From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the Times of India podcast. How Congress as a party and as a government have ceded a piece of India piece of Bharat relinquished sovereignty, more importantly, shrunk over India's borders, thereby creating all the problems our Tamil fishermen, brothers and sisters are facing today.
We felt, considering today, that the situation of the fishermen is so much a concern, then it is right for the fishermen themselves and the people of Tamil Nadu to know the truth and the whole truth of this matter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have mentioned the tiny uninhabited island of Kachitivu in a parliamentary speech in August 2023, but it never quite made the headlines it has in the last week.
The furor over the island comes after a Right to Information reply received by the BJP's Tamil Nadu unit chief. The BJP has alleged that the territory was ceded to Sri Lanka
by the Indira Gandhi government. This, according to the BJP, reflects poorly on the Congress nearly 50 years later and on the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu. The tiny island has been uninhabited and is largely visited by Indian fishermen during a festival that is celebrated with their counterparts from Sri Lanka. So what then are the long term impacts of making it sound like Sri Lanka shouldn't have got the island? Sri Lanka for now has said that the issue is an internal Indian issue.
The country's foreign Minister Ali Sabri brushed aside questions and said that there was number question of anyone else claiming the island. In today's episode, we're in conversation with N Satyamurthy, who is a policy analyst and political commentator based in Chennai. He was the director of the Chennai chapter of the Observer Research Foundation and has been a close watcher of ties between India and Sri Lanka as well as India and Maldives.
In today's episode, he explains why the Kachitivo issue won't yield electoral gains for the BJP in Tamil Nadu and won't help India in the long run. We started by asking him about the significance of the island for both India and Sri Lanka.
He explains why India didn't complain about giving control of the island to Sri Lanka. And he also explains how the two nations in a way pioneered a unique agreement before the creation of Unclose or the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which defines boundaries in the sea, a subject of confrontation in regions like the South China Sea presently, What is the significance of Kachativu 2, even Tamil Nadu, and what is its significance between the two nations at all,
if any? Basically Kachatibo as you all of us would know by now is a small islet between India and Sri Lanka. At one point both countries they claim to get citing by old records and documents that 1974 agreement and 76 agreement do not contain the word seed as it is being made out. That was about six or seven years before the Unclass 1982 was came into force and at that time India and Sri Lanka drew their IMBL.
That is International Maritime borderline in a way that Kachatibi fell on the Sri Lankan side. There were very many technical reasons and justification for that. One. Kachatibu is 11 nautical miles from Depth Island, the last inhabited island in Sri Lanka, and 14 nautical miles from Rameswara. So even if the Median line is drawn between the two countries in a way unclose defined it later Kachatibu would still fall within the Sri Lankan territory.
As already former foreign secretaries have said there was a gentleman's agreement So to say to swap Kachativa was Watch Bank. WADGE Watch Bank is a 10,000 square kilometer water area beyond the Kanyakumari where ceiling and fishermen were allow were fishing. There was an arrangement for India to take over Watch Bank, possibly in return for Kachati. There is nothing written there. If you go into the 74 agreements, it does not say seed, it does not say swap or anything closer to that.
All that it says is to give latitudes and longitudes of the IFBL. If you want to talk about the diplomats, they were very careful not to get into a kind of controversy that is being whipped up today. Incidentally, Bach bank has hydrocarbon reserves and maybe last year the Government of India has notified the proposal to allocate 3 blocks for gas and oil exploration. Now anyone with some sense will understand what was the importance what bank had for Indian negotiators at that time.
I am given to understand that Indian experts knew there was likelihood of hydrocarbon fines in the watch bat. So you'd basically, I mean you'd basically say that it wasn't like a bad deal or anything. It was basically two countries just agreeing to sort of set differences aside over issues that stood between them. Precisely. See, let us look at the world at that time and India at that
time. One. We have lost the China for three years earlier, right since 1956 when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal. There was the uproar in the international community on the simple question that waterways like that should they be allowed to be the sovereign property of individual nations or not. This Pak strikes that connects or divides India and Sri Lanka. Through this agreement we have kept it two of us. It never became an international waterway.
