Between two stools

India's Sri Lanka policy must not be reactive

The recent resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly calling for an independent probe into war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan army in the course of its civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is an indication that the Union government has failed to defuse the crisis caused by a similar resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) recently. This is due to the fact that, in desiring to please everybody, New Delhi wound up pleasing nobody. In the process, it has discovered the limits of its strategic vision — subject to domestic political pressures, true, but even more worryingly, dangerously reactive. After all, the UNHRC resolution was relatively toothless, and has been treated with open contempt by the Sri Lankan government.

Whether New Delhi’s bumbling in Geneva, having already weakened the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre, will also cause the Sri Lankan government to go even closer to the Chinese government remains to be seen. On the one hand, Beijing developed strong links with Colombo during the years of the civil war. On the other hand, there is little doubt that Colombo’s decision to go after the LTTE no-holds-barred had New Delhi’s tacit approval; indeed, Sri Lankan Defence Minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president’s brother, insisted last week that he, his brother Basil Rajapaksa, and another senior presidential advisor regularly briefed the then Indian national security advisor, defence secretary and foreign secretary during the war. It is entirely possible, therefore, that New Delhi has privately assured Colombo that its public stance on the toothless UNHRC resolution means little.

There is every reason for India to globally project itself as an antithesis to the Chinese, who have – for strategic reasons – supported dictatorships without much fuss. Had that defensible position been India’s strategic vision, then it should have fought longer and harder for a tougher resolution internationally, and some signal to Sri Lanka that it would have to pay a price for ignoring it. The overall feeling is that India was buffeted between contesting forces, ending up with a position that was a reaction rather than a proactive stance.

That the Dravidian parties have chosen to view the Sri Lankan vote as a way to compete for votes is unsurprising — it is a natural reaction, in a democracy, to the very great horror that their voters displayed as allegations of the Sri Lankan army’s actions became public knowledge. It remains to be seen whether this public outrage will die down or not. If it does not, then the process of government formation in 2014 – which will necessarily require one or the other major Tamil Nadu party’s support – is going to be complicated by demands made on whichever national party comes out ahead for sterner action against Sri Lanka. When that happens, the foreign policy establishment should not be again caught by surprise, as it was at the time of the Geneva vote.