By Mayank Chhaya-
For a short while, a 285-acre uninhabited island in the Palk Straits, located close to the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) between Sri Lanka and India, became a political tool for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
Apparently, with his eye on the vote garnering potential of questioning the Katchatheevu island’s ownership that the people of Tamil Nadu sometimes engage in, Modi said it was the Congress Party’s government that had “callously given it away” to Sri Lanka in the 1970s. Dr. Jaishankar went a step further saying the ownership question was a “live issue”.
It was a diplomatically fraught assertion with serious implications for India’s relations with Sri Lanka. However, and quite surprisingly so, Colombo chose to play down the Indian prime minister suddenly upping the ante.
Nearly a month after both Modi and Jaishankar raised the issue on April 1 in the runup to the Tamil Nadu phase of the parliamentary election, Katchatheevu seems to have completely receded from the political discourse. That is no guarantee though that it would not become one of Modi’s foreign policy priorities should he win the election.
However, Colombo is not particularly perturbed or worried on that front. “It is specially for the elections although he is likely to get elected with a thumping majority in the Hindi belt and elsewhere but in the southern part of the country, he (Modi) does not have a foothold, especially in Tamil Nadu. So to get some Tamil votes he must have used this issue,” Sugeeswara Senadhira, Media & International Affairs Advisor to Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, told Indica News in a video interview from Colombo.
Senadhira said there was no other reason for the Indian prime minister to raise it because “otherwise, there is a perfect understanding between the two countries on all other issues.”
“We don’t see it as some major problem between the two countries,” he said.
Asked how he saw Jaishankar calling it a “live issue”, Senadhira said, “Jaishankar’s statement that it is a live issue does not make any sense. Of course, being a BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) politician he has to follow the line taken by the prime minister at this juncture.”
There is much behind this rock in terms of how India under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, chose in 1956 not to make the island a matter of “national prestige” as part of his foreign policy approach to reassure that India’s giant geopolitical weight will not overwhelm its smaller South Asian neighbors such as Sri Lanka.
It was in 1974-1976 that the two countries signed agreements to demarcate the sea boundaries as part of which Katchatheevu went to Sri Lanka. Contrary to the assertion by both Modi and Jaishankar, Senadhira said, “This is not ceding an island to Sri Lanka. It is merely a recognition that Katchatheevu lies on the Sri Lankan side of the maritime border.”
Senadhira also explained that part of the reason why Colombo was not particularly concerned about India’s assertion because it had not received “any protest note or any request for revival of discussion on this issue. Colombo has not been informed. There has been no official communication whatsoever.”
As predicted by Senadhira, the issue has not been raised again as part of the campaigning by Modi so far because the election in Tamil Nadu is over.
Although at this stage it is merely speculative to say what might happen on the Katchatheevu front should Modi return to power for a third term on June 4 when the results of the election are scheduled to be announced. It is not altogether inconceivable he might at some point while dealing with Sri Lanka revive the issue even though Senadhira does not think so. He also said that the barely 1.6 kilometer (less than a mile) long island has no strategic value.
Its importance stems from the often-contentious activity of fishing in the waters around it by Indian fishermen much to the resentment of their Sri Lankan counterparts. Senadhira pointed out that because of a nearly three-decade-long Tamil separatism issue Sri Lankan fishermen had been avoiding the waters, making them unintentionally available to Indian fishermen.
[Photo caption: Sugeeswara Senadhira, Media & International Affairs Advisor to Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena]
