N.Sathiya Moorthy Ceylon Today 20 December 2025

Shorn of the frills, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s India visit this week has demonstrated continuity in Sri Lanka’s foreign policy independent of the expectations and anticipation that followed twin elections in three months. Earlier, by accepting the IMF agreement, as negotiated by the predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe regime, the current NPP dispensation had clearly indicated that it was not a ‘disruptor’ who would put the nation’s medium and long-term interests in jeopardy.

In many ways, the Joint Statement issued at the end of President Dissanayake’s talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministerial colleagues was a rather a reiteration of what all was said in the bilateral ‘Vision Document’ brought out at the end of Wickremesinghe’s Delhi visit in July last year. Together, the two documents may provide the blueprint for future relations between the two South Asian neighbours. As a stand-alone, the visit and the Joint Statement were reassuring, full and proper.

The Joint Statement goes beyond the Vision Document’s commitment to pursue cooperation on the economic and development fronts, including aid, assistance and energy security, in both conventional and non-conventional sectors, connectivity, digitalisation and people-to-people contacts. Yes, some specifics from the previous document, like a land bridge, have not been specified in the Joint Statement now, but that does not have to mean that it is not on.

On specifics, suffice, is to point out that President Dissanayake told an Indian media interviewer how his government would approach an otherwise controversial Indian conglomerate Adani Group as a stand-alone Sri Lankan issue. He recalled how the group had brought in their own money for work on the Colombo Port’s Western Container Terminal after withdrawing an application for funding from an American international agency. In particular, he clarified that on the Adanis’ green energy project in the North, environmental concerns were as important as investments, which was required after all.

The Adani group’s dealings in other countries were of no concern to Sri Lanka, the President said. In particular, he claimed that no commitment had been made at Delhi and they would only be reviewing past decisions inherited from the predecessor.  Naturally, specific issues and projects like those of the Adanis did not find a place in the Joint Statement.

Where the Joint Statement adds significantly to what was not mentioned in the Vision Document but iterated on earlier occasions is what PM Modi mentioned as a ‘defence cooperation agreement’, which he said the two nations should conclude early on. For the uninitiated, such an effort found early mention in Track 1.5 consultations in the week after the conclusion of the ethnic war in Sri Lanka or a little before that.

It is possible that the two sides moved very cautiously in the matter, given the domestic dynamics, especially in Sri Lanka. Today, with a JVP-NPP regime in power, Sri Lanka could not have hoped for a better environment to carry the local constituency with it.

When taken forward, such an agreement can provide a framework for regional security and keep extra-territorial powers out of the picture, though not out of the reckoning. In context, it remains to be seen how far such an agreement would go beyond India’s continued supply of security platforms and training more defence personnel of Sri Lanka, and how it would coalesce with the existing Colombo Security Conclave (CSC), in which other regional nations are also partners.

Putting the past behind

India rolled out the red carpet for Dissanayake in the form of a State visit – which is how it should have been and which is what it was. In line with the precedent set by his predecessors, the President chose India as his first overseas destination when some supporters expected it to be anything but India, even if not China. New Delhi too was ready to wait as it understood his compulsions and priorities, in the form of the impending parliamentary election, which conferred greater legitimacy on his presidency and government.

Especially from an Indian and more so Indian strategic community’s perspective now, President Dissanayake’s reiteration of his pre-poll commitment, that they (too) were concerned about India’s security and would not allow Sri Lankan territory to be used for anti-India activities, adds value.  As a prospective presidential candidate, he had said as much during a February visit to India, on a rare invitation by New Delhi.

In context, his reiteration of the earlier view as President reaffirms that his JVP-NPP had put their blinkered perceptions from the past, both as an insurgent group and a democratic party, behind, with a promise to look at the future with realistic responsibilities of a ruling party sans ideologies that had been rendered irrelevant both in the country and elsewhere, too. In more ways than one, the JVP and in continuation, the NPP, needed ‘closure’ and they initiated the same after full realisation that they might have been wrong all along.

