{"id":107393,"date":"2020-10-08T16:59:39","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T23:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=107393"},"modified":"2020-10-08T16:59:53","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T23:59:53","slug":"persistent-effort-to-push-sri-lanka-towards-indian-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/10\/08\/persistent-effort-to-push-sri-lanka-towards-indian-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Persistent effort to push Sri Lanka towards Indian solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

S. Akurugoda<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

According to the news item appeared in The Island<\/em> under the heading \u2018Address Tamils aspirations within\nunited Sri Lanka, and implement 13th Amendment\u2019 dated 28th<\/sup> September\n2020, Indian Prime Minister  Narendra Modi has urged Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa  to carry forward the process of\nreconciliation with the implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment to our\nConstitution. The news item further said that PM Modi has offered a\ngrant assistance of US$15 million for promotion of Buddhist ties between the\ntwo countries.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above advise and the offer of financial assistance remind us how the former\nIndian PM Dr. Manmohan Singh too insisted on the implementation of the 13th Amendment in full, while granting of loans (to payback with interest and\nwithin a specified period by the people of Sri Lanka) for the welfare of the\npeople in the North, East and the Upcountry during a State visit of President\nMahinda Rajapaksa to India in 2010. It looks like, not only PM Modi, all his\npredecessors were parroting the same song of Implement 13 A for the sake of\nIndian Interests\u201d, whenever they greet or talk to our leaders, since 1980s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly,\nPrime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa avoided giving any commitment regarding the\nimplementation of the 13th Amendment. Instead, he has spoken of the\nexpectations of all ethnic groups including Tamils and has stated his\nintention to take care of national reconciliation as per the mandate he\nreceived from the people of Sri Lanka and the relevant constitutional\nprovisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While analyzing  the outcome\nof the virtual summit between the two leaders, former\nIndian diplomat and analyst of international politics M.K.Bhadrakumar (MKB), in\none of his article titled \u2018Geopolitics\nof Sri Lankan Tamil Problem\u2019 appeared in Newsclick.in<\/em> dated 30th<\/sup> September 2020  quite correctly says\nThe virtual summit last week reveals that Sri Lankan nationalism\ncontinues to militate against Delhi\u2019s intrusive policy. Delhi has baited the Sri Lankan religious establishment with\na US$15 million grant for promotion of Buddhist ties, but Colombo will remain\nvigilant about Indian intentions in cultivating the powerful Buddhist clergy.  The modus operandi in the 2014-2015\nperiod to destabilize the incumbent government must be still fresh in memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Indian diplomat MKB, having\nworked in Sri Lanka as a diplomat in the early and mid-1980s when India was\nactively promoting the Tamil militant groups, use\nthe words \u2018intrusive\u2019 and  \u2018bait\u2019 when\nidentifying the offer of Delhi, probably, knowing very well the hidden agenda\nof the grant of US$15 million (LKR 2700 million)  for promoting Buddhist ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The said article\ndescribes in detail how and why the external powers orchestrated a regime\nchange in Colombo ousting Rajapaksa who was perceived\nas pro-China\u201d in Delhi and Washington. (<\/em>https:\/\/www.newsclick.in\n\/Geopolitics-of-Sri-Lankan-Tamil-Problem<\/em>)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us compare the said Indian\nfinancial assistance with the amount of expenditure that the government of Sri\nLanka had spent to maintain the Provincial Council (PC) established under the\n13th<\/sup> A.  Sri Lanka\u2019s PCs\nexpenditure was reported at 286,031.000 LKR million in 2017. This records an\nincrease from the previous number of 276,147.000 LKR million for 2016. The\nexpenditure is averaging 103,769.000 LKR million from Dec 1996 to 2017. The\ndata reached an all-time high of 286,031,000 LKR million in 2017 and a record\nlow of 22,128,000 LKR million in 1996. (https:\/\/www.ceicdata.com\/en\/sri-lanka\/provincial-councils-revenue-and-expenditure\/provincial-councils-expenditure)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be interesting to find out\nwhether there is any benefit to the general public for spending such a large\nsum of funds and how many millions of rupees have been saved from the public\nfunds for not activating the PCs during the last two years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As per the media\nreports,  Northern PC under the Chief\nMinister Vigneshwaran passed more than 100 resolutions (including one seeking\nan UN inquiry to investigate the genocide of the Tamil people) inciting racial\ntension and several others which are harmful to the country as a whole. During the establishment of Eastern Provincial Council, we witnessed how\nelections were manipulated by the political parties formed and named on\ncommunal basis and how the positions were claimed purely on communal basis by\nthe very same groups. Thus Segregating people according to communal lines under\nthe name of devolution, reconciliation etc could only strengthen the hands of\nseparatist movements still alive in various parts of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India became the first country, since independence,\nto interfere with the internal affairs of Sri Lanka, in mid 1980s.  There are several write-ups available on how India\nprovided training to Tamil separatists to fight against the Sri Lankan security\nforces and how India made Sri Lankan government somewhat obligatory to ‘invite’\nRajiv Gandhi to sign an Accord in 1987 by invading the Sri Lankan air space for\nthe first time and forcing the government to stop operations against the very\nsame terrorists whom they trained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the Indian government undertook to disarm\nthe terrorists group in return of implementing the constitutional amendment\nimposed on the Sri Lanka government, Delhi has failed miserably to fulfill its\nobligation as per the agreement. On the other hand, Sri Lankan people had to\nbear the huge cost of war against terror and the cost of implementing the\nconstitution amendment, thus imposed under the failed agreement, in addition to\nthe loss of lives since 1987. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since it is the Sri Lankan Security forces who\nultimately disarm the terrorists, the moral rights of the Indian government to\nask the government of Sri Lanka to implement 13th amendment is highly\nquestionable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, thousands of innocent civilians who got\ninjured and surviving relatives of further thousands of those who died as a\nresult of the terrorism abetted by India, we Sri Lankan deserve an apology (at\nleast) from the perpetrators for the losses incurred to us due to terrorism. Instead, it is likely that India will continue to interfere with the\ninternal affairs of Sri Lanka not only due to the internal politics of Tamil\nNadu, but to satisfy the geopolitical interests as described in the said\narticle titled \u2018Geopolitics of Sri Lankan Tamil Problem\u2019. Full implementation of the 13th<\/sup> or\nany other Amendments or the complete overhaul of the entire Constitution of Sri\nLanka is a matter for the Citizens of Sri Lanka and its elected leaders.\nContinuous insisting of how we should solve our problem and to push Sri Lanka\ntowards Indian solutions is simply a gross violation of our rights as a\nsovereign country and a clear example of how the powerful states are bulling\nthe weak and small states to achieve their own geopolitical interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

S. Akurugoda According to the news item appeared in The Island under the heading \u2018Address Tamils aspirations within united Sri Lanka, and implement 13th Amendment\u2019 dated 28th September 2020, Indian Prime Minister  Narendra Modi has urged Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa  to carry forward the process of reconciliation with the implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-s-akurugoda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}