Monroe, Putin, Modi And Sri Lanka
“If America can have Monroe Doctrine in Southern Hemisphere, we can have one in South Asia… Like (Lord) Hanuman, we must realise our strength….” - Yashwant Sinha, BJP Leader[i]
The ascendance of Narendra Modi did not take the Rajapaksas by surprise. On the contrary, the Ruling Siblings did their best to reach out to the BJP. The 2013-visit to Sri Lanka, by a BJP-Shiv Sena-RSS delegation, even as saffron-agents of the Rajapaksas were stoking anti-Muslim fires, marked the apogee of this outreach[ii].
The Rajapaksas may have believed that their anti-Muslim image would suffice to build a bridge-of-commonality to a Modi-India. The knowledge that Mr. Modi was declared a persona-non-grata by the US for his role in the horrendous Gujarati-riots[iii] would have further cemented Colombo’s belief that Sinhala-Buddhist strongmen of Sri Lanka and Hindu-strongmen of India can do business, in amity and to mutual advantage.
The Rajapaksas forgot the Dragon in the Room.
A Modi-government would have been willing to just pay lip service to the Lankan Tamil issue, as the previous Vajpayee-led BJP administration did, but for two critical developments – the death of Vellupillai Pirapaharan (the BJP was not enamoured of the Tiger-leader because of his proven unwillingness to become an Indian-pawn); and Rajapaksa Sri Lanka’s growing dependency on China.
The BJP has not been very vocal on foreign policy issues this election season. References to China constitute a clear exception to this general reticence. Last month Narendra Modi warned China about its ‘expansionist mindset’. BJP President Rajnath Singh has demanded the scrapping of Border Defence Cooperation Agreement with China, arguing that it is against India’s national interests[iv].
The BJP’s stance is simple: India is the pre-eminent power in South Asia and China, by developing close relationships with smaller regional-states, is intervening in India’s natural sphere-of-influence. In BJP-eyes this Chinese presence is not only a threat to India’s security; it also encourages India’s smaller neighbours to ‘disrespect’ India. The BJP believes that India, as the sole-superpower of South Asia, has the same rights in her ‘backyard’ that the Americans claimed for themselves in the 19th Century via Monroe Doctrine and the Russians are claiming for themselves in Ukraine.
Brashness is a visceral-vice of the parvenu. In 1895, the American government sent a diplomatic-note, demanding that global-superpower Great Britain respects the Monroe Doctrine vis-à-vis the British Guiana-Venezuela border issue. When asked why this diplomatic note was cast in extremely bellicose language, US Secretary of State Richard Olney replied that since “in English eyes the United States was then so completely a negligible quantity….only words the equivalent of blows would be effective”[v]. Read More
