From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the
Times of India podcast. How Congress as a party and as a
government have ceded a piece of India piece of Bharat
relinquished sovereignty, more importantly, shrunk over India's
borders, thereby creating all the problems our Tamil
fishermen, brothers and sisters are facing today.
We felt, considering today, that the situation of the fishermen
is so much a concern, then it is right for the fishermen
themselves and the people of Tamil Nadu to know the truth and
the whole truth of this matter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi may
have mentioned the tiny uninhabited island of Kachitivu
in a parliamentary speech in August 2023, but it never quite
made the headlines it has in the last week.
The furor over the island comes after a Right to Information
reply received by the BJP's Tamil Nadu unit chief.
The BJP has alleged that the territory was ceded to Sri Lanka
by the Indira Gandhi government. This, according to the BJP,
reflects poorly on the Congress nearly 50 years later and on the
ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu. The tiny island has been
uninhabited and is largely visited by Indian fishermen
during a festival that is celebrated with their
counterparts from Sri Lanka. So what then are the long term
impacts of making it sound like Sri Lanka shouldn't have got the
island? Sri Lanka for now has said that
the issue is an internal Indian issue.
The country's foreign Minister Ali Sabri brushed aside
questions and said that there was number question of anyone
else claiming the island. In today's episode, we're in
conversation with N Satyamurthy, who is a policy analyst and
political commentator based in Chennai.
He was the director of the Chennai chapter of the Observer
Research Foundation and has been a close watcher of ties between
India and Sri Lanka as well as India and Maldives.
In today's episode, he explains why the Kachitivo issue won't
yield electoral gains for the BJP in Tamil Nadu and won't help
India in the long run. We started by asking him about
the significance of the island for both India and Sri Lanka.
He explains why India didn't complain about giving control of
the island to Sri Lanka. And he also explains how the two
nations in a way pioneered a unique agreement before the
creation of Unclose or the United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea, which defines boundaries in the sea, a subject
of confrontation in regions like the South China Sea presently,
What is the significance of Kachativu 2, even Tamil Nadu,
and what is its significance between the two nations at all,
if any? Basically Kachatibo as you all
of us would know by now is a small islet between India and
Sri Lanka. At one point both countries they
claim to get citing by old records and documents that 1974
agreement and 76 agreement do not contain the word seed as it
is being made out. That was about six or seven
years before the Unclass 1982 was came into force and at that
time India and Sri Lanka drew their IMBL.
That is International Maritime borderline in a way that
Kachatibi fell on the Sri Lankan side.
There were very many technical reasons and justification for
that. One.
Kachatibu is 11 nautical miles from Depth Island, the last
inhabited island in Sri Lanka, and 14 nautical miles from
Rameswara. So even if the Median line is
drawn between the two countries in a way unclose defined it
later Kachatibu would still fall within the Sri Lankan territory.
As already former foreign secretaries have said there was
a gentleman's agreement So to say to swap Kachativa was Watch
Bank. WADGE Watch Bank is a 10,000
square kilometer water area beyond the Kanyakumari where
ceiling and fishermen were allow were fishing.
There was an arrangement for India to take over Watch Bank,
possibly in return for Kachati. There is nothing written there.
If you go into the 74 agreements, it does not say
seed, it does not say swap or anything closer to that.
All that it says is to give latitudes and longitudes of the
IFBL. If you want to talk about the
diplomats, they were very careful not to get into a kind
of controversy that is being whipped up today.
Incidentally, Bach bank has hydrocarbon reserves and maybe
last year the Government of India has notified the proposal
to allocate 3 blocks for gas and oil exploration.
Now anyone with some sense will understand what was the
importance what bank had for Indian negotiators at that time.
I am given to understand that Indian experts knew there was
likelihood of hydrocarbon fines in the watch bat.
So you'd basically, I mean you'd basically say that it wasn't
like a bad deal or anything. It was basically two countries
just agreeing to sort of set differences aside over issues
that stood between them. Precisely.
See, let us look at the world at that time and India at that
time. One.
We have lost the China for three years earlier, right since 1956
when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal.
There was the uproar in the international community on the
simple question that waterways like that should they be allowed
to be the sovereign property of individual nations or not.
This Pak strikes that connects or divides India and Sri Lanka.
Through this agreement we have kept it two of us.
It never became an international waterway.
At that time we had concerns about the US in the Cold War
era. Today we have concerns about
China. That will not happen.
Yes, you can always say US had was friends of Sri Lanka at that
time. China is a friend of Sri Lanka.
These things we have to workout with our diapers.
With regard to Kachitivu, you have a situation where the
central government at one point said it wasn't going to go to
Sri Lanka with the matter. It has told the Supreme Court
that it cannot get back the island.
