India would have a legitimate concern about any foreign
presence in Sri Lanka that precludes India.
-
By Nirupama Rao
(Full Text of Sree Chithira Tirunal Balarama
Varma ,birth centenary lecture titled‘India in a tough neighbourhood” that was
delivered at Trivandrum on December 14th 2013. It is being posted here with the
permission of ms. Nirupama Rao)
I am deeply honoured to be here at the
kind and gracious invitation of Maharaja Sree Padmanabha Dasa Uthradom Thirunal
Marthanda Varma at the Kanakakkunnu Palace to deliver the Centenary lecture to
honour the erstwhile Maharaja of Travancore, Sree Chithira Thirunal Balarama
Varma whose Birth Centenary is being celebrated today. I know Maharaja
Marthanda Varma cannot be here with us today due to unavoidable circumstances.
I send him my warmest regards and my respects, and wish him a safe and speedy
recovery.
Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal
Balarama Varma lived in epochal times in our country’s history, being an
important witness to our freedom struggle and also contributing in significant
measure, to social reform in Travancore, including the temple entry
proclamation, a move of historic proportions and the harbinger of elemental
change. I am aware of the deep respect and affection he received from the
people of Travancore, his humility and his oneness with the citizens of his
State, his pioneering reforms leading to adult suffrage and compulsory
education, and his creation of several charitable trusts from his personal
resources. He ruled justly, and wisely, conforming to the globally accepted
ideal of kingship. He was also ahead of his times in his sensitivity to the
preservation of our precious ecology in Kerala, and I recall in this context
that he set up the beautiful Periyar game sanctuary. His championing of
scientific causes and public health led to the establishment of the Sree
Chithira Thirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology, an Institute of
National Importance with a special focus on research in cardiology and
neurology. The Chithira Heart Valve developed at the institute has helped
thousands of patients. His legacy is therefore extremely precious.
I am also
honoured by the presence this evening of Her Highness Princess Gouri Parvathi
Bayi and her husband Chembrol Raja Raja Varma. I have admired Princess Gouri’s
erudition and her deep interest in the arts and culture of Travancore. I know
that it was her illustrious ancestor, who bore the same name, who was a pioneer
in the field of women’s education in the State. We are all aware of the manner
in which Kerala society was changed as a result. The fascinating talk that the
Princess gave last year, at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, on
Travancore and its traditions, won her a large number of admirers.
I wish to also place on record my
thanks to my senior colleague, Ambassador T. P. Sreenivasan who has been such
an eloquent and experienced representative of India all across the world.
The toughness theme
I have been asked to focus on India in
a “tough” neighbourhood in my speech today. As in economic affairs, the tide in
global strategic affairs has definitely “pivoted” to the East, to the Indian
and Pacific Oceans, and this shift coupled with the tangled web of challenges
that populate the environment in our immediate neighbourhood in South Asia, and
also in the Gulf region where many hundreds of thousands of Keralites earn
their livelihoods, makes the task of our policy makers very complex, to say the
least. For a developing country like India, with a huge population and as one
of the front ranking global economies, emphasizing interdependence with the
rest of the world, the perils of proximity as it were, have only grown rather
than diminished. This does not mean that we turn our back on the world, or our
neighbours, rather, it only serves to emphasize that we must grow our
comprehensive national strength in the economic, scientific, technological,
military and communication fields, in order to craft astute and strategic
responses to the challenges that surround us. Kerala should understand this
message well since you belong to a region that understood the essence of
globalization, which is openness to ideas, the flow of trade and capital, the
cross-fertilization of cultures, and the free movement of people long before
the word entered our lexicon. Kerala knew, long before the rest of the world,
what lives mortgaged to pilgrimage, trade and voyages of intellectual discovery
meant, where geo-civilizational paradigms surmounted the mere geopolitical.
What constitutes “tough” in a neighbourhood,
one may ask. Neighbourhoods around the world are more often than not, tough.
One only has to watch “West Side Story” to know that neighbourhoods in New York
can be very, very tough! There is no doubt, as our Prime Minister noted
recently, that we face formidable challenges in our neighbourhood. In the
concentric circles we draw around India to define our security and strategic
challenges, even beyond South Asia and the subcontinent, there is the Middle
East or West Asia as we call it, where the going has only become more tough
with the crucible of extremism, radicalism, weapons proliferation, sectarian
divides overflowing and threatening our energy security and the well-being of
the almost seven million Indians who live and work in the region. And in the
Asia-Pacific, of which we are an intrinsic part, we see attempts to re-order
sovereignty and the dilution and questioning of internationally accepted rules
of engagement and movement placing at risk the prospects of peace and the
movement of people, goods and services in a region that is critical for the
health of the global economy and for the future of the billions who call this
home.
