Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukharjee shares a laugh with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi yesterday evening in Chennai during their discussion on the situation in Sri Lanka. Karunanidh's daughter is by his side. Pic courtesy dinamalar.com

Sri Lanka and India often seem a lot further than a score of miles apart.  The Palk Strait has felt very wide and deep of late as the political storm in Tamil Nadu has intensified over the Government’s military campaign in the Vanni.  But while most Sri Lankan intellectuals were talking about the possibility of diplomatic or even military intervention by their neighbour, Indian thinkers were over here discussing how to work on a couple of millennia of shared history to bring development and prosperity to both countries.  One described the task in hand as building another Ram Sethu.

I listened with great interest.  The occasion in question was a seminar organised by the Sri Lanka India Pragathi Sansadaya, and India was represented by much admired former diplomats Ambassador K.P.S. Menon and Ambassador N.N. Jha and senior members of the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party Dr. Ravni Thakur and Dr. Seshadri Chari.  Participants from Sri Lanka included academics, public servants, business leaders, journalists and civil society activists.

Many of the things that came up weren’t at all surprising.  The Indians wanted not only strengthened ties but also more integration, both politically and economically.  There was a lot of talk about the glorious past, in which people of the two nations were said to have been truly interdependent.  Culture, religion and so many other aspects of society in both places have very similar roots.  It was perhaps a little overdone, but everybody got the point that there was a lot of common ground and also plenty of overlap in interests.

I got the feeling that the Indians saw building their relationship with Sri Lanka largely as a means of getting South Asia moving towards its rightful position on the world stage.  And it’s perfectly reasonable - South Asians make up almost one quarter of the global population, yet this region is one of the least influential players.  In particular, there is a UN Security Council position to be won.  SAARC has contributed to this failure, and it was interesting to note differences of opinion on the matter.  The Indians were split between those who saw the project as an admirable goal to be worked at slowly over time, and those who suggested that it was completely hopeless and ought to be given up at once unless the Pakistanis left.  The implication was that South Asia was only to be considered a worthwhile entity if it moved according to the wishes of India.

The Indians seemed a little too caught up with matters of pride, referring triumphantly on several occasions to the launch of their space mission.  I thought it rather more of a cause for shame given the number of Indians who are struggling just to keep alive.

Integrationists were much fewer in number on the Sri Lankan benches.  A handful of full-blooded internationalists gently pushed their agenda, but real enthusiasm from the majority could only be summoned up for innocuous proposals like abolishing visa requirements to free up travel between the two countries.  Sri Lanka has already done it, of course.

Fear was definitely in the air.  The Sri Lankans rightly pointed out that many people here are genuinely afraid of India.  And it’s easy to understand why - India is just a lot bigger, and it has a record of doing what it feels like without too much concern for the impact on Sri Lanka.  The Indians recognised this, after what they cheerfully referred to as a blip of a decade or so in the bilateral relationship.  They urged for it to be taken in context, and they also lamented the fact that many people on both sides were simply unaware of the centuries of friendship that preceded it. It was fair enough, but we don’t yet live in a utopia.  The Indians are subject to this kind of fear as well, as one of their representatives showed by wondering at the motives behind Sri Lanka’s dealings with their least favoured neighbours of Pakistan and China.  Everybody knows that such worries can’t always be written off as paranoid delusions, but paralysing fear is obviously not a good thing.

I was surprised at how little the Indians felt the need to talk about the current situation.  They all immediately dismissed the recent agitations in Tamil Nadu as opportunistic jockeying for position in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections, while emphasising that they were obviously also keen to be reassured that sufficient care was being taken to avoid undue suffering for people in the Vanni.  They were unanimous on the need to confront terrorism, while also hoping that a political settlement could be reached to solve the grievances of minorities forever.  I got the impression that they now really believed that Mahinda Rajapaksa was going to do his best on this no matter what happened on the ground.

It seems fairly obvious now.  The Tamil Nadu gale has almost blown itself out already - the Indian government conspicuously hasn’t asked for an end to the offensive or even cut off military assistance to Sri Lanka, the Q Branch has decided to arrest Vaiko for his pro-LTTE speeches, and Karunanidhi has undertaken not to bring down the governing coalition over Sri Lanka.  Nobody can proclaim that this kind of trouble won’t flare up again, but maybe remembering what happened this time could prove useful.

The Indians had actually come to the seminar thinking far beyond the conflict.  It was almost as if the LTTE had already been vanquished or reduced to the level of the terrorist groups they are so used to dealing with in India.  They wanted to talk about other issues, as though it were obvious that the LTTE would soon be a thing of the past.

I wondered if Sri Lanka risked being caught out by this.  So many things are not properly discussed here, and Indian enthusiasm for integration can just take over and displace a justifiably national agenda.

A Sri Lankan representative brought up a relevant point with regard to the CEPA.  He said that in a decade of talks, the Indian officials on the negotiating team had remained the same and were therefore completely prepared to argue their case, while the Sri Lankan delegation had changed almost every time so that none of the representatives had such a full understanding of the issues.  It was a good example, because it also showed why integration shouldn’t be accepted unconditionally and why not all opposition can be dismissed as merely fear.  The FTA has been a useful development if one thinks purely in terms of volumes, but it is failing even on that score now.  And whether or not you agree with that, it is obvious that Indian service businesses are far more advanced than their Sri Lankan counterparts.  Rushing forward without sufficient thought about the implications can lead to exactly what people fear.

I was more interested in proposals based on what one might call solidarity rather than traditional principles of integration.  Education seems an ideal domain in which the two countries can genuinely help each other.  Sri Lanka has an excellent system at the lower end, while India excels at advanced studies and has particular expertise in a number of currently sought after disciplines such as English and Information Technology.  But, the challenge remains to find a way of doing this that achieves what it is supposed to, which is not profits but more competent people on both sides of the Palk Strait.