Courtesy The Island

Sri Lanka’s JVP-led NPP government has made a dramatic pivot towards India, even utilizing legislative changes it once vehemently opposed.

On August 19, 2023, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, then an opposition leader, criticized a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that then-President Ranil Wickremesinghe had signed with India. We must have the freedom to freely move our hands and legs! But with this agreement, we will be in a situation where we are unable… to take any political or economic decision” independently, he said in a speech to National People’s Power (NPP) affiliated ex-military personnel.

However, a little over 18 months later, Dissanayake oversaw the signing of a series of agreements with India – including a landmark MoU on defense cooperation – during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s three-day visit to Sri Lanka from April 4 to 6. Overall Seven MoUs were signed during the visit, covering defence, energy, digitalization, healthcare, power grid connectivity, and development assistance. Once these MoUs come into effect, they will push Sri Lanka deeper into India’s orbit, restrict its foreign policy choices and expand India’s footprint in Sri Lanka drastically.

Of these, the MoU on defense cooperation has generated the most debate in Sri Lanka. This is Sri Lanka first such agreement with a foreign power, since the one signed with Great Britain in 1947, which came into effect after independence. The then United National Party (UNP) leadership signed this defense agreement with Britain, fearing that if it was not under the security umbrella of a major power, India would annex Sri Lanka. Marx once wrote history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Ironically, now it’s the NPP, whose main constituent is the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) that has always viewed India as an expansionist power, who has signed the defence pact with a country, whose involvement in Sri Lankan affairs once led it to take up arms in the 1980s.

In the late 1980s, the JVP took up arms against the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 and the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). The ensuing violence led to the death of over 60,000 JVP cadres, including the JVP founder Rohana Wijeweera. The NPP signing a defence agreement with India, especially when Modi has shown no interest in resolving Indian fishermen poaching in Sri Lankan waters and the Katchatheevu controversy, marks a profound ideological U-turn.

The ideological shift is made even more starker by the NPP using laws on power and energy that it once opposed to sign an agreement to connect the grids of two countries. When the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration made changes in Sri Lanka’s power and energy laws, the NPP, then in opposition, not only opposed the changes but also challenged them in court and promised to repeal the laws if the NPP came to power. Now in power, the NPP used these very laws to sign the agreement to connect its power grid with India.

Critics argue that the DCA undermines the country’s autonomy. Sri Lanka has entered an agreement with a country that is part of the Quad, a grouping of four nations that came together to counter the rise of China. This grouping has the U.S. as a key partner. A few days before Modi’s arrival in Colombo, the U.S. stationed six B-2 bombers in Diego Garcia in preparation for a military attack on Iran, another all-weather friend of Sri Lanka. The DCA with India draws the country close to the US aligned security axis, undermining NPP’s promise to return to a nonaligned foreign policy.

While the details of the DCA have not been made public, raising concerns of transparency. Before coming into power, the NPP promised transparency in any agreement with a foreign nation. As veteran diplomat and political commentator Dayan Jayatilleka observed in a recent interview in Sundy Observer: When there are contradictions between one’s closest neighbour [India] and one’s closest friend [China], why should we tie-up militarily with either one, instead of striving for balance and equilibrium in our relationships with them, and try to contribute to an equation of equilibrium between them?”

Sri Lanka faces several security challenges that require it to work closely with regional and extra-regional powers. However, rather than enter into defense pacts with individual countries, it must meet these challenges by pushing for a regional security arrangement. This would enable it to protect its sovereignty. It would have been wiser for Sri Lanka to push for a regional security agreement, centered around the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) instead of signing a security pact that makes the country seem like a satrapy of India.

Among other main agreements, a trilateral MoU was signed India, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates to develop Trincomalee as an energy hub. This involves developing a British-built oil tank farm that is already partially run by state-owned Lanka Indian Oil Corporation. The British Raj considered a foothold in Trincomalee harbor vital for Indian defence, a doctrine that the Indian republic has inherited.

The two sides also signed an MoU on Multi-sectoral Grant Assistance for Eastern Province. One of the three projects launched by Modi during the visit was the Sampur Solar Power Plant, which is a pillar of the Eastern Renewable Energy Zone being established under Sri Lanka’s Long-Term Generation Expansion Plan (LTGEP). It is being developed by Trincomalee Power Company, a joint venture between India’s NTPC Limited and the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB).

This will give India a strong foothold in the Eastern Province, in addition to the island’s Northern Province, where India’s power is entrenched. Now India has influence over two of Sri Lanka’s most geopolitically sensitive regions.

However, long-standing bilateral issues remain unsolved. Sri Lankan waters, Sri Lanka failed to obtain a commitment from India on the long-festering dispute over Indian fishermen poaching in Sri Lankan waters. Modi also did not address Sri Lanka’s unease about claims by Indian politicians about Katchatheevu island.

Beyond these MoUs, India offered to convert 100 million dollars worth of loans into grants.

The recent agreements have significantly deepened Sri Lanka’s strategic and economic entanglement with India. By entering into a defense pact, Sri Lanka has tilted decisively towards a regional power that is itself aligned with broader anti-China coalitions. This alignment has now gone beyond being merely symbolic. The agreements span critical sectors such as energy, defense, and infrastructure, with a strong focus on the Eastern Province, raising serious concerns about sovereignty and strategic autonomy.

On the other hand, the JVP-led NPP government now faces a serious blow to its credibility. The NPP came to power on a platform of transparency, sovereignty, and resistance to foreign domination. Yet, a few months after coming into power, it is now presiding over a dramatic pivot towards India, even utilizing legislative changes it once vehemently opposed. Whether this is pragmatic foreign policy realism or ideological betrayal, it raises uncomfortable questions about the NPP’s future trajectory.

The growing Indian footprint marks a historic turning point in Sri Lanka’s regional posture. And for a party like the JVP — once defined by resistance to Indian intervention — it risks becoming the very thing it once rose up against; a facilitator of foreign entrenchment on Sri Lankan soil.

by Rathindra Kuruwita
(The Diplomat)