Dealing with toughness: prescriptions?
There is a line from a popular song
that says the “tough gets going when the going gets tough”. I am not sure this
is a prescription that inexorably yields desired conclusions. I believe the
right mix of strength and strategic restraint may be more therapeutic. By
virtue of geography, territorial size , economic heft, extent of development,
military capability and, the size of our population, India has a preponderant
and central presence in South Asia. Each of our neighbours needs to understand,
as the late Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka, Lakshman Kadirgamar noted, where they
stand in relation to India, in terms of geographical location, historical
experience and national aspirations; how the region also needs to collectively
understand India’s “unique centrality” to the region. None of our neighbours
(except Afghanistan vis-a-vis Pakistan and vice versa) can interact with the
other without traversing Indian territory, land, sea or air space. India and
its neighbours in South Asia are integrally bound by ties of ethnicity,
language, culture, kinship and common historical experience. The Himalayas and
the Indian Ocean are the physical boundaries for India, and equally for South
Asia, as a region. India exists as the hub for South Asia and there is merit in
the reasoning therefore that India should concern itself with the nature of any
external influence or presence within the confines of South Asia since threats
to its national security can emanate from the working of such influences. I
could not agree more with this.
Crafting policies to deal with tough
situations
India’s approach in crafting a good
neighbour policy with its South Asian sisters is no afterthought. It comes from
the strategic calculation and grasp of the core idea that our security does not
exist in a vacuum. Our wellbeing is affected when poverty and youthful angst
and restlessness spill into our territory from across our borders. Terrorism
and religious radicalism are cross-border phenomena that affect the lives of
our citizens in metros and vulnerable locations across the nation.
Intra-regional connectivity through air, land and sea heightens the
vulnerability of vital installations, population centres and infrastructure. A
response to all this has to demonstrate the ability to offset such threats and
challenges with a combination of well-coordinated and effective homeland
security and defence as well as a policy that stresses communication, contact
and dialogue with our neighbours which has at its core, the need to safeguard
our vital interests in terms of security and development. Such a policy needs
also to increasingly strengthen the influence and outreach of those sections in
our neighbouring countries that see the benefits of better relations with India
and the unique centrality of India to the region.
Our neighbourhood will remain tough as
long as our neighbours harbour tendencies and foster elements that see the
targeting of India as adding incrementally to their (false) sense of security
and wellbeing. This is a calculus that is self-destructive as the growing tide
of domestic terrorism and insurgency in Pakistan created out of a sustained
fostering of terror groups by some sections of the establishment would
indicate. The incursions and military provocations from across the Line of
Control are another manifestation of this calculus at work. We are also yet to
see the dawning of any realization in Pakistan that pointing the gun at India
in Afghanistan through the myriad terror groups and their affiliates who wage a
proxy war for their handlers across the border can never bring peace to the
Afghan people. Neither will treating Afghanistan as an instrument to build
strategic depth against India help Pakistan. India has always stated its
intention to continue to invest and to endure in Afghanistan because the Afghan
people need us and we will not abandon them. Their security is important to us.
The rising tide of democracy in Pakistan, we hope, can alter the trajectory of
mayhem and violence that emanates from its soil and spreads its toxicity
through our region. While the bilateral issues that create conflict and
contestation between India and Pakistan need to be resolved by the two
countries themselves, in the larger international arena, India must step up the
velocity of its campaign to highlight its security concerns vis-a-vis that
country, and thereby negate Pakistan’s capability to spew violence in its
neighbourhood with India as its main target. In that context, it makes eminent
sense for India also to substantively develop its partnership with the United
States and demonstrate to the rest of our region that we have the strategic
foresight to plan and provide for this relationship to reinforce India’s
centrality as a “linchpin” for the region.