First, it was the economy, where the Dissanayake government went back on its pre
-poll commitment to ‘renegotiate’ the IMF deal originally negotiated by the Wickremesinghe government, and signed the inherited piece of document. Now, it’s the nation’s foreign and security policy that hinged on the Indian neighbour, where they had made no such illogical commitment.

They might have felt too shy to acknowledge it until their moment arrived, but over the past two years, they too have been witness to what India did and did not do to Sri Lanka, and not just in matters of sovereignty and security, once their perceived prime concern. Haltingly, the process had started two decades ago to the month, when India rushed military assistance for post-tsunami rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations at the shortest possible notice, and the troops that landed here defied the JVP campaign and returned home as fast as they came.

It was also proof that India would not demand a military base hereabouts for all times to come, unlike the likes of China, which, for instance, used decoy developmental projects, to drive the nation into debt and at the same time come in possession of Sri Lankan territory – first in Hambantota, and now in the Colombo Port City (CPC) project.  Instead, India’s commercial projects are commercial projects, good and proper, where in the case of the promised refurbishment of the Trincomalee oil tank farms, New Delhi would end up pledging its own energy security in the face of Sri Lankan sovereignty.

Today, as President, Dissanayake would have had the occasion to reminisce about the recent past and recall how India was the only nation or institution to rush economic and financial assistance when Sri Lanka needed them the most in the midst of the multiple crises of 2022. With aragalaya (protests) at times threatening not only political stability but also nationhood at one stage, there was no guarantee that Sri Lanka would at all be able to repay the debt to India any time soon, if at all. Yet, India was the only nation to put its money and more so faith in the country as none other, including many Sri Lankans to date, were ready to bet on.

Of greater significance, though in theoretical terms and hence not acknowledged enough, was the way India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman took time off during her Washington visit at the time, to argue Sri Lanka’s case for a ‘bail-out package’ with the IMF. It is possibly only one of its kind in the history of IMF that any one nation was kind of standing guarantee, even if oral guarantee, for another nation, which was already down in the dumps with no hopes of an early and full recovery.

De-hyphenating ties

Briefing newsmen after the summit talks, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri indicated that President Dissanayake’s declaration that Sri Lanka would not allow its territory (including Ocean territory) for anti-India activities would have a bearing on granting permission for foreign ‘research vessels’, starting with Chinese ships. Considering that the year-long moratorium on foreign research vessels, imposed by the previous government, comes up for revocation or review in the New Year, the Dissanayake dispensation’s decision in the matter will be keenly watched, and not just in New Delhi and Colombo, and not necessarily in that order.

Yet, it is time for the Indian strategic community to de-hyphenate neighbour’s relations (Sri Lanka or whoever) with China or other nations. They should learn from their nation’s experience vis a vis the US, whose de-hyphenation of India-Pakistan relations, contributed much to the fast-tracking of bilateral ties with New Delhi. Yes, the argument that the US also snapped its strategic ties with Pakistan too, helped, but bilateral, regional and geo-strategic priorities were the guiding matters.

It does not mean that there were/aren’t any differences. The Joint Statement mentioned the fishers’ issue in some detail, but at the end of the day, it did not come out with any solution. It did not mention the ethnic issue. PM Modi made a brief reference to the same and expected the new government in Colombo to address their ‘aspirations’ without using the term ‘Tamil’.  President Dissanayake, whose JVP-NPP had won substantial votes and parliamentary seats in the Tamil areas of the North especially, skipped the topic altogether.

However, that does not mean that the President does not intend to offer a solution acceptable to all stakeholders, if not now but when his government starts work on a promised new Constitution. He is on record that he does not intend to kick-start the process any time soon, before addressing the current issues (on the economic front), two of his three predecessors in a row, starting with one of their own and not completing it in their time!

Reaffirming Continuity, the Anura Way

(N.Sathiya Moorthy is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst and Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)