Sri Lanka, a small isle under the nipple of India, can only be found valuable so much as long as it shares neighbourhood with one of the biggest states and currently the single largest market in Asia – the Maha Bharat.
The colonists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries invaded Aisa as they had witnessed the wonders at its centre – India, the land of the gods – not because of some minuscule isle below. The Western colonists saw a toll-like isle under India’s nipple – the Ceylon, and took control of it, foreseeing the potential threat against the security of the Indian Empire the isle might pose, were it to be taken over by some other foreign power adverse to the West, although the West owned India at the time.
The Ceylon now Sri Lanka being a tropical land full of biodiversity notwithstanding, the Isle, even to this day, is found economically and politically critical only in the backdrop where it shares neighbourhood with India. What lies within is irrelevant.
Even today, India finds Sri Lanka an isle of importance against the risk of it being pulled by the strings by China, one of the major adversaries to India, as an observation hub. Otherwise, India finds little or no interest in a small state like Sri Lanka, which literally has almost nothing to offer to the single largest market in Asia.
Sri Lanka falls under the context in which India can easily take over at any given time. However, India needs no tendency to resort to such barbarism in the democratic dynamic of its political landscape. Needless to remind that the United Nations’ troops made no intervention at all when China made multiple attempts in invading Taiwan.
When an Indian fighter craft entered the Sri Lankan airspace and threw lentils on Jaffna in 1987, J.R. Jayawardena, the then Sri Lankan Head of State, who was a pro-American ideologist himself, had sought negotiations with the United States on the matter, but was told that the States, regardless of its close ties with India, could not make an intervention and that the conflict ought to be solved only via negotiation between the neighbours themselves. If truth be told, the Western powers never adopt a grudge with their ‘Asian Agent’ and the single largest market of the Asian Region for the mere benefit of a minuscule and before their eyes a puny land like Sri Lanka.
Last year, Sri Lanka fell onto its knees to suffer the worst economic collapse since Independence, and when all the countries of the world, including China, had abandoned it, India was the only state that offered a US $4 billion debt to prevent the once glorious Isle from becoming another historical Tanzania. India had done so only to avoid the threat it might face, were its neighbour in its worst shape fuelled by anarchy to be taken over by a dictator like China. India, on the other hand, gains no benefit by aiding a bankrupt nation like Sri Lanka.
Notwithstanding the above, the anti-Indian propaganda craved by the Sri Lankans for decades is nothing but an extension of the anti-Tamil ideology endorsed by the Sinhala-Buddhist Nationalism.
The racist anti-Indian propaganda runs into the depths of the Sri Lankan Culture, that it can be better understood by the colourful drawings on the walls depicting fictional battles between the two nations such as the ‘Coming of Ravana’ and ancient Sri Lankan kings like Gemunu, Gajaba and Vijayaba who were deemed ‘heroic’ for fighting battles against ‘Indian Invaders,’ made by racist trendsetters that paved the way for the coming of Gotabaya Rajapaksa almost four years ago.
India was the first state to make an intervention to provide a political solution to the marginalised community in the Northern Region of Sri Lanka, which had been blatantly ignored by the Sinhalese society in the Southern parts, via the adaptation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Parties who had initially objected to the 13A now begin to acknowledge that India’s intervention on the issue was, in fact, good. Even today, India worrying about the people of the North by no means can be described as ‘a bad thing.’
The real problem is that there are entities whose political vision itself is a tangled ball of yarn in their failure to comprehend anything beyond the halo of sea, waging war against a giant tiger, when they but form the role of an angry vermin.
*Adapted from original article “පිස්සු මීයෙකු විසින් ව්යාඝ්රයකුගෙන් ගේම ඉල්ලීම ….” published on 16.08.2023
