Colombo, February 6 (The Morning): The recent visit to New Delhi by leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)/National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Aruna Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is a significant development in domestic politics and emerging power relations in the Indian Ocean. On invitation from the Indian Government, Dissanayake led a delegation comprising Vijitha Herath, Nihal Abeysinghe and Prof. Anil Jayantha to New Delhi, and met both External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr. S. Jaishankar and Indian National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Kumar Doval. While the JVP has been around in the political sphere for nearly 60 years, this meeting with the Indian Government would likely be their most important foreign engagement in recent times.
The invitation to visit New Delhi is an indication that India has recognised a marked shift in the political discourse in Sri Lanka, and has gauged the legacy leftist party’s new makeover, the NPP, as an emerging political force worth engaging. The high-level diplomatic engagement is a publicity coup for the NPP, and will likely be marketed by them as an answer to the criticism directed at them by mainstream parties like the SLPP, UNP, SLFP, and the SJB on its lack of international connectivity and acceptance.
While both the local and Indian media have made much about the popularity of the JVP/NPP leader in recent times, history has shown such polls to be unreliable when it comes to the polling booth realities. However, regardless of AKD’s popularity in Sri Lanka, the long-standing erosion of trust in the state apparatus and the disdain which many Sri Lankans view the politics and the governance of mainstream political powerhouses, there is an undeniable drift towards the NPP. India has clearly been reading the ground situation in Sri Lanka closely, and understood that what transpired with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa being ousted by unprecedented public pressure in 2022, was indeed a turning point in the troubled island’s political history. It is likely that New Delhi is well aware of the general disgust the public view the political elites in Sri Lanka and can see the tilt in politics which is likely to come at the next elections. The NPP’s support base, which was made up mostly of youth, is now evolving to attract a wider and diverse demography of support, following the political instability and the economic crisis that the island endured during the last two years, and continues to grapple with.
The meetings would have given India an opportunity to sound off the JVP/NPP on their foreign policy, and test the waters about how receptive the party is to key Indian strategic investments and regional security structures. AKD, since forming the NPP has gradually mellowed the JVP’s legacy anti-India stance, recently accepting that India is the key regional player and that Sri Lanka should be careful not to disrupt the regional giants’ interest. Such comments are a marked departure for the JVP’s hard-line anti-India campaign between 1987-90 against the ‘Indo-Lanka Accord’, which was railroaded into legislation. At the time, JVP deemed the Indian intervention in Sri Lanka an expression of ‘Indian expansionism’.
India’s decision to invite the JVP/NPP and grant audience with not only their EAM but also the India NSA, is also clearly a message to the traditional political actors in Colombo, that all is not well in the Indo-Lanka relations via the existing political arrangement. It remains to be seen if India will use the optics of meeting, as leverage to fast track a number of key projects, including that of the conglomerate Adani which have been moving at a slow pace. After all, what is diplomacy without leverage? How will the mainstream local political parties in Colombo read the message India is sending remains to be seen.
It is also likely that the Indo-Maldivian affair has made India understand the need for better and wider engagement of political actors in countries in their neighbourhood. India cannot afford to have Sri Lanka gravitate away, the way the Maldives has done, towards China. While lacking widespread support, the new Maldivian President’s ‘India out’ stance has rattled New Delhi. Earlier this week, Maldivian President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu, delivering his maiden address to the People’s Majilis (Parliament), declared that his Government would beef up the country’s defences on land, sea, and air. This, while he has made repeated calls for Indian military personnel stationed on the islands for multiple tasks to be withdrawn. New Delhi has resisted the call, but may have to comply. It is interesting to see if New Delhi will replace armed forces personnel with Indian civilian specialists, to continue maintaining a toe hold on the archipelago. India has been moving to solidify its security relations with Sri Lanka, and reinforce the regional architectures which they have built, with the aim of posing a collective stance in the Indian Ocean region. Such architectures will only become more important as the geopolitical contentions in the region continue to grow, with increasing Chinese activity.
With all that’s happening in the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and the Pacific, and being that 2024 is an election year for Sri Lanka, the coming months will likely be an interesting period for Sri Lankans. The tides in the Indian Ocean keep changing; which way will they take Sri Lanka?
