India to Pay a Heavy Price

In 1987, after the Indo-Sri Lankan accord, the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF), comprising units of the Army, Navy and Air Force, was deployed in Sri Lanka to prevent a civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan military. The Indian and Sri Lankan militaries did not come into conflict with each other but, before it was withdrawn in 1990, the IPKF lost 1,195 men with another 3,000 personnel were wounded in clashes with the LTTE. Among the dead were Indian Army Tamilian officers and soldiers.

In 2010, Sri Lanka built an IPKF war memorial to honour the 1,195 Indian soldiers who had lost their lives (a few had been captured and tortured to death by the LTTE). In 2009, the LTTE was destroyed and its leadership killed, leading to charges of genocide of the civilian Tamil population by the Sri Lankan military. While public anger in Tamil Nadu is understandable (even though the LTTE was a ruthless terrorist organisation, which killed Indian soldiers and assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi), the government in Delhi should have been guided by national interest only when it came to the question of attending the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting, held in Colombo from November 15 to 17. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should have attended CHOGM, visited Jaffna and taken up the issue of genocide during closed-door diplomatic talks.

Every national leadership with an elementary strategic vision knows how important it is to keep enemy influence out of its immediate neighbourhood. By declining to attend the 54-nation CHOGM, Dr Singh has made a grave mistake (foreign minister Salman Khurshid represented India at the meeting). The CHOGM was boycotted by distant Canada and Mauritius (A pro-Indian government country comprised with approx. 90% of population with Indians who went to Mauritius as laborers for British; similar to how majority of Tamil came to Sri Lanka – Sinhalanet ), but Sri Lanka is our immediate neighbour, and it will be a disaster for India if China finds a naval base just a few miles from Tamil Nadu. British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the Tamil majority Jaffna and publicly raised his voice against the atrocities on Tamils before proceeding to join the CHOGM.

A few years ago, Sri Lanka had approached India to build the Hambantota Port (located about four hours drive south of Colombo), and when India did not respond, the Chinese stepped in and built a new seaport with an international cargo airport nearby. Chinese warships, submarines and aircraft could theoretically use the new port and airport for power projection into the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) along with similar port facilities that have already been built in Chittagong (Bangladesh) and Gwadar (Pakistan). China is now building an additional shipping container port terminal in Colombo.

Last year, two Sri Lankan military officers undergoing the prestigious Defence Services Staff College course at Wellington in Tamil Nadu were asked to leave due to pressure from the ruling All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party. These two officers are likely to go to Pakistan for their Staff Course and then reach senior ranks in the Sri Lankan military, and they as well as their colleagues can be expected to have little goodwill for us. The Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard (ICG) have played an important role in cementing ties with Sri Lanka. But all this has been undone by New Delhi. Over 90 per cent of Sri Lankan Navy personnel have been trained in India, and these personnel are very pro-Indian. In early 1971, as Navigating Officer of a frigate (INS Kirpan), I recall how an Indian Navy Task Force of six ships sailed to Colombo on the orders of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when that island nation requested help to fight the indigenous Sinhala fundamentalist party, the Janatha Vimukhti Peramuna (JVP).

I still remember Indian warships arriving in Colombo and after taking on board two Sri Lankan Navy personnel per ship, as interpreters, we sailed out to sanitise Sri Lankan territorial waters to prevent illegal import of arms by the JVP. The task involved stopping and searching numerous Sri Lankan fishing vessels for arms and then letting them go. During this search, a young foreign naval officer who was undergoing training on my frigate said, “Why waste time searching? In my country we would simply shoot all these fishermen.” I remember that we had to keep this foreign officer under constant watch and make sure that he did not get near any firearms on our ship. The coastal patrolling was successful, no one was hurt, and after a few weeks the Indian warships returned home.

In 1989, I was deputed to Trincomalee in Sri Lanka as part of the IPKF. Bomb blasts and firing were a daily occurrence. The local Sri Lanka Navy Commander (Commodore Clancy Fernando, who later became Navy Chief, and was then assassinated by the LTTE in Colombo) had done all his training in India, and I found him to be a very friendly and professional officer. During our interactions he revealed that he was very fond of poories and paranthas. After this we met often in the evenings and exchanged views over dinner which invariably included poories and paranthas. Very soon word of this “poories and parantha” diplomacy reached SLN headquarters in Colombo, who sent SLN cooks to be trained by Indian Navy cooks on how to make poories and paranthas. To further improve relations, we played a cricket match between personnel of the two navies in 1989 (The Navy invented T20, The Asian Age, May 14, 2010).

In early December 2004, as director-general Indian Coast Guard (DGICG), I took a group of Indian Coast Guard ships and aircraft to Colombo for the first ever ICG-SLN exercise. The event was a great success and we took the Sri Lankan military brass (defence secretary, Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force) along with the then Indian ambassador Nirupama Rao to witness the ICG-SLN exercise. Barely a fortnight after this exercise, Indian Navy and Coast Guard ships were in Sri Lanka to render humanitarian assistance following the devastating tsunami of December 26, 2004.

Here too India earned enormous goodwill, which has now been thrown away by New Delhi, as local votebank politics was given priority over national interest. China is now practically at our doorstep, ready to neutralise the enormous geographic advantage which the Indian Navy enjoys due to our strategic location astride the global sea trade routes. India may soon pay a heavy price for its Prime Minister not attending CHOGM.

The writer retired as Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam

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