And you've also written that this issue itself is a dead one
in the state of Tamil Nadu. Why do you say that it won't be
an issue in Tamil Nadu, despite the fact that there's so much
sound and fury about it? Sound and food is mostly in the
North Indian media and it is reflected here for 30 years now.
Since the age of again Chief Minister in 1991, she has been
hurling this charges particularly against the DMK
rival the late M Karnanidhi as Chief minister.
Even now Edappadi Palanisami, former Chief Minister, he is
doing the same to Karnadi son and President, Chief Minister,
Stalin. Still, they also included the
Congress whenever Congress and DMK were allies.
But the problem here is because it has been beaten about so
much, it is not an election issue.
And Satyamurthy says that even at the height of the civil war
in Sri Lanka, the island was not an issue that reaped political
dividends in the state. At the height of the NTTA war in
Sri Lanka, Mr. Baiko, who was seen as a spokesman and public
face of LTTA or the Tamil issues in Tamil Nadu, contested the Det
Vidhinagar Lok Sabha seat in southern Tamil Nadu with the
support of ADMK. Under Jayalalitha, he lost his
seat by 50,000 plus votes. So it was not an election issue
here. Even then, at the height of the
ethnic issue tended down the line, Pramagaran was killed
then. You can imagine the tension that
prevailed here in 2014. The late Sushma Swaraj, before
she got elected, was in Tamil Nadu lodging a similar campaign
on the larger Tamil Fisher's issue.
She even entered the seats in Rameshuram, lodging what she
called Kadal Tamari or Sea Lotus campaign.
The BJP did not win any seats here.
I mean BJP allies because of this issue.
Of course Mr. Pundrada Krishanmunda Kanyakumari seat
because of the parties inherent strength and hits own candidacy.
So even now, it is not an election issue.
N Satyamurthy says there is a genuine issue of fishermen in
Tamil Nadu being caught for trespassing into Sri Lankan
waters. Fishermen in India say Sri Lanka
has over 150 boats that it's seized over the past eight
years. Fishermen also face arrest if
they strain to Sri Lankan waters.
N Satyamurthy says these are not the issues the BJP is attempting
to talk about when it talks about kachitivu.
But the larger Fisher's issue is of considerable interest and
concern in Tamil Nadu, the whole of Tamil Nadu and particularly
to Rameshwaram and Ramanathapuram Lok Sabha seat
where Rameshwaram forms. These are two different issue.
Let us not try to bring in Kachatibi into the fishermen
issue for the simple reason. The fishermen locally know there
is no fish in Kachatiwi to be fished anymore.
It may look different from Delhi political Delhi in particular,
right? That is not the case there, the
Prime Minister or Mushar Namalaya or other central
leaders. They are not talking about the
fishing right of fishermen. They are only repeatedly
targeting the Congress political rival and DMK in Tamil Nadu AS
who gave away Kachatiwa. That is not an issue here.
In this case, like you said, it's more of a campaign issue,
but and India hasn't really said anything to Sri Lanka about it,
but how do you view something like this even being said on the
campaign trail? Does it put a strain on a
country that we don't really have any problem with at
present? It has strained our
relationship, full stop. We seem to think there is
election only in India. Presidential elections are due
in Sri Lanka by October and the presence is authorized to
dissolve Parliament anytime now. And anyway, Parliament elections
are due before August next year. I'm talking about two major
elections, Presidential and the Parliament.
So we can't say there is a it is a cabin issue only here even
without it despite what we have that we have helped Sri Lanka in
a very big way during economic crisis.
There are those who have been campaigning already even then
even now may be because of the economic crisis they were
keeping their mouths shut because they also did not.
They were shocked for words. But today the situation
different. Even in the last six months,
three months or so, there has been a huge anti India campaign
coming up. Some of the big Indian
industries associated or identified with the government
leadership are investing big time there.
And there is a campaign going on on specific issues like the
ecological issue there, political issue there.
Last year when the President Ranil Vikram Singha visited
Delhi and signed a series of agreement in the presence of
Prime Minister Modi, One of them was energy cooperation.
All of those things were there. But last month I think official
delegation, not even a ministerial delegation, a middle
level official delegation visited Kilombo for furthering
their discussions in the matter that across southern Sri Lanka
that is singular area which is a majority area.
Ball posters and India ball posters appeared overnight.
It is one question who is began date, who was funding it and all
those questions doesn't matter. But that sentiment was there.