At that time we had concerns about the US in the Cold War era. Today we have concerns about China. That will not happen. Yes, you can always say US had was friends of Sri Lanka at that time. China is a friend of Sri Lanka. These things we have to workout with our diapers. With regard to Kachitivu, you have a situation where the central government at one point said it wasn't going to go to Sri Lanka with the matter. It has told the Supreme Court that it cannot get back the island.
And you've also written that this issue itself is a dead one in the state of Tamil Nadu. Why do you say that it won't be an issue in Tamil Nadu, despite the fact that there's so much sound and fury about it? Sound and food is mostly in the North Indian media and it is reflected here for 30 years now. Since the age of again Chief Minister in 1991, she has been hurling this charges particularly against the DMK rival the late M Karnanidhi as Chief minister.
Even now Edappadi Palanisami, former Chief Minister, he is doing the same to Karnadi son and President, Chief Minister, Stalin. Still, they also included the Congress whenever Congress and DMK were allies. But the problem here is because it has been beaten about so much, it is not an election issue. And Satyamurthy says that even at the height of the civil war in Sri Lanka, the island was not an issue that reaped political
dividends in the state. At the height of the NTTA war in Sri Lanka, Mr. Baiko, who was seen as a spokesman and public face of LTTA or the Tamil issues in Tamil Nadu, contested the Det Vidhinagar Lok Sabha seat in southern Tamil Nadu with the support of ADMK. Under Jayalalitha, he lost his seat by 50,000 plus votes. So it was not an election issue here. Even then, at the height of the ethnic issue tended down the line, Pramagaran was killed
then. You can imagine the tension that prevailed here in 2014. The late Sushma Swaraj, before she got elected, was in Tamil Nadu lodging a similar campaign on the larger Tamil Fisher's issue. She even entered the seats in Rameshuram, lodging what she called Kadal Tamari or Sea Lotus campaign. The BJP did not win any seats here. I mean BJP allies because of this issue. Of course Mr. Pundrada Krishanmunda Kanyakumari seat because of the parties inherent strength and hits own candidacy.
So even now, it is not an election issue. N Satyamurthy says there is a genuine issue of fishermen in Tamil Nadu being caught for trespassing into Sri Lankan waters. Fishermen in India say Sri Lanka has over 150 boats that it's seized over the past eight years. Fishermen also face arrest if they strain to Sri Lankan waters. N Satyamurthy says these are not the issues the BJP is attempting to talk about when it talks about kachitivu.
But the larger Fisher's issue is of considerable interest and concern in Tamil Nadu, the whole of Tamil Nadu and particularly to Rameshwaram and Ramanathapuram Lok Sabha seat where Rameshwaram forms. These are two different issue. Let us not try to bring in Kachatibi into the fishermen issue for the simple reason. The fishermen locally know there is no fish in Kachatiwi to be fished anymore. It may look different from Delhi political Delhi in particular,
right? That is not the case there, the Prime Minister or Mushar Namalaya or other central leaders. They are not talking about the fishing right of fishermen. They are only repeatedly targeting the Congress political rival and DMK in Tamil Nadu AS who gave away Kachatiwa. That is not an issue here. In this case, like you said, it's more of a campaign issue, but and India hasn't really said anything to Sri Lanka about it, but how do you view something like this even being said on the
campaign trail? Does it put a strain on a country that we don't really have any problem with at present? It has strained our relationship, full stop. We seem to think there is election only in India. Presidential elections are due in Sri Lanka by October and the presence is authorized to dissolve Parliament anytime now. And anyway, Parliament elections are due before August next year. I'm talking about two major elections, Presidential and the Parliament.
So we can't say there is a it is a cabin issue only here even without it despite what we have that we have helped Sri Lanka in a very big way during economic crisis. There are those who have been campaigning already even then even now may be because of the economic crisis they were keeping their mouths shut because they also did not. They were shocked for words. But today the situation
different. Even in the last six months, three months or so, there has been a huge anti India campaign coming up. Some of the big Indian industries associated or identified with the government leadership are investing big time there. And there is a campaign going on on specific issues like the ecological issue there, political issue there.
Last year when the President Ranil Vikram Singha visited Delhi and signed a series of agreement in the presence of Prime Minister Modi, One of them was energy cooperation. All of those things were there. But last month I think official delegation, not even a ministerial delegation, a middle level official delegation visited Kilombo for furthering their discussions in the matter that across southern Sri Lanka that is singular area which is a majority area.
