{"id":88202,"date":"2019-05-04T15:43:41","date_gmt":"2019-05-04T22:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=88202"},"modified":"2019-05-04T15:43:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-04T22:43:41","slug":"sri-lankas-pain-fuels-ugly-debate-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/05\/04\/sri-lankas-pain-fuels-ugly-debate-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka\u2019s pain fuels ugly debate in India"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mihir Sharma<\/a> Courtesy The Gulf News<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Attack feeds into the Modi campaign\u2019s ongoing efforts to exploit high-octane nationalism <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"OPN_LANKA-1556973662765\"\/
A Sri Lankan soldier stands guard outside St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo on May 2, 2019, a week after a series of bomb blasts targeting churches and luxury hotels on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka.Image Credit: AFP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It is increasingly clear that the Easter Sunday blasts in Sri Lanka could and should have been prevented. Warnings about the group responsible, their intentions and even specific attackers were delivered well in advance. Both President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe have acknowledged that the information did not reach them and wasn\u2019t acted upon.<\/ins><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two men \u2014 and their respective parties \u2014 are still at loggerheads after a months-long constitutional crisis last year in which the former tried and failed to fire the latter. The president has attempted to exclude the prime minister from decisions over most national-security issues; a divided and confused Colombo establishment clearly contributed to the security breakdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No doubt this will become a factor in elections later this year: Former Defence Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa \u2014 whose family, led by former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, dominated Sri Lankan politics till a few years ago \u2014 recently said that the government was never serious\u201d about security and was more concerned\u201d about reconciliation after Sri Lanka\u2019s decades-long civil war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fair enough. In the elections already under way in next-door India, though, the attacks are adding more fuel to an already ugly politics of patriotism and national security. And accountability is the last thing being discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was swift to bring up the Sri Lanka attacks as a reason to vote for his Bharatiya Janata Party: A vote for the BJP, he said, was a vote to destroy terrorism of the sort Sri Lanka had suffered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This feeds into the Modi campaign\u2019s ongoing efforts to exploit high-octane nationalism. The BJP seized upon a confrontation with Pakistan in February to turn the national conversation away from its spotty economic record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mudslinging<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the BJP is actually in power, though, it can\u2019t snipe from the outside as the Rajapaksas are doing. So BJP figures have essentially resorted to calling the opposition terrorist sympathisers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Congress Party\u2019s fairly detailed election manifesto could have served to open an argument on the most effective way to balance welfare and economic growth. Instead, the BJP has zeroed in on the Congress\u2019 proposal that some particularly draconian and illiberal laws be diluted. Modi\u2019s finance minister, who you\u2019d think would have had plenty to say regarding the opposition\u2019s lack of fiscal mathematics, instead focused on calling their manifesto a charter to weaken India\u201d and an agenda for balkanising India.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other rhetoric has been much harsher than that to which Indians are accustomed. Modi\u2019s right-hand man, BJP President Amit Shah, said that after an Indian air strike on Pakistan there was mourning\u201d in just two places: Pakistan and the Congress. This is a familiar charge: Before elections in Modi\u2019s home state of Gujarat a couple years ago, Modi accused his predecessor prime minister Manmohan Singh of a secret meeting\u201d with Pakistani diplomats, implying that the latter were seeking to influence the election results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been absurdly easy for Modi and the BJP to make security into a major, if not the primary issue in the election. Unfortunately, this heated rhetoric seems to be considered an adequate replacement for any more rational response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India\u2019s February air strikes into Pakistan \u2014 in retaliation for an attack on an Indian paramilitary convoy in troubled Kashmir \u2014 were seen in many quarters as influenced by electoral considerations. Crucially, there has been no accountability for the security failures that led to the convoy bombing. Kashmir is so heavily militarised that a sophisticated attack of that sort should have been prevented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike in Sri Lanka, nobody in New Delhi has taken responsibility for the original failure. It\u2019s fine to talk about national security during a campaign. But the most important questions aren\u2019t being asked: Why did the attack happen? Which group organised it and how did they build up their strength? How can other such attacks be prevented?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coarseness of the current debate in India is not just a betrayal of the large part of the electorate that wants a clear discussion of bread-and-butter issues. It is frankly dangerous for national security itself. One hopes Sri Lanka will, over the next few months, have a more productive political dialogue than India has had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mihir Sharma Courtesy The Gulf News Attack feeds into the Modi campaign\u2019s ongoing efforts to exploit high-octane nationalism It is increasingly clear that the Easter Sunday blasts in Sri Lanka could and should have been prevented. Warnings about the group responsible, their intentions and even specific attackers were delivered well in advance. Both President Maithripala […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88202","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=88202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}