Anura’s Indian summer exposes JVP’s double face, double tongue
The JVP turned a new Indian leaf after its nationalist bloom wilted under the hot Indian sun following a brief stint in the subcontinent by its leader Anura Kumara last week. Travel, broadens the mind and, indeed, it has expanded his horizons beyond measure.
It was certainly not the man who had left his native land almost a fortnight ago who returned home nearly a week later. He seems to have undergone a metamorphosis while on the Indian mainland and turned from insular local politician to one who has come to grips with John Donne’s view, ‘No man is an island entirely of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main’.
Starting from day one, he flitted adorned in full suit and red tie when meeting External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, and opted for blazer with casual collar button down shirt and slacks when meeting India’s Foreign Secretary Kwatra and National Security Adviser Doval.
Then his Indian hosts sent him on the Grand Tour to Modi’s home state, Gujarat, where, in the nation’s ‘milk capital’ Anand, Amul Dairy – owned by Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation of India--has its headquarters which enabled Anura to conveniently meet its chief to discuss its proposed foray into Lanka take over MILCO, Highland and the National Livestock Development Board’s 31 dairy farms.
Then a stopover in Thiruvananthapuram, capital of India’s only Marxist controlled state of Kerala, to reaffirm red ties with Chief Minister comrade Vijayan, wrapped up the five day trip.
Alas, the Indian Council for Foreign Cultural Relations which had formally issued the invite had left out showcasing its cultural sites. Wisely and tactfully they’d dropped Buddha Gaya – a traditional must for Lankan visitors – from the itinerary, knowing too well, perhaps, the JVP’s anti-religious stance. Despite the inviter’s cultural credentials, India’s heritage was not on the menu. Instead, they had confined the agenda to those items that solely advanced India’s security and economic interests in Lanka.
So what was the real Indian motive behind Anura’s Indian odyssey? What was the pressing need to camouflage its ulterior aim with a flimsy cultural guise at the very outset? Denied of crystal ball, and being no fly on Jaishankar’s British built office wall, one can only surmise on the secret machinations of India.
Was it a diplomatic ruse employed by the Indian Government not to make it appear as if it was granting formal recognition to a potential president by not inviting Anura for direct talks, and thus avoid granting the visit undue importance? That he had arrived in India as part of a cultural delegation and, as a promising presidential candidate, had been invited to New Delhi’s South Block - which houses the Prime Minister’s office, Ministries of Defence and External Affairs – to meet Jaishankar, and two other top brass, for an informal chat to pick his brains on regional concerns.
Was it to lure Anura away from seductive oriental charms of Chinese arms where he already lies embraced? Was it to make him veer away from straying more towards the choppy, dangerous South China Sea and persuade him to return to calmer seas within the Indian ambit for greater political gain?
Or was it to soften him up and wean him and his party off from the rabid Indian phobia they had been fed from youth by fanatics to hold? Had India finally cottoned on to playing the player and not the game to win the match?
Had they wooled him in a Kashmiri coat, wined and dined him, dished out hospitality in rich Moghul style, buttered his bread and subtlety led him to believe that India was the genie in Aladdin’s magical lamp, ready to grant his utmost wish to wear Lanka’s presidential crown, provided, of course, he rubbed off his comrades’ antiIndian tattoo etched on their breast and exorcised the Indian phobia rooted in their minds against the Adanis, the Ambanis, the Tatas, the Amuls of India from controlling the island’s key economic sectors?
What did Anura say, whilst at Amul’s main office in Anand, when the chief of Amul broached the subject of them buying MILCO, Highland and 31 dairy farms, comprising 28,000 acres belonging to the National Livestock Development Board? Did he raise the red flag and repeat the rant he had made whilst addressing a seminar on January 2nd in Colombo on ‘Untold Truths of selling off national assets’?
