A file photo of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa. For long, India has resisted calls for forcefully raising human rights issues with the Rajapaksa regime. Photo: Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP

First Published: Thu, Mar 07 2013.

Countries that experience internal upheavals such as insurgency or civil war often return to a normal state when conflict ends. After the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by the Sri Lankan army in 2009, it was expected that this neighbour would enter a phase of democratic consolidation and peace. Events since then have belied this hope. An impending discussion of the human rights situation in that country at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is now turning into a row between Colombo and a number of countries championing human rights. The US, which favours a vote against Sri Lanka, has exhorted India to join it in a negative vote.

It cannot be denied that Sri Lanka has witnessed increasing concentration of power in the hands of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his family members who hold influential positions in the government. Had this been a simple issue of an influential family wielding power, it would not have mattered much, for this phenomenon has been observed in many other countries. But since 2009, a victorious army commander has been jailed—and later released after immense international pressure; a chief justice has been sacked; independent journalists intimidated and so on. The two sets of events cannot be delinked. For long, India has resisted calls for forcefully raising human rights issues with the Rajapaksa regime. This is because India has a healthy suspicion of human rights being a convenient excuse for promoting the political goals of the Great Powers. There are other strong grounds not to press Colombo too hard. There’s a risk that an embittered Sri Lanka may “align” with other countries that are hostile to India. China comes to one’s mind. But this threat may be overstated and in any case, Colombo has proved adept at “balancing” Beijing and New Delhi. India’s current position has not yielded the desired results. It is time to take a hard look at it.

Under normal circumstances, any country’s foreign policy choices are well-articulated and do not vary from government to government. But at the moment, Sri Lanka is not in a “normal” situation. The events described above show an extreme degree of centralization of power in a democracy. This is unusual even for a country with a unitary constitution as Sri Lanka. The invariance of foreign policy across different governments may not hold true in this case.

This is not an argument for India to meddle in the affairs of that country but for it to convey its unhappiness at the active disregard of its interests there.