WHY ARE THE INDIANS CONTINUING TO DE-STABILIZE THEIR FRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR?

Sri Lanka did not lease out the tank farms and now India is a closer ally of the western countries. India even has diplomatic relations with Israel. India could now claim that Sri Lanka still does not support India as they would like to and quote Sri Lanka's silence during the recent Kargil incidents as a case in point. India's relationships with her neighbours has been one of aggravation. On their independence, Neru unveiled the ' Greater India Policy' and it is clear that India has not deviated from this goal todate and successive Indian administrations have adopted a policy of Indian Hegemony in the region.

The Island of 2nd May 2000 carried a letter under the title of ` Conflict Resolution and Inviting India' in the Opinion Page which demonstrates this situation.

Quote
Within three years of Indian independence, India interfered in the political troubles in Sikkim. In 1950 India as part of a deal signed a treaty with the ruler, the Chogyal, making her a dependency of India, and, within a short time so changed the demography of Sikkim that in 1975, more than 97 percent of the inhabitants of Sikkim voted for the merger of Sikkim with India. All this was done " democratically" and today the Sikkimese, are a lost minority submerged in a deluge of Indians and no one even remembers that Sikkim was once an independent state. To understand Indian foreign policy we must understand the philosophical base of the Hindu mind which is fashioned by the ancient Hindu pumas and the sentiments of Kautiliya. Indian foreign policy is molded by K.M. Pannikar: adhered to the philosophy of the absence of dandha (the fear of punishment or reprisals). In the absence of dandha the world reverts to a state of anarchy based on the Matsuya niyaya the " way of the fishes of whom the stronger eat the small, as opposed to panchasila (the five precepts) of co-existence based on the natural and moral impulse of man to do the right thing, (as expounded by the liberal Indian thinking of the day like that of Nehru). Pannikar urged that there was no place for panchasila in Hindu thought, being a heresy planted by Buddhist reformist to sully its purity and urged India to abandon it in realpolitik. Since independence, in the absence of any fear of reprisals, India has grabbed Hydrabad, grabbed Sikkim, grabbed Goa, made incursions into Bangladesh to create a buffer state of her and then bullied her by depriving her of the waters of the Farrukah Dam, tried to strangle land locked Nepal and bullied Sri Lanka into signing an unequal accord with us.
Unquote

India has grievances against all it's neighbours and supports insurgencies and terrorism in bordering countries todate except Bhutan - in other words if we behave like Bhutan and our economy as well as people's living standards are similar to Bhutan then perhaps India would decide to leave us alone Would they stop supporting the LTTE at least then?

In the case of the Maldives, after the famous invasion by PLOTE (widely believed to be stage managed by India) the Maldivians have been successful in building up an acceptable relationship with India.

Despite the treatment we have been receiving from India for the last twenty five years, India is one of our biggest trading partners and is the country with a large trade deficit in favour of India. importations with the government of Sri Lanka. The people and the government of Sri Lanka continue to adore Indian products and buy them in plenty. A case in point is the importation of buses to Sri Lanka where tenders are called only for Indian buses despite the fact that their products are coming with technology which is forty years old and the economic life of these buses are not more than two to three years

When the writer mentioned this factor to one of the senior government ministers recently he said '' we have excellent relationships with the Indian government and there is no proof that the central government of India are directly involved". But one cannot understand why the Indian Central government is deaf and blind when their territory is used for terrorist activities against ` a friendly ' neighbour of theirs by a state government!

It was amusing under these circumstances for the Jathika Sanga Saba to ask the Indian High Commissioner ( and also the new Sinhala Urumaya Party in a press statement) to ask India to send troops to fight the LTTE - a case of asking the enemy to come and save us and India's Janatha Party leader Subramaniam Swamy has given an appropriate answer (Midweek Mirror of 3rd May 2000 quoting the Hindu Newspaper of 2nd May 2000) where he has suggested that Sri Lanka should pass a resolution in parliament to merge with India in a confederation as a way out of the ethnic crisis. (J.R. Jayawardena had to sign the Indo - Sri Lanka Package under duress and Premadasa had to dismantle the Tamil National Army which was being set-up by Indians as their proxy army by giving arms to the LTTE. Our politicians once again demonstrated how to handle an external threat by accusing Premadasa of giving arms to the LTTE).

The government of Sri Lanka does not even understand the Indian role and obviously does not have a plan to deal with it. Perhaps our foreign office should study the Maldivian relationships management in detail.

-7-

Previous Page   Next Page

Pages 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12 

Back to Latest News

Copyright © LankaWeb 2000

Home News Business DhammaWeb Info & Services Classified Search