India: Lanka should look south also

The world's largest representative democracy, India concluded the first phase of its current Parliamentary election this week. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) riding high almost entirely on the personal charisma of its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to sweep the polls when the final results are announced on June 4. However, the BJP juggernaut is probably going to meet its match in the southern states of India, including the state of Tamil Nadu which voted last Thursday.

The BJP's nationalistic, right-wing, aggressively pro-Hindutva campaign has won widespread grassroots support in the north of the vast sub-continent but it does not seem to have the same currency in the south. The ‘one nation; one language; one culture’ policy of this ‘saffron party’ is viewed with suspicion in the South.

It was in clearly a desperate bid to throw some political mud at Tamil Nadu’s ruling party, the DMK, that the Prime Minister no less, threw foreign policy considerations to the wind by dragging the Kachchativu non-issue into his election rhetoric with his faithful choir singing from the same hymn sheet.

Wiser counsel seems to have prevailed on the BJP hierarchy after sections of the Indian (non-mainstream) media slammed all of them for shooting off the hip on a settled subject jeopardising otherwise good relations with neighbouring Sri Lanka. The party's final campaign run in Tamil Nadu last week was minus references to Kachchativu.

It was somewhat heartening that the Tamil Nadu parties at least this time refrained from playing the 'Sri Lanka Tamils plight' card to win votes. They were probably unable to do so as there was no armed conflict in the island nation and they themselves remained exposed for encouraging their fishermen to steal the catch off the northern waters of Sri Lanka depriving their brethren across the border of their livelihood.

It is still not too late, however, for the Sri Lankan Government to pay more attention to 'connectivity' with the rapidly developing southern states of India, viz., Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, and those in the east like Odisha and West Bengal rather than only with Delhi.

It is time for a long overdue shift in its foreign policy direction vis-a-vis India, as it is possible that these states may not be in sync with their own Centre.