Big Brother India is family, China just a business partner
Old feuds were forgotten, the old hatchet buried and the old adage that a nation ‘ doesn’t have permanent friends, only permanent interests’ shunted aside when a change of fortunes and a change of attitude made New Delhi roll out the red carpet of welcome to the returning prodigal who came to genuflect and proclaim kinship as the gateway to India’s heart.
The tail end of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term of office as President saw Indo- Lanka relations take a nose dive after Sri Lanka steadfastly refused to tear herself away from China’s stringed embrace and return to India’s beckoning arms that had once jealously held her close.
Manmohan Singh, India’s then prime minster, waved in earnest and implored with fervor but Rajapaksa was blithely lost in trance, fixated ‘pon Xi Jinping’s captivating Dragon Dance to notice the frantic overtures that were being made for him to come back to the fold.
The unkindest cut, the deepest cut that bled and hurt the most, was that the suitor, this Xi Jinping– come- lately, was India’s enemy number one who had wooed and won Lanka’s hand and swept her off her feet by showering gifts without divulging they came attached with an exorbitant price tag.
Spurred India bided her time to eat the dish best eaten cold. She did not have to wait for long to have her appetite for revenge sated. The opportunity arose when it was Colombo’s turn to hold the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting ( CHOGM) in November 2013 with then Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa taking centre stage playing host to a cluster of leaders whose countries had once been colonised by Britain.
The Crown would, of course, be represented by Queen Elizabeth who is the traditional Head of the Commonwealth but the crowning jewel in it, the Kohinoor diamond, would be India’s Prime Minister Singh without whose indispensable presence the meeting will fail to be regarded a success for the host country.
The queen promptly sent her regrets expressing her inability to attend in person but as a consolation crumb detailing her son Charles to make a cameo appearance on her behalf. Now all depended on the attendance of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. To lose the presence of the present monarch of England may be considered as unfortunate but to lose the Star of India as well would be pure negligence.
The importance of Singh at the gala event was not lost on the Rajapaksa
Government; and no stone was left unturned to secure his participation. As a final flourish Foreign Minister Prof G. L. Peiris turned delivery boy to personally handover the gilded invitation of the Lankan President to India’s Prime Minister. If the personal touch extended to Singh and Singh alone was intended to elicit a prompt positive reply, it failed to work its magic. Peiris returned home empty handed without answer.
A f t e r ke e ping t he Lankan Government waiting for days on end in a chronic state of nail biting nervousness, Singh’s RSVP finally arrived. It contained Singh’s regrets of his unavailability to grace the occasion and India’s undisguised snub of her refusal to break bread with the Lankan host and to hammer home the distaste it held toward his regime and its wish to see the last of him, to the Lankan people.
But worse was to follow. Exactly three months later on February 12, 2014, India severed the umbilical cord that had so bound the two countries for centuries; and, in one fell swoop, disowned Lanka from family membership.
Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid delivered a telling snub to Lanka when he declared to a visiting Sri Lankan media delegation in his New Delhi office: “We are not the big brother, we are just partners”. In other words, don’t call us big brother, you are no thambi of ours.
In one cutting sentence he effectively severed the ties that had stretched across the Palk Strait for centuries binding both nations in a special relationship of goodwill and cooperation born of a broad common cultural and religious heritage. The Indo- Lanka bond has been based on kinship, with India held up as Lanka’s big brother; and, in true Eastern fashion, Lanka has been quite comfortable to genuflect to the bigger and older sibling whose land gave birth to the core spring of her religion and the core source of her language, the hallowed land where the Buddha trod and set in motion the Wheel of the Dhamma.
But all sensed that India’s ire, as contained in External Minister Khurshid’s vitriolic statement, was directed not against the people of Lanka but more toward its President for playing truant and allowing the Chinese ‘ Road and Belt, Silk Route’ gambit succeed in Sri Lanka as well, against India’s security interests. This was evident a year later when the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi showed Indo- Lanka relations were back on track by visiting Lanka as the first state guest of the newly elected President Sirisena.
Since then much water has flowed under the bridge and the chequered fortunes of the Rajapaksas have turned full circle. And India, with its permenant interests at heart, has begun to court in earnest the unputdownable Rajapaksas who have made a truimphant comeback to the uplands of power.