As 2014 approaches, and the United
States and its allied forces prepare to draw down (and possibly even withdraw
totally) from Afghanistan, our strategic planners have to seriously assess the
options available to India in that country. Taliban extremism in Afghanistan
has shown no sign of muting itself, and any loss of the Afghanistan we have
known since 2001 will have grave implications for our security. We must assume
a scenario in which the Taliban will seek to destabilize the legitimate
government in Kabul. India must not hesitate to work overtime to strengthen the
international and regional coalition for Afghanistan, and ensure that a
democratically elected government is not left to fight the forces of medieval
extremism and radicalism on its own. The nature of the Taliban must be
realistically appraised, for they have shown no signs of reform or turning over
a new leaf. The abandonment of Afghanistan cannot be an option either for India
or the international community.
Several analysts and observers have
enumerated the threats posed to India by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. This is an
arsenal developed solely against India and fears have been expressed about the
safety of the nuclear weapons involved. It is Pakistan’s military and not its
civilian leadership that is in control of this arsenal. Former Foreign
Secretary Shyam Saran pointed earlier this year to the dangers implicit in this
situation and I quote: “What is rarely highlighted is that among nuclear-weapon
states today, Pakistan is the only country where nuclear assets are under the
command and control of the military and it is the military’s perceptions and
ambitions which govern the development, deployment and use of these weapons.
This is a dangerous situation precisely because the military’s perceptions are
not fully anchored in a larger national political and economic narrative. The
pursuit of a more powerful, more effective and more sophisticated nuclear
arsenal, dictated by the Pakistani military, may run in parallel with a
steadily deteriorating political, social and economic environment. Would it be
possible to island an efficiently managed and sophisticated nuclear arsenal
amidst an increasingly dysfunctional polity?’’ These are serious questions and
cannot be brushed aside by the international community, including Pakistan’s
friends. And for India, the answer is eternal vigilance.
Looking East
Just as India’s neighbours are often
dependent on India for access to the world beyond, our north-eastern states
would be greatly benefited by smoother access through Bangladesh to the rest of
India. This will be a significant development “enabler” for our North-east.
While traditionally, foreign policy is the sole purview of the Centre, we are
now entering an era where the word of the state governments and the parties
than run them is increasingly weighing in on the moves that New Delhi can make.
In the case of Bangladesh and our policy to that country we need to develop a
“whole of government” approach that enables a concerted approach of
consultation involving all the States that border that country so that a
critical balance of interests is evolved which does not sacrifice the overall
national interest but takes into account the very real needs of our bordering
states in regard to security, transport, border trade, connectivity, water
resources, and illegal migration in a holistic rather than piecemeal manner. It
must also be recognized how vital it is for India and Bangladesh to work
together to fight terrorism and radicalism so as to secure their homelands
since it is only through such cooperation that we can weaken and eliminate
these forces. Any strengthening of radical Islamist forces in Bangladesh and
the anti-India causes they espouse has serious security repercussions for
India.
So too, there is our relationship with
Nepal. The open border locks us in very close embrace with land-locked Nepal.
The welfare of the Nepali people should be at the core of this relationship and
the strengthening of mutual trust and strategic reassurance that Nepal can
always count on Indian support and friendship is essential. Any usage of Nepali
territory by alien, adversarial forces to threaten and weaken India’s security
concerns us. Seamless bilateral cooperation between our two governments to
outmanoeuvre and prevent such forces from succeeding in their nefarious ways is
of absolute importance. I believe that we can well afford to be more generous
with meeting the needs of neighbours like Nepal and Bangladesh in order to
cement trust and confidence and also to safeguard our national security. Nepal
has the water resources to potentially generate over 100,000 mw of electricity.
It is the tragedy of our times that mistrust of Indian intentions has held
Nepal back from harnessing this capability that could well turn it into the
richest of South Asian nations per capita, because of the power it can export
to India.
There is need for mention of Myanmar.
That country is our land gateway to Southeast Asia. It’s northern part defines
the landscape of the India-China-Myanmar triangle. Security cooperation with
Myanmar to counter insurgencies in our Northeast is vital as also the fast tracking
of road and multimodal transportation projects to build connectivity between
this region of India (where literally, southeastAsia begins) and the ASEAN
world. Anti Rohingya violence in Myanmar has had it’s reverberations in India,
and bears close monitoring.
Our peninsular neighbourhood
Sri Lanka is figuratively, a heartbeat
away from where we stand today. This part of southern India has had millennial
ties with northern Sri Lanka, and later in time, with the rest of the island.
