While positive commentaries have emerged in both countries over Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s maiden overseas visit in office to neighbouring India, there are specifics that add greater positivity to the expected outcomes from bilateral talks at the highest levels, if taken through a logical path to a mutually-beneficial conclusion.
One such area is defence cooperation, which will require both nations to work on details. It will require greater confidence that any draft agreement in the matter will have to be built inside Sri Lanka than across the Palk Strait. Sri Lankans may even want the contents debated inside and outside Parliament, given the mood and methods of the self-styled ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists’, who see India as evil. In contrast, many of them see China as a friend and have had no problems when previous governments gave away Sri Lankan territory in Hambantota on 99-year-lease, as if it did not impinge at all on their nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Of particular and more immediate interest to both nations and their governments, particularly Sri Lanka, that too in the context of increasing exportable commodities as a medium and long-term way out of the nation’s continuing economic ills, should be cooperation in sea-bed mining. While India’s official and not-so-official concerns about Chinese ‘research vessels’ having access to Sri Lankan ports and more so to work in Sri Lankan waters is focussed on their ‘spying capabilities’, the import of their ‘research outcomes’ should not be overlooked.
There is every possibility that with the data culled from such research trips, Beijing may approach international organisations tasked with the authority for rights to sea-bed mining in the seas that India and Sri Lanka share, and faraway from Chinese territory. It is possibly not without reason that the Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) had publicly asked Dissanayake to publicise the subject matter of his proposed discussions when he visits China in the first half of January 2025.
It however needs to be remembered that the SJB is as India-friendly as this statement might suggest. Instead, on specifics, party founder and Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa had publicly criticised the agreement the predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe government had signed with Indian infra major, Adani Group, for setting up green energy projects in Sri Lanka’s Tamil North.
Continental shelf
The Joint Statement issued at the end of bilateral talks in Delhi had a separate section on Defence Cooperation. The statement said that they would ‘explore the possibility of concluding a framework Agreement on Defence Cooperation’. In their joint news conference after talks, in official-level and ‘restricted’ modes, Indian Prime Minister Modi had this to say on the subject: ‘President Dissanayaka and I are in full agreement that our security interests are interconnected. We have decided to quickly finalise the Security Cooperation Agreement.’ Of equal significance is what he said in addition: ‘We have also agreed to cooperate on Hydrography.’
Sri Lankan official statement on Dissanayake’s response mentioned that he had requested Modi’s intervention in convening early bilateral technical discussions pertaining to Sri Lanka’s claim to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) for the establishment of the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)’.
Between the two statements lies the hopes for mutual cooperation in related matters, starting with the question of ‘continental shelf’, which Colombo had flagged as early as 2009 and New Delhi had followed up in its own way, later on. Shorn of details, both nations have laid claims to the same waters beyond their respective EEZ under the UNCLCS, and the Jamaica-based UN affiliate has slowed down the processes, pending verification, or possible negotiations between the two sides.Sri Lankan cuisine
In ways, Dissanayake has referred only to such negotiations, which are of highly technical nature. As Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said while briefing Colombo newsmen on bilateral talks, the Dissanayake government seems only to have either agreed to or has sought (further?) negotiations on subjects/issues that had been mentioned in the Joint Statement. The ‘continental shelf’ may be one. Read between the lines, Dissanayake might have only said as much – that they want early negotiations without his conceding anything on the ground – nay, water.
Sea-bed mining
Coupled with the question of continental shelf, and de-coupled at the same time, are the competing claims to cobalt-rich Afanasy Nikitin Seamount (ANS), south of Sri Lankan waters. Cobalt is a future mineral and so are other minerals that are thousands of metres below the sea-level. India may have the expertise and technology for sea-bed mining and pre-mining research, which Sri Lanka and other nations in the shared Indian Ocean neighbourhood do not hope to possess any time soon.
The question before Sri Lankans is if they can afford to wait until they acquire technological capabilities for sea-bed research and mining and continue to contest Indian claims, or those of other nations later on – or, work with India to explore and exploit the economic opportunity that the nation can well do with. It is here, India’s offer of a hydrography ship for Sri Lanka’s use needs to be viewed.Sri Lankan cuisine
Shorn of frills, such a course would empower Sri Lanka to shrug its shoulders off when China comes back offering ‘joint maritime research’, when Colombo’s one-year moratorium on ‘foreign research vessels’ ends this year-end. The Dissanayake dispensation has already declared that a special committee would look into the implementation of an SOP in the matter. Both the committee and the SOP, or Special Operating Procedure, were coinages from the previous Wickremesinghe government.
Stopping the animal
Now the question is if Sri Lanka would have to look beyond the Indian neighbour for undertaking such joint enterprises – conceding that if it has to be done in the contemporary period, it has to be a cooperative venture with another nation. India is a regional partner, whereas others, whether China, the US or any European or Asian power (like Japan) will be an ‘extra-regional’ power. Sri Lanka’s experience in Hambantota contract-and-lease would show that once you have ushered in an ‘outsider’, whose politico-strategic culture and compulsions are much different and distant from yours, there is little that you can do to stop that animal from devouring you.
In contrast, much as anti-India academics and trade unionists of the past JVP mind-set may want the rest of the nation to believe, New Delhi cannot have the cake and eat it too. It is not only about Sri Lanka’s location-advantage that successive governments have waived at India, at times menacingly. It is even more about a mind-set that seems to be compelling New Delhi for guarantees of the kind that is mostly in the minds of anti-India groups in Sri Lanka.Sri Lankan cuisine
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi coined the phrase SAGAR, it was not about the Sanskrit word for sea or ocean. The acronym stands for ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region’. It implies an Indian initiative whereby New Delhi proposes to share their concerns and interests and jointly usher in an era of growth and regional peace. It is not easy to achieve, especially when there are inherent suspicions about India that have had no foundation, then or now, but that is what New Delhi has proposed to overcome in their company and with their full understanding and cooperation – or, so it seems.
It is not a trial balloon or experiment for India alone. It is one, if any, for the region as a whole. Nations like Maldives, which out of ignorance under incumbent President Mohamed Muizzu, had refused to extend the three-year contract for joint hydrological exploration with India, may stand to lose economically if they hold on to such a position. Yes, allowing Chinese research vessels to search for minerals underneath the Maldivian seas is one thing. Allowing them to mine those minerals for joint marketing is another. It can only be another Hambantota experience, whether it is Maldives, Sri Lanka or any other.
On the other hand, any successful cooperation between India and Sri Lanka can open up new vistas for the entire region, going all the way down to the southern rim of shared IOR, to Mauritius and Seychelles, where in the none-too-distant future such opportunities for maritime cooperation of the new era may emerge.
What Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans need at the moment is an element of trust for the larger Indian neighbour, which came upfront at the height of the Aragayala era economic crisis, to share and shoulder their burden – and continues to do so. Those holding such anti-India sentiments need to acknowledge at least at this late stage that their apprehensions predate the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and the IPKF, when JVP founder Rohana Wijeweera put that idea into their heads. Now is the time for them to re-think their attitude and approach, which has no foundation in ground realities, especially of the more informed 21st century, when the international order has ways to deal with their suspicions, if proved even remotely right, than any time in the previous century!
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst and Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)