India under Narendra Modi: Is Sri Lanka ready?
Posted on July 19th, 2014
By Senaka Weeraratne Courtesy: Daily Mirror
The Indian general election would, if the forecasts are proved to be correct, result in a change in India’s relationship with the rest of the world as well as a revolutionary transformation of her economy, industry and education if the changes introduced in Gujarat by Chief Minister Narendra Modi are an indication. It will also dramatically affect the ongoing ‘blow hot, blow cold,’ relationship that India currently pursues with Sri Lanka.
India under Narendra Modi as Prime Minister will claim its rightful place in Asia as one of its true leaders, politically, economically and even militarily, and in order to demonstrate these credentials India can be expected to abandon gleefully its current policy of servility and unconditional subservience to the West. It will do so in the full knowledge that continuing subservience to its former colonial masters and their allies i.e. the new sponsors of colonialism, will severely undercut any Indian claim to lead the once colonised but now liberated nations of Asia.
India will discard its junior partner status in any relationship with USA and retaliate in a more effectual manner if the American gaffe we saw in the recent past involving Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade were to be repeated.
India will reclaim its ancient spiritual and cultural heritage and take pride in its civilisational achievements in a way that will put to shame the negative attitudes being adopted currently by the Indian establishment, including its mass media and burgeoning film industry, lacking vision, sense of the country’s purpose and more importantly, pride in its own history and heroes.
The upsurge of the view that India has nothing much to offer other than material goods and services and entertainment in this modern age has diminished India’s moral standing in a world long used, particularly in the pre-colonial past, to be the beneficiary of Indian philosophical thought, wisdom and outspokenness that had no equal.
India will mend any strains it has in its relationship with China and will not allow interfering outsiders, particularly from the West, to identify India’s friends and potential enemies and teach India how to conduct itself vis-à-vis imagined foes. India will take comfort from a historical fact that India and China despite being neighbours on the Asian continent had never gone to war with each other for over 5000 years except on one dismal occasion in contemporary history (1962) when it clashed over a border issue that has its roots in British colonial mischief.
India will set its own foreign policy agenda and goals from a central government perspective, rather than from a regional government perspective, which today has unfortunately contributed to India’s almost total isolation from its immediate neighbours in South Asia. This anticipated posture will contribute immensely to improvement of India’s ties with Sri Lanka. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the popular freedom fighter and nationalist leader that India never had as its Prime Minister, will come alive in the form of Narendra Modi and will revolutionise India’s national and international image.
India will no longer be the country that the West, particularly USA, would take for granted with contempt for both its leaders and people, but a new India conscious of its place in the world and obligations to both humanity and all other living beings. India’s Constitutional provision that it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures,” (Article 51 A (g)) will gain a new lease of life. This is the vision that India’s great son, Gautama Buddha, had for Bharat and its greatest Emperor Asoka faithfully strove to establish in the form of a compassionate society.
India’s moral voice can be expected to be heard again in the far flung corners of the world in a manner that the Buddha, Mahavira, Asoka, Nagarjuna, Swami Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and the like resounded to the serene joy and delight of humankind. Idealism will return to India and in turn help to re-charge the batteries of a largely spiritually weakened Asia, now increasingly despoiled by unbridled crass materialism.
We must gratefully acknowledge that it was India more than any other country that originally provided the value system for the moral and ethical foundations of Asia, through the spread of the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism. Are we in Sri Lanka ready to meet the challenge of foreseeable radical changes in our closest neighbour, India?
Email – senaka.weera@gmail.com
July 20th, 2014 at 2:01 am
We pray and hope that India will have a moral, ethical, cultural and economic awakening under Narendra Modi, and that India will put to rest its misguided conflicts with neighboring countries.
I have long supported Narendra Modi with the hope that Sri Lanka will be able to re-establish the friendship Sri Lanka and India enjoyed in the Asokan Age.
However, the PROOF of the PUDDING is in the EATING.
Let us HOPE for the BEST, and PREPARE for the WORST, until his POLICIES towards Sri Lanka become CLEAR.
July 20th, 2014 at 12:43 pm
To quote the article: “India will discard its junior partner status in any relationship with USA and retaliate in a more effectual manner if the American gaffe we saw in the recent past involving Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade were to be repeated.”
