LET'S CALL THE BLUFF OF INDIA AND THE INDOPHILES

A few years ago, the Indian Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, who also served as the President of the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) from 2014 to 2020 in a conversation over the party’s victories in several States is reported to have quipped ‘Nepal and Sri Lanka are still left’.

- Malinda Seneviratne

Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Deb, who recalled the conversation, interpreted Shah’s comments as indicative of the party’s plans to have a BJP government in Sri Lanka and Nepal.

People can have aspirations. If it’s about ideology and its spread, then the BJP’s ‘plans’ are no different from the Communists, Catholics, the Jihadists and of course the Capitalists and the nations and blocs that lead or promote these ideologies. Also, we have had such governments all over the world. They are called lackeys, creatures, pawns, vassals and client states. Shah could have been speaking in jest. Let’s go with that and leave it there.

On the other hand, India’s operations with respect to Sri Lanka are ridden with words and deeds that do not call for laughter. Shah has said it, albeit in lighter vein. Others didn’t say it but let the actions speak. Well, Shah was not the first; Rajiv Gandhi let slip that the Indo-Lanka Accord was ‘the beginning of the Bhutanization of Sri Lanka.’ Careless words, but then again, they are mere echoes of acts that come shouting.

The talk today is about the East Container Terminal (ECT). It comes with grave faces, words of disappointments and a lot of lobbying; the High Commissioner met Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister just the other day and the Indian press has all but cried ‘foul!’ Anyway, though we can talk of the condescension embedded in big brother rhetoric, the deliberate attempts to destabilize Sri Lanka by funding, arming and training terrorists, dhal-drops followed by imposing India-friendly legislation and such; let’s just focus on the ECT.