Narendra Modi-led India abstaining from voting in the United Nations Human Rights Commission resolution on Sri Lanka, and that too with the Tamil Nadu election coming up, shows that the Centre has come a long way from being arm-twisted by domestic parties on international matters.
The 46th Session of the UNHRC has ‘adopted’ a resolution tabled by the core group on Sri Lanka. The resolution flags human rights abuses by “all parties” in the island nation and the “deteriorating situation” in the country. The 47-member Commission passed the resolution with 22 countries voting in favour, 11 against and 14 countries abstaining from voting. It is a technical victory of sorts for the core group.
As expected, New Delhi abstained from voting, although India has time and again advised Colombo to resolve the issues arising out of the 30-year-old civil strife amicably. No other country is better placed than India to resolve the issues arising out of the conflict in Sri Lanka.
Interestingly, resolutions and actions by international institutions vis-à-vis Sri Lanka become a hotly debated and highly contested issue in Tamil Nadu. The regional parties have repeatedly made the civil strife in Sri Lanka a domestic issue and derived political mileage out of it. At one time, Tamil Nadu was also the popular destination for the sleeper cells of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE) and other Tamil separatist outfits before they were dismantled.
But circumstances are changing.
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A call for Centre, not states
India has generally followed the procedure of remaining neutral as far as country-specific resolutions are concerned. In the case of Sri Lanka, India had voted against Colombo twice, but under political pressure from the Dravidian parties.
The domestic politics impacted India’s foreign policy to such an extent that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could not attend the prestigious 54-member Commonwealth Heads of Governments’ (CHOGM) meeting hosted by Sri Lanka in November 2013. The proposed visit by the Indian prime minister to the north and east of the country, former strongholds of the LTTE and where Colombo had initiated reconciliation projects, had to be dropped given the opposition by Tamil Nadu parties. The CHOGM meet was then attended by Salman Khursheed, external affairs minister at the time. Incidentally, 16 months later, in March 2015, Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit war-torn Jaffna in the 30 years since the civil strife began.
The UPA’s foreign policies towards Sri Lanka were virtually dictated by two parties in Tamil Nadu.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) had extended outside support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre. To add to its miseries, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) was the ruling party in Tamil Nadu. Both political parties played the ‘anti-Colombo’ card to extract political advantage out of the Tamil issue.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government does not need the support of the Dravidian parties and hence is able to pursue foreign policy undeterred by domestic compulsions.
The fact that New Delhi could take the decision to abstain from voting in the UNHRC meet unconcerned by any fallout in the upcoming Tamil Nadu election highlights the changed circumstances. Again, in a role reversal, it is the regional parties in Tamil Nadu that need the support of the Centre and hence have very little to arm-twist the Union government on issues that fall under the purview of the external affairs ministry and the PMO. The Sri Lankan Tamil issue is no longer a political issue in Tamil Nadu.
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India’s balancing act
After the complete victory over the dreaded LTTE in 2009, Colombo worked very closely with successive governments in New Delhi to assuage the feelings of the displaced persons and implement the “Vadakkin Vasantham” or Northern Spring project under the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). As such, successive governments in Colombo have played and continue to play a commendable role in reaching out to the victims of the civil strife that devastated Sri Lanka for more than three decades. Faced with mounting problems and the economy struggling to make a comeback, the last thing Sri Lanka needs is empty words and threats from international bodies that are oblivious to ground realities.
The mandate received by UNHCR chief Michelle Bachelet to “collect evidence of crimes during Sri Lanka’s long civil war, which ended in 2009 with the defeat of the separatist Tamil Tigers and a surge of civilian deaths” should ideally also include the atrocities committed by the LTTE on the civilian population and their own leaders who were in favour of reconciliation with Colombo.
The present resolution draws its strength from the initial resolution A/HRC/RES/25/1 adopted in March 2014 on “Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka” in the wake of the defeat of LTTE, which used civilians as human shields while on the back foot. The resolution is totally silent on these issues. Strangely, it was the representative for the Philippines, Evan P. Garcia, who pointed out that the text (of the resolution) was “driven by simplistic generalisations of complex conditions on the ground”. Pakistan’s spokesperson, Khalil-ur-Rahman Hashmi, argued that the draft resolution “fails to acknowledge the long struggle of the Sri Lankan people and government against LTTE” and “shies away from a call for accountability of the LTTE and its sponsors and financiers”.
While Colombo would have preferred India to vote against the resolution, New Delhi chose the best available option that balanced between the insensitive West and a strategically important neighbour. India will not be a voting member for the next two years. But this should not keep New Delhi away from playing its role in the region and remain on the side of countries in its ‘sphere of influence’ in the immediate and extended neighbourhood, Sri Lanka included.
Seshadri Chari is the former editor of ‘Organiser’. Views are personal.
Edited by Neera Majumdar.