Sri Lanka is really a single neighbour country – India is its only near
neighbour. Our memory drive on Sri Lanka must encompass the last thirty years
of our relationship with that nation, in particular. I was a young diplomat
serving in Colombo when the Black July ethnic conflagration took place in Sri
Lanka in July 1983. After that tragedy in which so many innocent Tamil lives
were lost, and property looted, India entered the scene with a view to ensuring
how a mutually acceptable, fair and reasonable dispensation that allowed the
minority Tamils justice, representation and equity within the framework of a
united Sri Lanka could be achieved. The unfolding scenario of ethnic conflict
and civil war spelt disaster for all communities in Sri Lanka, with nobody more
affected than the Tamil population of the North and East.
The repercussions for India in terms
of the assassination of Shri Rajiv Gandhi were tragic. Today, history cannot
afford to repeat itself in Sri Lanka. The end of the civil war is a historic
opportunity for reconciliation and the healing of wounds of a bitter divide
that pitted one Sri Lankan against another. While the final word is yet to be
written, it is in the interest of both of us neighbours, that the pride and
self-esteem, the self-respect of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is not eroded,
that they are treated with magnanimity and that they are able to contribute
their talents, their knowledge, and their effort for the progress of Sri Lanka.
Lakshman Kadirgamar once referred to
the exposed southern flank of India as Sri Lanka and that India would have a
legitimate concern about any foreign presence in Sri Lanka that precludes
India, because of the security implications involved. This is a truism. The
question is often raised in India whether this factor is given sufficient
weight within the Sri Lankan policy calculus. No government in New Delhi will
ignore this central premise and accept any compromise of its security
interests. Both the Indian and Sri Lankan governments need to strike the right
balance in this regard. The relationship both countries share is unique and
unparalleled – the two main ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, Sinhalese and Tamil,
are equally, constituents of a first wave diaspora of Indian origin, the ties
that bind them to India in history, culture, custom, language, religion, and
ethnicity are one of a kind.
In the recent past, India, Sri Lanka
and the Maldives have institutionalized their cooperation on maritime security
issues. This is a constructive development that creates a progressive template
for security in our region. Developments in the Maldives, after the turbulence
seen in the last year have stabilized after the recent Presidential elections,
and the stress by all parties on the need for reconciliation so as to further
development and people’s welfare is welcome. We have fundamental stakes in the
India-Maldives relationship, given the proximity of that nation to our
south-western coastline, multi-faceted people-to-people contacts, our defence
and security interests, and because circumstances and events have shown we are
their partner of “first resort”.
“And there lie dragons..”
No consideration of the situation in
our neighbourhood can ignore the China factor. China is our largest neighbour.
The challenge is to manage our relationship with China despite inherent
complexities and embed it in the matrix of dialogue and diplomacy. The China
factor has quite understandably influenced our security calculus. The factor
not only subsumes bilateral issues but also China’s regional profile and
military capabilities. The dispute over territory, in our lingua franca the
boundary question, is not new to the relationship, having existed now for over
fifty years. Legacies from the past cast shadows on the present and there is
the risk of these obfuscating our vision for the future. The tried and tested
way across the world is to manage these differences so that they do not
escalate, to promote and sustain mechanisms to maintain peace and tranquillity.
Reducing the decibel levels of recrimination aired through media and vectors of
public opinion is necessary so that we do not go down the river of no return.
Much responsibility devolves on us, as governments in India and China, to help
chart an enlightened way through what some scholars call “the cartographies of
national humiliation” which confine us to a sense of what we should feel about
boundaries rather than how we maturely handle the geopolitics that surround
them. India also has much work left to do on strengthening communications,
transport and infrastructure in its border areas, and we need a “mission-mode”
approach to this task. This helps the population in those areas, integrating
them closely with the rest of the country, and also ensures better defence of
our interests.
There are continuing concerns about
the profile of Chinese activities in our neighbourhood. The Sino-Pak equation
is one of them. China’s relationship with Pakistan has an India-related edge
and that edge is not a friendly one. The duality in China’s approach to the Kashmir
issue (one tack for India and another for Pakistan) and the legitimacy it
attaches to doing business, including strategic cooperation, with Pakistan in
Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir does not find favour with us. China’s port and
infrastructure building activity in many neighbouring countries, including
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is another example of the creation of new
security imbalances. On our part, we need to do much more to strengthen our own
coastal security mechanisms, our port infrastructure, and ensure faster
delivery of our developmental cooperation projects with our South Asian
neighbours like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka where the Chinese capacity for speed
in project implementation is constantly cited. The indispensability of good
relations with India given the regional layout of South Asia, and that we
cannot co-exist with divergent definitions of security has to be emphasized.
