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Indian foreign policy and the UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka

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In Brief

At the March 2012 session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), India voted in favour of a resolution criticising the Sri Lankan government’s handling of post-insurgency rehabilitation of minorities. This vote has divided India.

While many argue that India has not lost much because Colombo was already brazenly ignoring India’s quiet diplomacy, a vocal group feels that India’s central government has committed a blunder under the pressure of its Tamil coalition partners and the US.

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In this view, India’s loss is threefold. First, China will be able to consolidate its presence in Sri Lanka while India — and the West — will be further marginalised. Second, India has estranged itself from its South Asian neighbours, who supported Sri Lanka. Third, the government has set a bad precedent by allowing provincial politics to affect foreign policy.

A reality check is in order. While China accounts for more than a sixth of Sri Lanka’s imports, Western countries and India are responsible for more than half of Sri Lanka’s exports and tourism revenues, and India represents a substantial part of the cargo handled by Sri Lanka’s ports. In the interest of its export-driven economy, Sri Lanka cannot afford to further antagonise its major trading partners. So fears that Sri Lanka, barely 30 kilometres from India, will fall like a ripe fruit into China’s lap are exaggerated. In any case, China is unlikely to go out of its way to use Sri Lanka to trouble India, because India is emerging as a major market for Chinese goods. In the worst case, China will use Sri Lanka as a bargaining chip to restrict Indian activity in Southeast Asia.

Similarly, the argument that India has cornered itself in South Asia is misleading: voting in favour of Sri Lanka would not have revolutionised India–Pakistan ties, but it would have definitely cast India in a poor light.

Moreover, while provincial politics can affect foreign policy in a federal democracy, the Indian government did not act under pressure. The exit of scam-tainted Tamil parties would not have destabilised the coalition government, which now has the support of major regional parties from other parts of the country.

But if the government was not under pressure, then why did it change India’s longstanding Sri Lanka policy?

After the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, Sri Lanka successfully portrayed itself as a co-victim of Tamil terrorism. On the one hand, Sri Lanka argued it was helping India by fighting Tamil insurgents. On the other, India tolerated Sri Lanka’s defence transactions with China and Pakistan because it viewed armed Tamil insurgency as an obstacle to ethnic reconciliation in Sri Lanka and as a threat to its own maritime security. But after the end of the insurgency, the Sri Lankan government stonewalled India’s suggestions for political rehabilitation of minorities because it believed that India would not want to open itself to criticisms on Kashmir or push Sri Lanka into the arms of its adversaries. India’s vote in favour of the UNHRC resolution has called this bluff. Sri Lanka is now free to further expand its ties with China and Pakistan and criticise India’s human rights record.

But Sri Lanka knows that confrontation is not going to help. Its leaders know that India voted on its own terms after successfully bargaining for a non-intrusive resolution that leaves room for constructive engagement. They are also aware that of those who voted against Sri Lanka, India alone could help ensure that the resolution remains non-intrusive. Unsurprisingly, some in Sri Lanka are downplaying India’s vote by suggesting that it was driven by immediate domestic political compulsions.

Now Sri Lanka needs to cope with the surprising turnaround in India’s foreign policy. It can achieve this by addressing the UNHRC’s concerns and encouraging India to support it at the next session. Otherwise, Sri Lanka risks forcing India into a position where it will support an intrusive resolution in the future. In any case, Sri Lanka can no longer smugly assume that India will either support it or remain neutral. India has signalled that it is no longer satisfied being an unquestioning contributor to reconstruction while Sri Lanka blatantly ignores its own commitments regarding political rehabilitation. By voting against Sri Lanka India has recovered its strategic autonomy within South Asia.

The vote also reveals another shift in India’s foreign policy. The resolution against Sri Lanka was one of the many diplomatic fronts where the US expected Indian support. India chose a less costly front. Voting against Sri Lanka makes it relatively easier for India to resist US solicitation on other issues, such as on the Persian front.

To conclude, India’s vote against Sri Lanka has revealed twin shifts underway in its foreign policy: willingness to risk confrontation with neighbours in international fora, and an inclination to make realistic choices unencumbered by sentimentalism and idealism. These shifts have serious implications for India’s domestic dissidents as well as its South Asian neighbours and outside powers with stakes in the region.

Vikas Kumar is Assistant Professor of Economics at Azim Premji University, Bangalore.

A longer version of this article appeared here on Global Asia Forum.

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