This story is part of ‘Modi’s India from the Edges’, a special Himal series presenting Southasian regional perspectives on Narendra Modi’s decade in power and possible return as prime minister in the 2024 Indian election. To read the series and support Himal’s work on it, click here.
When Indira Gandhi, as the Indian prime minister, visited Sri Lanka in 1973, she marked the advent of an especially warm phase in relations between the two countries. The personal chemistry between Gandhi and Sirima Bandaranaike, her Sri Lankan counterpart – which extended into a rapport between their two families – was an added fillip. The bilateral pact on Katchatheevu, recognising Sri Lankan control over the disputed island in the Palk Strait, was signed in 1974, followed by the agreement extending Sri Lanka’s maritime boundary to Palk Bay in 1976.
But the closeness between the two leaders had had knock-on political effects. The opposition United National Party (UNP), the perennial rival to Bandaranaike’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), adopted an antagonistic position to Gandhi’s Indian National Congress. The UNP swept Sri Lanka’s 1977 election and the new government, led by J R Jayewardene, developed a close bond with the Morarji Desai administration that deposed Gandhi and the Congress in India that same year. When the Congress regained power in 1980, the unfriendliness between the two ruling parties caused a serious deterioration in the bilateral relationship. The Jayewardene administration inched closer to the United States and Pakistan, both then on the other side of the Cold War divide from pro-Soviet India, in the hope of balancing out India’s power.
India’s relations with Sri Lanka are currently far less troubled than they were back then, or than its relations with many other neighbouring countries are today. The last Maldivian election was won by a specifically anti-India party that invited China back to the archipelago. India’s otherwise cordial relationship with Bangladesh seems to be hitting a snag, with the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party reacting to perceived over-identification between New Delhi and the ruling Sheikh Hasina government. The BNP has accused India of interfering in the country’s recent parliamentary elections, and in some areas people are reportedly boycotting Indian products. There’s even an India Out campaign, much as there is in the Maldives. When India lost the final of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup at home last November, there were celebrations in Dhaka – a repeat of what happened in Colombo after India crashed out of a World Cup on home soil in 1987, when the Indo-Lankan relationship was in tatters.