Once bitten, never shy-India's Sri Lanka policy?

SETTING aside domestic Tamil sensitivities, the Indian government appears to have involved itself in a full-fledged proxy war in Sri Lanka.

While claiming to have adopted a hands-off policy with regard to its neighbour’s continuing ethnic conflict between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the forces of the Sinhalese government, India is extending the latter its covert support.

This was revealed by Sri Lanka’s army chief, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, last week during an interaction with members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association in Colombo.

“Eight hundred of our officers are trained (in India) every year; free of cost,” Fonseka is reported to have said. “India gives them an allowance for the duration of their courses there. The support from India is huge.”

Fonseka’s remarks came on the heels of a high-level Indian delegation’s visit to Colombo at a time when the government troops and the LTTE are locked in a fierce battle in northern Sri Lanka.

The Indian officials’ trip was kept a close secret. According to media reports, even the Lankan foreign ministry came to know about the visit of India’s national security adviser, MK Narayanan, defence secretary Vijay Singh, and foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon only hours after they landed in Colombo on an Indian Air Force plane.

Fonseka, who survived an assassination attempt last year, has vowed to achieve a military victory against the LTTE. His confidence stems from his military success against the Tigers in the Eastern provinces last year and covert Indian support to his war efforts.

Fonseka, President Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother and defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse together form the powerful Colombo triumvirate that advocates a military solution to the ethnic strife that has claimed over 70,000 lives in the last three decades. In March, Fonseka made a six-day state visit to India, during which he met with top defence officials.

Military relations between India and Sri Lanka have developed over recent years even though the two countries have not entered any formal cooperation agreement. While many in Delhi support such an agreement, it has not seen the light of day due to stiff opposition from political parties in Tamil Nadu.

At present, however, India appears to have cast aside all neutrality in the Tamil-Sinhala conflict, and adopted a policy best encapsulated by an unnamed military officer to a news agency on the eve of Fonseka’s Delhi visit: “India wants to ensure that the Sri Lankan army maintains its upper hand over the LTTE.”

India’s training of Sri Lankan army personnel has never been officially confirmed by either country, until Fonseka’s boast last week. More details of the military cooperation are, however, emerging.

According to a July 1 report in The Times of India, in 2008-2009 alone, over 500 Lankan army personnel are to be trained in Indian institutions like the Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairengte in Mizoram and the School of Artillery at Devlali in Maharashtra.

According to the report, about 100 gentlemen cadets will receive training at the Indian Military Academy at Dehradun, 39 officers at the College of Military Engineering at Pune, 15 in the School of Artillery at Devlali, 29 in the Mechanised Infantry Regimental Centre at Ahmednagar, 25 in the College of Materials Management at Jabalpur, 30 in the Electronics and Mechanical Engineering School at Vadodara, and 14 at the Military College of Telecommunication Engineering at Mhow.

Support does not stop at training alone. India has been supplying ‘defensive’ military equipment to Sri Lanka, including the indigenouslymanufactured Indra radars.

Officially, India claims it does not supply offensive weapons to Sri Lanka, but there are strong possibilities of a secret arrangement being in place already.

However, in June last year, when MK Narayanan publicly cautioned Sri Lanka against purchasing arms from China and Pakistan, he also said it could approach India for any help it required. Narayanan’s statement could have meant only one thing, that India was ready to meet Sri Lanka’s arms demands.

India’s relations with Sri Lanka is seen by many from the perspective of the Chinese geopolitical strategy in the region. Sri Lanka has moved closer to China in recent years, and Rajapakse, who came to power in 2005, has been particularly adept at playing the China card against India.

Sri Lanka figures prominently in Chinese naval strategy, being part of China’s “string of pearls” (or strategic bases) starting from the South China Sea and extending through the Strait of Malacca, Indian Ocean and on to the Arabian and Persian Gulfs.

Security experts like B. Raman, a former additional secretary of the Government of India, have been expressing concern about the Chinese threat. In a recent column, Raman noted: “The semi-permanent presence, which the Chinese are getting in Sri Lanka, will bring them within monitoring distance of India’s fast-breeder reactor complex at Kalpakkam near Chennai, the Russian aided Koodankulam nuclear power reactor complex in southern Tamil Nadu and India’s space establishments in Kerala.”

While India’s need to counter this threat is beyond doubt, sections of those sympathetic to the Lankan Tamil cause see striking similarities in the present developments to the situation in the 1980s, in the run-up to the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka accord in 1987.

In that period, the then Sri Lankan president, JR Jayawardene, got India embroiled into fighting the LTTE. The consequences of that flawed intervention, and the immense suffering it caused Tamils at the hands of the Indian army, are yet to be erased from the bruised memories of Tamils all over the world.

Discontent over the Centre’s policies in Sri Lanka continues to simmer in Tamil Nadu, with various parties urging the Indian government to stop military aid to the country.

The LTTE has also made appeals. Following Fonseka’s visit to Delhi in March, the outfit issued a statement against India’s growing military aid to Sri Lanka, saying: “While proclaiming that a solution to the Tamil problem must be found through peaceful means, India is giving encouragement to the military approach of the Sinhala State. This can only lead to the intensification of the genocide against the Tamils.”

A pro-LTTE Sri Lankan Tamil MP said recently, “We are optimistic even during this darkest hour. The Sri Lankan government will ditch India in favour of the Chinese in due course. Then India will have to change its policy and support the Tamils as Indira Gandhi did during her time.”

Whatever may be the future twists and turns in South Asia’s highly unpredictable diplomatic world, as of now India cannot disown responsibility for its part in the Eelam tragedy.