India Tightens Grip Over Sri Lanka with Defense Pact

Sri Lanka's JVP-led NPP government has made a dramatic pivot towards India, even utilizing legislative changes it once vehemently opposed.

- RATHINDRA KURUWITA

On August 19, 2023, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, then an opposition leader, criticized a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that then-President Ranil Wickremesinghe had signed with India. “We must have the freedom to freely move our hands and legs! But with this agreement, we will be in a situation where we are unable... to take any political or economic decision” independently, he said in a speech to National People's Power (NPP) affiliated ex-military personnel.

However, a little over 18 months later, Dissanayake oversaw the signing of a series of agreements with India — including a landmark MoU on defense cooperation - during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s three-day visit to Sri Lanka from April 4 to 6. Overall Seven MoUs were signed during the visit, covering defence, energy, digitalization, healthcare, power grid connectivity, and development assistance. Once these MoUs come into effect, they will push Sri Lanka deeper into India’s orbit, restrict its foreign policy choices and expand India’s footprint in Sri Lanka drastically.

Of these, the MoU on defense cooperation has generated the most debate in Sri Lanka. This is Sri Lanka first such agreement with a foreign power, since the one signed with Great Britain in 1947, which came into effect after independence. The then United National Party (UNP) leadership signed this defense agreement with Britain, fearing that if it was not under the security umbrella of a major power, India would annex Sri Lanka. Marx once wrote history “repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Ironically, now it’s the NPP, whose main constituent is the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) that has always viewed India as an expansionist power, who has signed the defence pact with a country, whose involvement in Sri Lankan affairs once led it to take up arms in the 1980s.