In the veritable swirl of conspiracy theories emanating from Colombo on why India voted against Sri Lanka in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in March, the most compelling as well as ostensibly tenable one links New Delhi's decision to its fear of China. In that theory, China's growing role in the economy of the Emerald Isle of the East goaded New Delhi into using its vote in the UNHRC to warn Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa – he could step out from under the Indian umbrella at his own peril.
Conspiracy theories often reveal more about the psychology of their promoters than about the contested facts and decisions themselves. The Indian vote has dismayed Colombo to no end, and even though it has been a month since the US-sponsored resolution was passed in Geneva, the Lankan political class and media have not tired of trying to rationalise New Delhi's decision to their satisfaction, without indicting Sri Lanka in any way. One of their theories is arrant nonsense: that the Manmohan Singh government voted at the behest of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who was distressed by pictures showing the dead body of LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran's 13-year-old son Balachandran.
The disappointment in Sri Lanka stems from erroneous assumptions made while crafting its policy to counter the UNHCR resolution. For months before the vote, New Delhi had been reminding Rajapaksa to initiate a political settlement with his country's alienated Tamil population – an agreement which would presumably have devolved power to the North and East, once the bastions of the LTTE. But Rajapaksa equivocated to stall the settlement, not caring to display credible intent even after New Delhi communicated to his government that it was taking a serious look at the US-sponsored resolution. But it was more a case of Colombo getting its assumptions wrong than of being caught napping. For one, it perhaps banked on India's avowed opposition to country-specific resolutions that are intrusive, dilute national sovereignty, and question a government's conduct of domestic policies. The Indian government upholds this policy for very many good reasons of its own, not least to deflect foreign criticism of Indian policies in Kashmir, the Northeast and Maoist-affected areas, which are draconian and in gross violation of all tenets of human rights.
More significantly, Rajapaksa believed that he could use the threat of closer Sri Lankan alignment with China to guarantee a favourable Indian vote in Geneva. China's stunning rise in the Sri Lankan economy is best illustrated by its emergence as Sri Lanka's biggest lender in 2010, with loans amounting to USD 824 million. Add to this Beijing's role in developing Sri Lanka's infrastructure, particularly the Hambantota port, which by 2020 will have facilities to simultaneously berth 33 ships and is expected to attract 20 percent of worldwide maritime traffic. All these are fodder for the rather jingoistic, Sinophobic and didactic Indian media, which spins alarming stories on Sri Lanka becoming yet another pearl in the Chinese necklace girding India. Could a hemmed-in, paranoid India risk displeasing Sri Lanka and pushing it into a tighter Chinese embrace? Rajapaksa thought not.