Only to a certain degree. The relationship between India and the US has been going on since the days of President Bush Sr. when India signed a broad binding alliance with the US. By doing so India made several strategic mistakes.
In 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed and the central Asian Muslim nations that include Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, etc. first approached India to form a regional alliance. Their reason for this was based on the fact that India was the Soviet Union’s strongest ally during the cold war. India had one of the world’s largest Muslim populations and India was (and is) the world’s largest Democracy. These nations were “crying” for a Democratic leadership in the region. instead New Delhi ignored this golden opportunity to form a regional organization and by that emerge as a true power that would have check mated both China and the emerging Russia.
Instead China and Russia took advantage of it and formed the Russian CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) and China formed the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) while New Delhi cemented her alliance with the distant USA.
A recent article in the Asia Times pointed that the coming to power of the BJP will not change the many military contracts India has signed with the US, while at the same time reducing her military contracts with the resurgent Russia. This widening distance between Russia and India could not have come at a worse time. Russia and the US are confronting each other on several field. from Iran, Syria to Afghanistan Russia is gaining the upper hand and in Ukraine the US is reduced to a war of words and sanctions that have a potential to backfire on the US and her NATO allies.
In the meantime Russia and China have effectively defused the US in the containment policy of China using India and other Asian nations with China making strident efforts to form her own alliances with the same nations meant to contain her. The recent BRICS summit is a massive blow to the US dominated IMF, World Bank and the Asian Development bank. The monies of this new Bank is expected to rise to 350 Billion in a couple of years and expand her membership to include Argentina (Please check articles on this subject in Asia Times (7/19/14). It is the first true alternative to the developing world to get loans without the political ties from Washington D.C. It could eventually lead to the demise of these institutes.
It has been suggested that the distancing of New Delhi with Moscow on military procurement would lead Moscow to align with Pakistan in the subcontinent. The growing relationship between China and Sri Lanka is yet another foreign policy blunder of New Delhi who backed Tamil Tigers against Colombo and lost that proxy war. It was further made even worse when India attempted to get the US to form human rights motions tailor cut to the end of the war and only against the Sri Lankan military. When it came for the member states of the UNHRC to vote no nation in the region sided with India. India was isolated by her own machinations against Sri Lanka
The change of leadership bring a lot of promise to India but that has to be tempered by the baggage India has to carry from past administrations and of her own doing.
July 20th, 2014 at 2:11 pm
Useless 13 amendment curse takes a new turn!!
Good for the foolish govt. for keeping these pieces of dirt (SLMC and provincial councils). SACK Hack-him.
Explain to Endia the ISLMIC THREAT due to 13 amendment. SCRAP 13 amendment.
“Sri Lanka’s major Muslim party Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) has decided to demand the Chief Minister position of the Eastern Provincial Council.
SLMC claims that the President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the leadership of the ruling coalition United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) had promised to give them the Chief Minister position after two and half years.
SLMC had consented to the Chief Minister Najeeb Abdul Majeed of ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) on this condition, said the secretary of the SLMC Hasan Ali.
According to this condition, he said, that the SLMC had to be given the Chief Minister position by next year.
Ruling UPFA won 22 seats including the seven seats won by SLMC at the election held in September 2012. The opposition has 15 seats making SLMC the crucial factor in forming a government in the Eastern Provincial Council.”
-colombopage
July 20th, 2014 at 4:23 pm
Why don’t the people understand the FEAR and EVER INCREASING desires of the big boss ?
“SLMC claims that the President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the leadership of the ruling coalition United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) had promised to give them the Chief Minister position after two and half years. ”
Not SLMC claims. It is a fact. I saw it everywhere in media that time.
July 20th, 2014 at 4:26 pm
13A discussion should take place between the countries again NOW. I am sure MODi can be convinced to scrap this nonsense. This the ONLY WAY FORWARD.
July 21st, 2014 at 6:20 am
United Provincial Council Of Mother Lanka !
NP – Saiva Thamil Eelam
EP – Muslim Thamil Eelam
Other 7P – Bhuddist Sinhala Lanka
Live & Let live until Eelam War V !!!
Nampugnkal , Naalai pirakkum Thamil Eelam – Jesus will back !
You Sinhala Modaya & Thamil Sakkiliyar never learn .