INDIA-SRILANKA RELATIONS- NEW OPPRTUNITIES & CHALLENGES

Keynote address by Prof. V. Suryanarayana

Love as well as Hate could be said about the relationship for last so many years between India & Sri Lanka, said Prof. V. Suryanarayana at Universal Brotherhood Day function organized by Vishva Adhyayan Kendra in Mumbai on August 8, 2014.Srilanka has been the only model country in the British colony where the transition of powers in Feb. 1948 was very smooth mainly due to harmonic integration of various ethnic groups. However, due to the very Britishers’ divide & rule policy, the Tamilians who were taken by British for tea plantation didn’t go well with Sinhalis. The country which has 85-90% voting turn out later saw that its Election Commissioner resigned declaring himself as incapable to function, its civilians to soldier ratio is 400:1, had emergency proclaimed from 1971 to 1977, ethnic genocide through organized riots by JVP & human right violations became very frequent, as the Sri Lankan Govt. not only disallowed minorities’ representation in ethnic conflict solving mechanism, but also enacted funny anti-democratic laws like the one which allows disposal of bodies without any inquiry whereby the Tamilian movement in the country went from non-violence or cooperation to conflictive attitude or terrorism, observed Prof. Suryanarayana. India never considered any such thing as Sri Lanka’s domestic problem but as its duty to protect civilians there & it always helped this ethnically, culturally same neighbor in its every calamity, whether it was 1971 JVP revolt when ships were provided for transporting Tamilians from Colombo to Jaffana during 1971 JVP Revolt or tackling Dec 2004 Tsunami to display that people of India are always with them but didn’t get much in return. He however asserted that Tamilians in Srilanka should follow nationalism there, like here in India we have no multiple identities & believe that we are first Indian & lastly too Indian, whereas he amused the audience by informing the famous Vali Khan’s assertion that I am first Pathani, then a Muslim & lastly a Pakistani.
Thiru. P.Deivamuthu, the editor of ‘Hindu Voice’ a nationalist magazine being published from Mumbai & Chief Guest of the function during his talk said that with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goodwill gestures at his swearing-in ceremony sufficiently indicate that soon our new foreign policy could make Sri Lanka less dependent on Pak or China. The trade & diplomatic relations between India & Sri Lanka would grow better, according to him, if India would bother little in Sri Lanka’s internal matters. To stress his point he further said that our Tamilnadu politicians are part of the Sri Lanka-India problem as they don’t want to solve the Tamilian problem in Sri Lanka for their own political survival here & if we nourish the concept of Tamil Elam, gradually there could be a demand for separate identity different from being part of India, he cautioned.
At the beginning of the function here in Mumbai at MIG Hall, Kalanagar, Bandra East, the Secretary of VAK, Mumbai Chapter Prakash Sahasrabuddhe gave background on VAK & about how in the last 10 years VAK has offered India-centric perspectives on world events, aside from its annual function of observing Universal Brotherhood Day in the memory of its Founder Laxmanrao Bhide.