India’s stake in Sri Lanka must be preserved

For anyone - least of all Tamilians - to argue in India that Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh should not attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo is to show poor sense of political responsibility. This must be particularly impressed up on Tamil Nadu leadership – all of them, to whichever party they belong. In the first place the meeting was called by the Commonwealth office, not by Sri Lanka.

In the second place India is a senior member of the Commonwealth and must behave like one. In the third place, let us go back to history for a while. Throughout the Seventies, private parties and elements in the State Government of Tamil Nadu were believed to be supporting the armed rebellion undertaken by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

India could hardly accept that and had necessarily to support the Sri Lankan Government, which had its own defects. For that India had to pay a heavy price in the assassination of Rajya Gandhi. Instead of finger-pointing, it would be a wise government which seeks to look into the future and not into the unsavory past. India needs Sri Lanka just as the latter needs its big neighbour.

Both are members of several regional and multilateral organisations such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme not to mention South Asian Economic Union and BIMSTEC. Since a bilateral free trade agreement was signed and came into effect in 2000, Indo-Sri Lanka trade rose by 128% in just four years and quadrupled by 2006. Between 2000 and 2004 India’s exports to Sri Lanka, increased by 113% while Sri Lankan exports to India increased by 342%.