North Satyamurthy points to the fact that there are former Sri
Lankan ministers who have support in Sinhala areas and
have been accusing India of making investments only to
dominate the industry there. He says even when it comes to
fishermen, the two nations are at loggerheads and a recent
document moved by a minister indicates the sentiment in the
country against India. There are political leaders,
former ministers who are even now present with some kind of a
limited electoral presence in the CIGLA areas who have openly
said India interested money only to subdivas sector by sector,
industry by industry. So these are our political
issues. And remember in the Tamil areas
also fishing is a huge problem. They are not saying that they
want to share for livelihood issue is common to both them and
Indians. They don't want us.
Last month again. Their Fisheries Minister Douglas
Devananda at Tamil has moved what is called the position
paper in the cabinet for creating a simple defense force
of Tamil fishers to protect themselves against the Tamil
fishermen from India. You can understand what it is
intent to do or it will mean. In the mid seas they are
possibly replacing the Sri Lanka Navy with this Civil Defence
Force which will have legitimacy.
Of course, it has not been taken up by the Cabinet, nor has it
been converted into an organization or outfit or
whatever, but that is the mood in Sri Lanka.
The big worry for India, at least earlier before the
economic crisis, was that China was too close to Sri Lanka.
Does this sort of sentiment then push Sri Lanka back towards
China because they just see it as a more convenient
relationship? So I wouldn't say that for
simple reason. There are India friendly
leaders, India friendly people, China friendly leaders, China
friendly people. The balance of convenience, I
mean logistics and other things. The majority of them are India
friendly. We have to work overtime to
ensure that they don't suspect India.
They don't convert to being neutral first and through China
later because they suspect India.
This is an extreme necessity for India for us to maintain that
relationship. India Today is not what India
was 70 years back when Kachetriba agreement was signed.
Today India is strong and says it is strong and the world
believes it is strong. We have to need with with our
neighbours through bilateral prism and not through hyphenate
a relationship. China Maldev, China, Sri Lanka,
China, Nepal and other thing just don't work In the post Cold
War era, sovereignty of individual nations count more
than earlier. That is one of the reasons why
we are in a multipolar world and there is no bipolar world as
during the Cold War. In this circumstances, this
government started with the neighbourhood first policy
announcement, which was always there.
No one gave it a name and title. So it is incumbent upon this
government even more and even future governments to raise
about all these things and behave like a elder brother and
not a Big Brother in the eyes of our neighbors.
We have to remember only one thing that just as we are
watching China or US or China and US earlier, US and Soviet
Union, all our neighbors are small and their preoccupation is
watching India for good, bad and ugly.
So not many people in this country aware of that, and those
who are aware of it don't understand the dynamics of it.
Then how do you view India then making these statements about
its neighbours? And it's not even India making
these statements. It's more a sort of a social
media campaign or something like that, which are internal
campaigns that seem to drum up political support here in some
way. How do you view that, given that
its target, in a sense, is a country in the neighbourhood?
See if you are referring to Boycott Maldives campaign in the
recent past to say take only an example, it was a disastrous
campaign. He has three deputy ministers in
that government which was already perceived by as anti
India by the Indian media from as far as I can see from in the
Maldivian newspapers and even Indian official frustratements.
Yes there is a strain, visible strain but they are trying to
working over it or around it. But the Indian media bent all
out social media even worse just because three ministers had a
comment to make against India or even the Indian Prime Minister
which was defamatory. Of course there are official
channels to take it up with the government there.
If you look at the even Maldives or Srinagar, other than
editorial news and all that, social media is the the
Maldivian said. For instance, only the president
speaks, no minister speaks out in India.
That kind of a situation should arise here.
Yes, there are differences, may be some of it need to be aired
but not in the social media. The minute someone in Delhi
understood that this has not gone down well or the way it
might have been perceived, the social media campaign against
boycott Maldives, it stopped all of a sudden.
Who was holding the key? That question arose in Maldives,
the sheets of Maldives. They haven't stopped asking that
questions of themselves. Do we do this or we habituated
to do this sort of election campaigns where we say anything
we want against anything and anyone and we just expect them
to forgive us? Have we done this before or is
this a new dynamic that we are also?
For instance, if we take only this has been a political drama
in Tamil Nadu. I won't say even drama,
something more campaign point or factual or whatever you want to
believe. Government of India leaders, if
they are. That the Congress that was being
attacked, they would rebut it or if even if it is a BJP.
For instance, 199899 Vajpayee was the Prime Minister for six
years. Even in 2004 the central
government was very clear not to commit itself or comment on any
of these things. That will be seen as affecting
good neighbourly relations and they should not become anti
India. That was an extra care they took
at that time. I think that is slipping up or
that has slipped up here on this recent months.
Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh and Sahil Gupta.
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