Since the presidential election in Sri Lanka earlier this month, Colombo and New Delhi have lost no time in seeking to mend ties, or at least re-warm a traditional friendship that had come to be buffeted by contrary winds with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa seeming to be pointedly disregarding India’s political and security concerns while making the appropriate noises at the formal level, and privileging those with whom this country has had an up-and-down relationship. President Maithripala Srisena has said India would be the first country he would visit.
This is the strongest indication of his inclination to bring back the traditional orientation of friendship in our bilateral relations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi could seek to re-invigorate ties speedily by visiting Colombo as early as possible at a mutually convenient date and taking discussions forward across the board, and giving full consideration to Sri Lanka’s sensitivities while conveying our own concerns.
The atmosphere seems congenial, but we need to begin with the understanding that as equals we should seek to return to earlier levels of mutual accommodation. Sri Lanka foreign minister Managala Samaraweera, who was in New Delhi — incidentally his first port of call since he assumed his present position — on Sunday, has reportedly expressed his country’s desire to work in “close coordination” with India. Mr Samaraweera has also spoken of “course correction” in Colombo’s foreign policy and wants to dismiss the “paranoia” that had informed the policy of recent years.
In this context, it appears wholly facetious to dramatise the routine work of diplomats, as done by a Colombo dateline story of an international wire service, and suggest that the station chief of RAW, India’s foreign intelligence service, had been expelled from Colombo last month by the former regime as he was thought to be helping to foster coordination between the Opposition forces in Sri Lanka to take on the incumbent. Mr Samaraweera said in New Delhi that there was no “substance” to what can only be called a piece of laboured sensation. India has officially denied the story outright. In their normal work, diplomats meet not just Opposition politicians but all kinds of people in their place of posting. The official spokesman said in New Delhi that all Indian diplomats who had completed three years in Colombo had returned home. To his credit, former President Rajapaksa too has been careful in commenting on the story that drags RAW in. As Mr Samaraweera noted, the election victory of his party had been produced by the people of Sri Lanka.