Looking beyond
“No region impinges on our security
with such immediacy as West Asia”: these were words by our National Security
Adviser, Shivshankar Menon at a seminar in New Delhi earlier this year. This is
a region vital for India, from the point of view of fighting terrorism, the
welfare of the 6.5 million Indians who live there, our energy security and
fighting the scourge of piracy. We have been active in supporting dialogue
processes in the region, whether it is on the Palestinian question, or seeking
a way out of the nuclear conundrum surrounding Iran. We cannot obviously
dictate the pace of change in the region, and the dislocations taking place in
a number of countries but we have spoken out against externally enforced change
while supporting democratic aspirations in these societies. There is
uncertainty about outcomes of these processes and the examples of Libya and
Syria have not been reassuring in the least. The forecasted reduction in
Western dependence on oil from the region is also likely to alter strategic
contours and priorities that have traditionally defined policy approaches
concerning West Asia. We are yet to judge what the shape of things to be will
be. Suffice it to say that we have vital interests tied up here and we wish to
see positive, balanced outcomes.
Water bodies
Turning lastly to the Indian Ocean,
and the larger Asia-Pacific of which the seas that surround us are a part, in
the present era of interdependence, the security and economic prosperity of
nations is vitally linked to the safety and security of sea lines of
communication. We support working together with regional and global partners to
address common threats to maritime security. It has been observed how the
intersecting interests of maritime trading and strategic powers, especially the
United States, China and India “create the glue of an emerging strategic
system”. In the same vein, the mental map of the Asia-Pacific has evolved with
the centre of gravity moving westward to include India. Internationally
accepted rules of conduct and passage must define the security architecture for
the region. The potential for conflict that arises from unsettled maritime
territorial issues is worrisome.
Any aggravation of tensions arising
from unilaterally applied measures seemingly intended to safeguard (contested)
sovereignty can have negative consequences for the region as a whole, impacting
the political, economic and social wellbeing of millions in littoral states, as
also the passage of maritime trade and commerce. This does not mean that India
favours new, divisive alignments to deal with emergent threats in the region.
That is only a recipe for further division. We have to ensure that inclusive
dialogue to deal with outstanding issues is made a top priority when dealing
with nascent tensions and assertive nationalisms.
In the traditional focus on our land
frontiers we have often underweighed our maritime assets – assets which should
make many countries envious. Both the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the
LaccadiveIsland territories (our natural “aircraft carriers”and ideal bases for
maritime surveillance and defence) need to be fitted in more strenuously into
our calculus of strategic planning. We have had access to Trincomalee in Sri
Lanka for some years now both in terms of the Oil storages developed during the
Second World War and also through visits of our naval ships and training programmes
for the SriLankan Navy.
This should never be foregone and we
must pursue the right calibration in our relations with Sri Lanka to ensure
that we maintain and even strengthen this exclusive presence. Similarly our
relations with Indonesia (literally a contiguous neighbor in maritime
terms)must receive far greater focus and attention than they do today.
Indonesia by virtue of it’s moderate Islam, inclusive cultural and religious
traditions and it’s strategic location straddling the Asian landmass is a
country of critical importance for India and the emerging Indian
Ocean-Asia-Pacific scenario. Our relations withVietnam deserve similar
attention. This, together with the relationship with Indonesia, are vital
balancer relationships for India.
And finally..
You may well ask, where this leaves
India. The answer cannot be a facile one. I have tried to elaborate both on the
challenges that surround us, as also the responses crafted to deal with “tough”
situations in our neighbourhood. Differing challenges require a mix of
approaches to address them – a firm and clear strategic calculation that
ensures the uncompromising defence of our security interests, as well as the
pursuit of foreign policy goals that stress dialogue and negotiation to achieve
solutions to long-standing problems, and do not forego the people-centred
dimension that is an essential ingredient of all viable diplomatic
relationships. The situation is not frozen, it acquires new contours and shapes
from year to year, and we must calibrate our responses with firmness and where
required, flexibility. The future has promise, but to embrace it, we must
ensure an objective, clear headed understanding of the present and its
possibilities.
Thank you.
(Ms.Nirupama Rao served as Indian
Foreign secretary and also as envoy to several countries including China,USA
and Sri Lanka)
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