, Healthy, and Non-demeaning Manner

But the picture painted in the heat and din of election season of a previous government “callously gave away” Katchatheevu is pure sophistry or jumla at best – it ignores a far more complex and possibly gratifying past which is deliberately obliterated in public discourse, and instead a cherry-picked piece of a larger equation is postulated for consumption. That the '70s was a period of frenetic neighbourhood outreach (after Bangladesh in 1971) to settle neighbouring uncertainties is tellingly ignored – even more so, that amongst the subsequent agreements with Sri Lanka was Colombo’s settled recognition of India’s sovereign rights over the ultra-strategic Wadge Bank (10,300 sq km of fishing and other natural resources e.g., oil, minerals etc.).

In 2015, the Ministry of External Affairs then headed by the Foreign Secretary who is now the External Minister (also at the forefront of rousing up Katchatheevu issue, now) had formally stated, “This (1974 agreement) didn’t involve either acquiring or ceding of territory belonging to India since the area in question had never been demarcated” – but selective amnesia that afflicts the Foreign Minister contradicts his own stand, and of the current government’s accepted position in 2015.

A thoroughbred diplomat like him would know that revisiting and questioning settled issues (even by self) does not make for good impressions or diplomacy in the already wounded neighbourhood. Yet he did it, knowing perhaps that it does however make for good domestic politics, insincere accusation, and grandstanding. 

Even though the stakes to make a powerful debut in the South, and especially in Tamil Nadu are high for the ruling dispensation, it must tread forward in a more honest, healthy, and non-demeaning manner. Reminding Sri Lanka of India’s support and aid in times of distress does not warrant demeaning the sovereign integrity and pride of a nation, as matters of sovereign dignity can never be offset with other considerations. A redux of the Maldives or Nepal should be studiously avoided, whatever the temptation to play vile domestic politics.

The throes, passions and larger issues of India may allow it to forget and move on with its urgencies post-elections, but the sleight imagined in the neighbouring countries has a stickier tendency to linger and metastasise. Lastly, the fleet-footed Chinese would invariably be waiting for such missteps by India to pounce upon and attempt to swing the tide in its favour. This is exactly what they did in the Maldives, in Nepal, in Myanmar, and now could do so in Sri Lanka also.

(The author is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)