He had told the audience in Colombo that the Government had fast tracked its plans to sell off public assets and had urged the people to ‘fight against privatisation’ and to make it count because that do-ordie struggle will decide the nation’s future. He had told the Colombo seminar, ‘The government has no excuse for selling these national enterprises but had used the same old excuse that they are loss making and a burden to the national economy and the treasury.’
But his rigid opposition to selling off public assets – even more so to Indians, as one can well believe given the JVP’s doctrine of ‘antIndian expansionism’ – seemed to melt like butter before the chief of India’s Amul. Gone was his vehement opposition to the sale of public assets, gone, too, was his antiIndian rhetoric. Instead, as he explained to Amul’s chief, his objection to the sale of MILCO and the NLDB was due to a lack of transparency and it being sold as a private property in secret.
Perhaps on Indian soil and in Amul Chief ’s office, he didn’t wish to appear rude to his hosts by rejecting Amul’s proposed investment out of hand and reiterating anti-Indian sentiments. On his arrival at Bandaranaike Airport last Saturday, he seemed to have seen India in new light on his voyage of discovery to the subcontinent.
‘India is an emerging country in the region,’ he said. ‘We need capital and technology in some sectors. We also need to deal with some countries to expand our market. We can't achieve our targets by being an isolated country in the world. Therefore, our target is to strengthen our ties’.
Although no details of his talks with India’s top political brass had been revealed and no detailed account discussions with Amul’s chief has been disclosed by either side, JVP MP Vijitha Herath who represented the NPP in the delegation to India, confirmed at a new conference held last Sunday, the JVP’s dramatic shift on its avowed policy against privatisation of public assets.
Vijitha Herath declared: ‘The Indian visit was successful and our government will put into practice most of what we learnt during the visit. We protested against investors being selected under unsolicited proposals but we welcome investors from any country provided the investment process will occur in a transparent manner following due tender procedures.’
Funny he should say that, for their past rhetoric has made it unequivocally clear that they are totally opposed to the sale of public enterprises, with or without tenders. In fact, they had constantly harped that this was what made them unique, seeking home grown solutions to Lanka’s problems by applying the diktats of a Marxist ideology, born in Trier, Germany, matured in London and practised in Moscow.
But this sudden U-turn now shows they are not opposed to public assets being sold to foreigners, provided tender procedures are followed and done in the open, perhaps, even by public auction, even to Indians whether or not it advances Indian expansion.
This was indeed a quantum shift from their anti –Indian expansion doctrine as expounded in the second lesson of their infamous ‘5 core class’ curriculum which must be attended as part of the initiation rite to become a fullfledged member.
But a five day sojourn in India had made both JVP leader Anura Kumara and secretary of their collective outfit, the NPP, fellow JVP MP Vijitha Herath, drop two most important crucibles of their faith – the anti-Indian doctrine as well as the opposition to the sale of public assets - like two hot potatoes.
As for its anti-Indian doctrine, Anura Kumara says they have dropped it now. Of course dropping their stances when it’s convenient to do so and resurrecting them when it suits them, is, of course, nothing new to its opportunistic character.
Lionel Bopage, a former longtime JVP secretary till 1983, who left the party in 1984 due to ‘ideological differences’ with the leadership and settled down in Australia, wrote in an article published last week that the JVP adopted its ‘anti-Indian expansion,’ after China’s Chairman Mao had first forwarded it. The JVP, however had dropped the doctrine after 1972, which enabled Rohana Wijeweera and him to meet India’s Narasimha Rao when he visited Sri Lanka in the early eighties but had resurrected the doctrine after 1984, and had used it to justify its orgy of violence in the south.
JVP’s Herath also said: ‘’Although the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, which leads the NPP, strongly opposed the Indo-Lanka Accord decades ago and was dedicated to safeguarding Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, even at the cost of lives, the times today have changed.’
Knowing that their blood soaked past can never be exorcised from Lanka’s collective conscience, the JVP had never deigned for three decades to apologise for their bloody deeds. But after JVP’s apparent coming of age in India, their 80’s saints have been toppled from their pedestals and the supreme sacrifice they paid for the JVP cause, cursorily dismissed as outdated in today’s changing times.
