{"id":79204,"date":"2018-07-11T14:53:25","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T21:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=79204"},"modified":"2018-07-11T14:53:25","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T21:53:25","slug":"sushma-swarajs-gumption-and-indias-abiding-arrogance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/07\/11\/sushma-swarajs-gumption-and-indias-abiding-arrogance\/","title":{"rendered":"Sushma Swaraj\u2019s gumption and India\u2019s abiding arrogance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne\u00a0Courtesy The Daily Mirror<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, addressing top diplomats posted in neighbouring countries (July 3, 2018), opined that India should not focus on competing with China on resources. That\u2019s sensible considering resource-mismatch. She also said that India must closely watch all Chinese activities. That\u2019s sensible too, considering India\u2019s economic and strategic interests in the region. This (and what follows) has been reported in the Hindustani Times of July 8, 2018.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

She has also said, \u2018India must push ahead with full vigour its own work, presumably in neighboring countries. That also makes sense if \u2018work\u2019 is about building houses, bridges, roadways and railways, or if it is about trade agreements that are mutually beneficial and not heavily tilted in India\u2019s favour nor scripted in ways that India can interfere in Sri Lanka\u2019s domestic affairs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Debt trap\u2019 is not something\u00a0that naive leaders of\u00a0nations walk into blindly<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Work\u2019 on the other hand can include things like violating airspace, dropping dhal, helping out a terrorist organization that India helped create, funded, trained and armed. Work could also mean something like the Indo-Lanka Accord, clearly an abrasive encounter which left Sri Lanka scarred, courtesy of a) giving a new lease of life to the LTTE and dragging for a further 22 years a war that took a heavy toll on the country and the citizens.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be generous and assume that Swaraj was talking about hospitals, ambulances and sharing of technology. I don\u2019t think anyone would object.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the rub, though. Swaraj says that India \u2018must educate friends in the neighbourhood about how a certain kind of engagement with Beijing can have negative consequences for them.\u2019 The Hindustani Times describes the discussion Swaraj had with the diplomats as follows: \u2018The broad sense in the meeting was that in Pakistan, China\u2019s economic and political dominance had only grown; in Bangladesh, while the Chinese have made huge economic commitments, many in Dhaka were wary of the \u2018debt trap\u2019 Sri Lanka found itself in; in Sri Lanka, while the government remained politically friendly to India, its economic ties with China had continued apace.\u2019<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s limit this discussion to Sri Lanka. We can understand India\u2019s apprehension about China\u2019s economic ties with any country in her neighbourhood. The concerns about \u2018growing economic and political dominance\u2019 is understandable. The observation regarding Sri Lanka\u2019s ties with China is a statement of fact. Nothing wrong in that. Dhaka being wary of the \u2018debt trap Sri Lanka found itself in\u2019 is an observation too. Nothing wrong with that, except of course that term (debt trap) needs to be fleshed out a bit, especially the \u2018trap\u2019 part of it.<\/p>\n

The New York Times article about a Chinese state-owned company getting the previous regime \u2018to cough up a port\u2019 mentioned the term. It\u2019s not new though. \u2018Debt trap\u2019 is not something that naive leaders of nations walk into blindly. In many cases, the trap is seen but concerns of personal gain have frequently outweighed the interests of the particular country and citizenry. The literature on the pernicious role of the Bretton Woods institutions and how the trappers used coercion, threat and bribes to obtain agreement for representatives of those intended to be trapped is extensive. Much has been coughed up in the past 74 years.<\/p>\n

In short \u2018debt trap\u2019 is not news. The identity of the \u2018trapper\u2019 is only of academic interest. India\u2019s concern is the identity given economic and strategic ramifications, Sri Lanka\u2019s concern should be about the fact of entrapment, but that again, as pointed out, is old news. It is not that Sri Lanka was unfettered a la debt before China moved in.<\/p>\n

The broad sense in the meeting was that in Pakistan, China\u2019s economic and political dominance had only grown; in Bangladesh<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Trapping\u2019 is not only about debt. It can come in the form of trade agreements. It can also take the form of arm-twisting weak leaders lacking both imagination and\u00a0\"\"confidence in the people to extract constitutional amendments that serve the arm-twister. That\u2019s what India did in July 1987. Rajiv Gandhi, who bragged that it marked \u2018the beginning of the Bhutalization of Sri Lanka,\u2019 trapped Sri Lanka in a constitutional amendment (13th) that gave credence to Eelamist myth-modelling as per the boundaries (drawn by the British and not supported by history) demarcating an imaginary \u2018traditional homeland\u2019 and, as things turned out, a long drawn struggle to eliminate terrorism, an exercise which, as pointed out, cost Sri Lanka much.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most objectionable about Swaraj\u2019s position is the condescension. She wants her diplomats to tutor the neighbouring countries. Sure, it\u2019s not that the leaders of the countries mentioned (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) are rare intellectuals also endowed with courage and enjoying the full backing of the respective peoples, but this stated need \u2018to educate\u2019 them is clearly out of order, especially considering Swaraj is the minister in charge of external affairs and was addressing a group of diplomats. Nothing diplomatic there, but even if she had couched her directives in \u2018diplospeak\u2019 it is still obnoxious and objectionable.<\/p>\n

India has always treated her neighbours as though they were poor cousins, to be \u2018looked after\u2019 since \u2018they are helpless and can\u2019t take care of themselves\u2019 or worse, treat them like glorified slaves relegated to menial work to serve their rich and powerful cousins who they can address as \u2018brother\u2019 or \u2018sister\u2019 but who nevertheless operate as lord and lady.<\/p>\n

So, India knows what\u2019s best for Sri Lanka or is it that India knows what Sri Lanka should or should not do to deliver what\u2019s best for India? I believe it is the latter. That\u2019s fine, because India should (as it always does) look after India\u2019s interests. However, Sri Lanka doesn\u2019t need India to tell what\u2019s best for Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

India has always treated her neighbours as though they were poor cousins, to be \u2018looked after\u2019<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps Sri Lanka should re-think all relations with all countries. I say \u2018all countries\u2019 for a reason. For example, the current regime believed that the West would bail it out, but as things turned out the regime found out that the West was broke. So they opted for the Chinese debt trap or rather to remain fettered to China rather than to the West (the preferred slave-master).<\/p>\n

However, the traps agreed to and the getting out of such traps should be Sri Lanka\u2019s business, not India\u2019s. And not least of all because India hasn\u2019t really been a friend. It has always been a pound-of-flesh friend who, unlike China, wanted Sri Lanka to inhabit India\u2019s version of Sri Lanka\u2019s reality.<\/p>\n

Sucks. To put it bluntly.
\nmalindasenevi@gmail.com. malindasene (twitter). www.malindawords.blogspot.com\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne\u00a0Courtesy The Daily Mirror The Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, addressing top diplomats posted in neighbouring countries (July 3, 2018), opined that India should not focus on competing with China on resources. That\u2019s sensible considering resource-mismatch. She also said that India must closely watch all Chinese activities. That\u2019s sensible too, considering India\u2019s economic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79204","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=79204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}