Last November, not even 10 days after being sworn in as the newly elected President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s first ever state visit abroad as president was to New Delhi where he was given the right royal red carpet treatment by the Indian Government. As a parting gift he was also given a 400 million US dollar credit line.
Last week it was the turn of his big brother Mahinda Rajapaksa who had once been the chief protaganist of the Indo-Lanka rift, to be India’s honoured guest. This time he was coming as Lanka’s Prime Minister. But this was not purely a courtesy call to present his credential to Big Brother India. As the man in charge of the nation’s finance , he was a man on a mission: to keep the wolf from the door and keep the home fires burning.
What would be his pitch? And would India buy it? After many years of being in India’s bad books for cavorting with the Chinaman despite big brother’s rebukes the seven- year curse of stepping on the Indian’s toes had to be exorcised before making the pitch for alms.
Last Saturday, whist being winged to New Delhi, Mahinda Rajapaksa may have, perhaps, mused on how President Jayewardene had once saved Lanka’s bacon when relations between the two countries had hit a sour patch. The strained situation was thawed only when President JR had ended his 1986 SAARC Summit speech in Bangalore with the moving words, ‘I am a lover of India, I am a friend of her people. I am a follower of her greatest son Gautama the Buddha’. It had won him the lost heart of India. Perhaps, he, too, would use his persuasive skills on those lines to make a stone yield water or a tortoise to give its feathers.
After his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Modi, the Lankan Prime Minister spoke to the Indian press. When the Hindustan Times asked him about Pakistan’s call for Sri Lanka to condemn India’s move in Kashmir, his Indian heart winning sure fire answer was: "Whatever the view of any country, we will not get involved in the internal matters of India.’’
Then he made his claim to kinship, to special blood ties that make Lanka’s relationship with India singularly unique. ‘ But remember this’, Mahinda Rajapaksa declared, ‘I always say India is our relation. Others are only friends."
And there was more to follow to warm the cockles of India’s heart. Rajapaksa defined the nature of Lanka’s "strategic" relationship with China. "For the sake of development, China helped us, that is all there is to it. Our war had shattered our country, we needed help to develop, they were ready with the money, so why not?" he said.
Then Mahinda Rajapaksa who had always been extremely jealous of sharing the Eelam war victory with anyone and had always kept the kudos to himself alone and to Lanka, admitted possibly for the first time in public on Indian soil: "Without India’s help, I don’t think we would have won the civil war in Sri Lanka.’’
No doubt, it would have been honey in
Modi’s ear to hear Rajapaksa giving India the credit for the war victory, without which development would not have been possible in the first place; and for demoting the role of China to that of a business partner and no more. Chewed today, spat out tomorrow.
Then did the Maestro lay out his wares before the Indian press and, baring the empty bowl he had brought from the Lankan Treasury revealed the impoverished state of the country’s coffers which like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard now lay bare. He had made an appeal to the Indian Government, he said, to grant Lanka a grace period of three years of loan payments to India. The debt service payment due this year alone is US$ 169.7 million. Sri Lanka will have to settle US$ 182 million in 2021 and US$ 168 million in 2022. The total debt to India is approximately US $962 million
He told the Hindu newspaper, ‘I have asked India whether Sri Lanka could get a moratorium on all loan repayments for three years, until it can revive the economy. If the Indian government agrees to the request, then other governments might agree to do the same, including China.’
Lanka has borrowed from China US$ 5.2 billion, most of it taken by the Rajapaksa government between 2011 and 2014. Payment scheduled for this year is US$ 674.4 million. A case of biting off more than can be chewed.
With pitch done, it was time for the Lankan Premier to go on pilgrimage. After visiting Varanasi and Buddha Gaya, he prayed at Tirupathi Kovil where a special Pooja was held. Then it was back to the capital to fly home on Tuesday.
The Indian Government’s reaction to Rajapaksa’s appeal has so far been positive. They would, no doubt, have been moved by the seeming destituteness of her neighbouring relation, who has bared to the world, no less, her pathetic plight. Is that why, though direct flights from New Delhi on the national carrier Srilankan were available to fly the Lankan Prime minister and his delegation home, India insisted from the largeness of her heart, that they fly on a specially chartered Indian flight courtesy of the Indian Government?
Perhaps they thought given the plea for grace, the cash strapped Lankan entourage couldn’t afford the return airfare.
New Delhi rolls the red carpet to Lanka’s new PM whom it once wanted toppled from power