Herath explained: “The political situation today is different. In the global political power struggle involving China, America, and India, as a nation facing economic challenges, our primary aim must be the reconstruction of our country amidst political instability.’
But lo and behold, that same day JVP leader Anura returns to his Anuradhapura hometown to address the JVP’s women’s wing. Did the ancient city’s returning son tell its proud residents that, on Indian soil, he had told Amul’s Chief that he will not oppose Amul buying MILCO if its presented anew through due procedure? Heck, no.
Contrary to what he was reported to have told Amul Chief, and confirmed by comrade Herath at that morning’s news conference, he had declared to his female comrades: ‘Some are saying after we went to India that we will support the sale to Amul. No, that will not happen, remember that. We will under no circumstances mix up our dealing with foreign countries and meeting their leaders with a national economic policy. No powerful nation or corporation can buy us. Just because Mahinda was bought, we can’t be bought.’
It was a reaffirmation of the returned knight’s unbetrayed nationalist faith, proclaimed, with drawn Dutugamunu sword in hand, in the rumble of the ruins that echoed the grandeur that was Anuradhapura. He reaffirmed his faith again in a TV interview on Thursday, and repeated, the JVP’s rigid opposition to the sale of public assets remained the same and their resolve to oppose ‘public assets’ sales had not wavered one jot on his 5 day Indian tour. He also said, the JVP had been able to show that they could win the trust of foreign governments.
But - in view of what comrade Herath told last Sunday’s news conference - can trust and integrity to win the confidence of foreign states, trust that forms the bedrock of bi or multilateral treaties, be writ on shifting sand by chameleon like outfits that change hue to blend with foreign soil but revert its colour when returned to home turf ?
Did Anura tell JVP’s women’s wing in Anuradhapura that he had not expressed even a whimper of protest in India when Minister Harin Fernando in Mumbai told The Hindu BusinessLine last Friday that Narendra Modi’s friend, Adani, in addition to his billion dollar investments in Lanka’s ports, solar and wind power projects, is presently in talks with Lankan officials to take management control of the country’s three airports, including the Bandaranaike airport?
He kept mum in India and has still kept mum at home. Perhaps, Adani, with his powerful political connections, is too big a fish to fry, unlike Amul butter? Perhaps, the smell would outrage the neighbour next door and earn his wrath?
Has India achieved one or all of her objectives in inviting the JVP team to her soil? Has she gauged if JVP’s potential, be it as an agent of real change or as provocateur of chaos, is in line with her interests? Despite Anura’s belief, as expressed in his TV interview, that it is India’s desire to see a prosperous, stable Lanka on her doorstep, whether it’s really so, only the mandarins at New Delhi’s South Block will know.
India has long shown a not too prosperous, a not too stable, a not too self-sufficient island on the tip of her southern coast, one hanging on a leash, dependent on her goodwill and credit lifeline will be far more amiable to let her dictate its foreign policy and surrender its surrounding territorial sea for India to protect and guard to fortify her security interests. One example of how Indira Gandhi’s government in the 80s allowed LTTE terrorists to be trained on Indian soil, is on record.
The JVP has shown it will go to any extent to realise their dream of attaining absolute power. On Wednesday, a group of monks from the National Bhikkus Front went to meet the Malwatte Maha Nayaka to lobby his support for the JVP leader Anura whom they described as Lanka’s only saviour.
To the JVP, which once held religion with Marxist distaste as being the opium of the masses, using political monks to exploit Buddhism to market the Anura Kumara brand name, is simply the Machiavellian belief that the end justifies the means. The question is what end? And serve whose ends?
This was indeed a quantum shift from their anti –Indian expansion doctrine as expounded in the second lesson of their infamous ‘5 core class’ curriculum which must be attended as part of the initiation rite to become a full-fledged member.