{"id":57274,"date":"2016-08-02T23:26:58","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T05:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=57274"},"modified":"2018-07-29T16:31:24","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T23:31:24","slug":"ramayana-trail-again-beware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/08\/02\/ramayana-trail-again-beware\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018RAMAYANA TRAIL\u2019 AGAIN? BEWARE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sugath Samarasinghe<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

I learn that the Sri Lanka Tourist Board under the Minister of Tourism and Christian Affairs(a curious combination!) has signed an MOU with the Government of India to create Ramayana Tourist Trail in Sri Lanka. I recall that such an effort came up when the last UNP government was last in office in early years of year 2000 and later went down either due to opposition locally or after the change of government later. It seems to have raised\u00a0 \u00a0its ugly head again.<\/p>\n

It is fairly well known in this country the type of Indian tourist who comes here on such religious kind of tourism live a frugal life here and spend as little money as possible thus bringing little revenue to this country. It also appears that this matter has been initiated by the Foreign Minister of India on her last visit here. Why is India pushing this matter? I think we have to look at the larger picture here. There is more to it than meets the eye. It is high time that our policy makers take a hard look at it.<\/p>\n

It appears that Indian policy makers are looking at acquiring a hegemony over all its neighbours following the doctrine spelt out by Panikkar, to make all its small neighbours vassal states of India. The strategy appears to be through signing various MOUs and Treaties with these countries in different fields including trade, cultural and social services etc. leading to their free access to and presence in these countries with a view drain their economic resources and exploiting whatever other resources they have and make them their economic consumers.<\/p>\n

This could well be seen in the manner India has progressively achieved this objective with its land locked neighbours, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan since Independence in 1947. After a series of Treaties between the two countries, Sikkim was annexed to India as the 22nd<\/sup> state of India. It is important to note that the leader of that country who facilitated these treaties ended up as the first Chief Minister of this State. Similarly India signed altogether 14 such treaties and MOUs since 1950 with Bhutan exploiting all its economic resources disempowering her into submission through bullying tactics. Bhutan has virtually become a vassal state of India.<\/p>\n

It is well known how during the last few decades India bullied Nepal, latest step by not supplying Nepal fuel in terms of the agreements between the two countries. India\u2019s bullying has reached such a state that India dictated to Nepal what should be included in their Constitution.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka being an island separated from India by sea, enjoying some extent of isolation, we have been able to exercise some degree of independence. But since 1977 India has been making clear inroads to influence this country violating our independence ignoring the Panchaseela Principles originally enunciated by Jawaharlal Nehru. We should recall that India sought to brazenly destabilize this country by training and providing succor to the Tamil Terrorists, interfered with aggression when Sri Lanka government forces sought to deal the final blow on the Terrorists, illegally forced a Peace Accord with a 13th<\/sup> amendment to our Constitution creating Provincial Councils that have become a white elephant. The only resentment to this dastardly act was by a lone Naval Rating who tried to assault Rajiv Gandhi with his rifle butt, followed of course by the countrywide insurrection lead by the JVP. India was then taught a lesson by the LTTE that they were not pushovers whom India anticipated to vanquish them in 72 hours. LTTE then went on to kill Rajiv Gandhi in his own country. Anyway, Sri Lanka could only defeat the LTTE because India did not interfere this time probably having learnt a lesson. However, no sooner than the LTTE was defeated India sought an established two consular offices, one at Jaffna, and other, of all places, at \u00a0Hambantota, \u00a0no doubt watch posts. They then grabbed the contract to rebuild the Northrn Railway line when it could have been done cheaper and better by the Sri Lanka Railway. Now they secured another contract to build houses for the homeless in the Northern Provinces despite the fact that the homes so planned to build are not suitable to this country climatically. India has already acquired the rights in the distribution of oil by the IOC depriving the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation a return of Rs.525 billion. In the meantime India is planning to build a Bridge across the Palk Strait at their own expense, for whose benefit? Sri Lanka did not ask for such a bridge. Then they are foisting on this country an ambulance service, unasked by Sri Lanka when Sri Lanka\u2019s ability to deploy its Health Department fleet in a network as has already been demonstrated by the NP Provincial Health Minister. It is obvious that by this means India is going to run a spy service all over the country. The peculiar situation is that, it is India that is deciding what Sri Lanka needs!<\/p>\n

At the moment, the Northern Fishermen are deprived of their catch by intruding fishermen from Tamil Nadu using prohibited fishing gear, so blatantly that some arrests of these intruders have been made as far down as Kalpitiya. India, whilst violating law of international waters, is urging Sri Lanka to negotiate with them to accommodate the Indian poachers!<\/p>\n

Apart from all this, we are now confronted with an ECTA initiated by India. Sri Lankan government appears to be trapped into it already. All this, in spite of the disadvantages suffered by this country with the already signed CEPA. And now a cultural invasion in the form of a bogus Rama Trail, signing an MOU with the SL Tourist Board in order to \u00a0bring down hordes of Indian tourists here. Now as said before, it is common knowledge here that Indian tourist are such a frugal set that they spend hardly any foreign exchange here. What the SL Tourist Board does not seem to realize is that it is not the number of tourist arrivals that matter but the foreign exchange that they spend here. Hence it is to be surmised as to what India is expecting out of such an MOU. Judging by what came about to Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan with such treaties, it is not difficult to see what India is upto. We must be smart enough to see that India is slowly but surely closing on us on all sides.<\/p>\n

If our governments do not realize this danger even at this late stage and withdraw from these MOUs, Treaties and other seemingly benign traps, we are going to deprive our future generations the space to live in an independent country for which our ancestors fought and died for two millennia, we are destined to fall into the same trap that Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal have fallen.<\/p>\n

Sugath Samarasinghe<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sugath Samarasinghe I learn that the Sri Lanka Tourist Board under the Minister of Tourism and Christian Affairs(a curious combination!) has signed an MOU with the Government of India to create Ramayana Tourist Trail in Sri Lanka. I recall that such an effort came up when the last UNP government was last in office in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sugath-samarasinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57274","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=57274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}