Splendid Isolation

Days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went to Seoul seeking friends like South Korea in pursuit of India's Look East policy, New Delhi had possibly cast its most decisive vote affecting south Asian politics since the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF)'s aborted operations between 1987-90.

For the first time since 1947, India, ignoring close political and cultural ties with its immediate southern neighbour, cast its vote in favour of a US-backed resolution urging Sri Lanka to probe human right abuses in the war on Tamil Tigers.
After the vote, where the UNHRC adopted the resolution with 24 votes in favour, 15 against and eight abstentions, New Delhi was quick to emphasise that Colombo's sovereignty must be respected, deeply aware that political ramifications of the vote could not be underestimated.

"This is a dicey situation. India now stands isolated not just in south Asia but everywhere. This is a US-sponsored motion about our immediate neighbour and we have walked into it because of domestic compulsions. In line with compromises made at Sharm el Sheikh it represents the worst foreign policy capitulation in decades,'' G Parthasarthy, strategic affairs specialist told TSI.

There was an uproar in 2009 when India had reportedly changed its stated position on Pakistan by including terrorism and Balochistan in the joint statement issued by the two countries after a meeting between Singh and Pakistani premier Yousuf Raza Gilani at the Egyptian desert resort of Sharm el Sheikh. That, experts contended, was tantamount to accepting that both India and Pakistan were equal victims of terror and that Indian intelligence agencies had a role to play in Balochistan's insurgency against the state.

With India being the only Asian country to vote in favour of the resolution at the UNHRC, the mood in Colombo was sour. Lankan minister Mahinda Samarasinghe rejected the US resolution as ``misconceived,unwarranted and ill-timed.''
Another government spokesman went further and bluntly said that India should now not expect Sri Lankan support on the Kashmir issue, which also has liberal references to human rights violations and cessation.

Just how badly India had slipped and just how well her rivals are going to utilise her discomfort became evident from the overwhelming backing that Colombo received from China, the world's rising power, which voted against the resolution. That quid pro quo could come in the form of bases that Sri Lanka would now be favourably inclined to award to Beijing in India's immediate vicinity, the Indian Ocean.

A Sri Lankan diplomat told the media,  that ``the prevarication over giving out bases to China in the face of India's objections, has now lifted.''

Says former top-ranking Indian envoy M Bhadrakumar, ``We still have with us at least three officials who know the inside out of the Sri Lankan issue right from its genesis and the truth, and nothing but the truth, as to what made former LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran turn an enemy – West Bengal governor MK Narayanan, foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai and the permanent representative to the United Nations HS Puri. It is advisable that we constitute a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Sri Lanka ourselves.''

Realising its not-so-splendid isolation and the potential dangers, New Delhi has gone into a serious damage control mode after the vote. Manmohan Singh, before he left for Seoul, said,``We had to weigh the pros and cons. What we did was in line with our stand.'' India has insisted that they voted in favour of the resolution only because it is 'non-judgmental and non-intrusive'.

A top Indian diplomat told this magazine that too much was being read into the controversial vote. ``Geography binds India and Sri Lanka. We have overwhelming trade ties. India is their biggest trade partner and largest investor. Our bilateral relations are so intertwined that both the countries will take the UNHRC vote in their respective strides.''

At select briefings in New Delhi, ministry of external affairs (MEA) officials were at pains to emphasise the lengths to which India had gone to `help' Colombo's case by diluting the resolution's draft. They insisted that one correction was made in the preamble and another in the body of the draft resolution.

The other change, the diplomats said, was in reference to the last para of the resolution which talks about providing advice and technical assistance on implementing the resolution agenda.

The final amendment said advice and technical assistance would be provided ``in consultation with and with the concurrence'' of the government of Sri Lanka. In the original draft, Sri Lanka had been simply asked ``to accept'' that advice.

What has galled experts here is the question of what they call US and western double standards. According to Parthasarathy, the numbers of those killed by American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan far outstrip casualties in Sri Lanka. ``No other country in our neighbourhood supported the resolution targeting a small, democratic and friendly neighbour of ours. To our east, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia and Philippines voted against the resolution. To our west, Maldives, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, voted in support of Sri Lanka,'' he says.

India's vote against Sri Lanka appears to have largely been prompted by domestic considerations. It became evident after the vote when both the DMK and AIADMK, Tamil Nadu's leading political parties, took credit for India's stand at the UNHRC.

According to well placed sources, ahead of the vote, Sri Lanka made one last ditch effort to get India to review its stand but with political parties upping the ante down south and with unsteady alliances in the Lok Sabha, India was left with little choices. In Colombo, Lanka's media minister Laksman Yapa Abeywardena said India's political situation had prompted its response. ``Sri Lanka's ties with India will not be affected over the decision. India's ruling party has lost some big states in the elections and all parties in Tamil Nadu have gathered together to pressure the central government to support the resolution.''

But opinion in Colombo appeared to be divided. Says Tisaranee Gunasekhara, senior Sri Lankan journalist and an analyst with the World Institute for Asian Studies,``The Rajapaksas have made it a habit of treating India in a rather supercilious manner. And because of this habit of taking New Delhi for granted emboldened minister Mahinda Samarasinghe to heedlessly declare India's opposition to the resolution in his previous speeches to the UNHRC. Unfortunately for the Rajapaksas that patronising declaration and jumping the gun may have been the straw which broke the normally phlegmatic Indian camel's back.''

Leading Sri Lankan strategic and terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna in his classic account `Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka: The Role of India's Intelligence Agencies' published in 1993, recalls how politicians from Tamil Nadu have always influenced the political discourse on Sri Lanka.

According to Gunaratna, back in the early 1980s, it was common for then Tamil Nadu chief minister MGR to land up in New Delhi and pressurise former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to put diplomatic pressure on Colombo to cease hostilities against Tamils by the Sinhalese political leadership or even use the Indian army to intervene. Due to sustained pressure of this nature every time elections were due in Tamil Nadu, by 1987 the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was virtually forced to send in the IPKF into the emerald islands to settle what was essentially a local dispute.

The results were disastrous. In a three-year engagement there, the Indian Army was not convinced that it was fighting a war for Indian territorial integrity. When the ill-fated campaign was finally over in 1990, leading Tamil politicians fell over each other to welcome the end of the `occupation' of Tamil areas by the India's security forces.

One thing appeared pretty clear though: India will have to learn to carefully differentiate between its foreign policy imperatives and domestic considerations, which is a tight rope walk at the best of times. At these times with UPA ally DMK releasing photographs of Prabhakaran's son killed by Sri Lankan security forces and all out attempts to whip up emotions, it is more than a tightrope. With uncertain political allies in north India, the problems have tended to get compounded.