Ball posters and India ball posters appeared overnight. It is one question who is began date, who was funding it and all those questions doesn't matter. But that sentiment was there. North Satyamurthy points to the fact that there are former Sri Lankan ministers who have support in Sinhala areas and have been accusing India of making investments only to
dominate the industry there. He says even when it comes to fishermen, the two nations are at loggerheads and a recent document moved by a minister indicates the sentiment in the country against India. There are political leaders, former ministers who are even now present with some kind of a limited electoral presence in the CIGLA areas who have openly said India interested money only to subdivas sector by sector, industry by industry. So these are our political
issues. And remember in the Tamil areas also fishing is a huge problem. They are not saying that they want to share for livelihood issue is common to both them and Indians. They don't want us. Last month again. Their Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda at Tamil has moved what is called the position paper in the cabinet for creating a simple defense force of Tamil fishers to protect themselves against the Tamil fishermen from India. You can understand what it is
intent to do or it will mean. In the mid seas they are possibly replacing the Sri Lanka Navy with this Civil Defence Force which will have legitimacy. Of course, it has not been taken up by the Cabinet, nor has it been converted into an organization or outfit or whatever, but that is the mood in Sri Lanka. The big worry for India, at least earlier before the economic crisis, was that China was too close to Sri Lanka.
Does this sort of sentiment then push Sri Lanka back towards China because they just see it as a more convenient relationship? So I wouldn't say that for simple reason. There are India friendly leaders, India friendly people, China friendly leaders, China friendly people. The balance of convenience, I mean logistics and other things. The majority of them are India friendly. We have to work overtime to ensure that they don't suspect India.
They don't convert to being neutral first and through China later because they suspect India. This is an extreme necessity for India for us to maintain that relationship. India Today is not what India was 70 years back when Kachetriba agreement was signed. Today India is strong and says it is strong and the world believes it is strong. We have to need with with our neighbours through bilateral prism and not through hyphenate
a relationship. China Maldev, China, Sri Lanka, China, Nepal and other thing just don't work In the post Cold War era, sovereignty of individual nations count more than earlier. That is one of the reasons why we are in a multipolar world and there is no bipolar world as during the Cold War. In this circumstances, this government started with the neighbourhood first policy announcement, which was always there.
No one gave it a name and title. So it is incumbent upon this government even more and even future governments to raise about all these things and behave like a elder brother and not a Big Brother in the eyes of our neighbors. We have to remember only one thing that just as we are watching China or US or China and US earlier, US and Soviet Union, all our neighbors are small and their preoccupation is watching India for good, bad and ugly.
So not many people in this country aware of that, and those who are aware of it don't understand the dynamics of it. Then how do you view India then making these statements about its neighbours? And it's not even India making these statements. It's more a sort of a social media campaign or something like that, which are internal campaigns that seem to drum up political support here in some way. How do you view that, given that its target, in a sense, is a country in the neighbourhood?
See if you are referring to Boycott Maldives campaign in the recent past to say take only an example, it was a disastrous campaign. He has three deputy ministers in that government which was already perceived by as anti India by the Indian media from as far as I can see from in the Maldivian newspapers and even Indian official frustratements.
Yes there is a strain, visible strain but they are trying to working over it or around it. But the Indian media bent all out social media even worse just because three ministers had a comment to make against India or even the Indian Prime Minister which was defamatory. Of course there are official channels to take it up with the government there. If you look at the even Maldives or Srinagar, other than editorial news and all that, social media is the the
Maldivian said. For instance, only the president speaks, no minister speaks out in India. That kind of a situation should arise here. Yes, there are differences, may be some of it need to be aired but not in the social media. The minute someone in Delhi understood that this has not gone down well or the way it might have been perceived, the social media campaign against boycott Maldives, it stopped all of a sudden.
Who was holding the key? That question arose in Maldives, the sheets of Maldives. They haven't stopped asking that questions of themselves. Do we do this or we habituated to do this sort of election campaigns where we say anything we want against anything and anyone and we just expect them to forgive us? Have we done this before or is this a new dynamic that we are also?
For instance, if we take only this has been a political drama in Tamil Nadu. I won't say even drama, something more campaign point or factual or whatever you want to believe. Government of India leaders, if they are. That the Congress that was being attacked, they would rebut it or if even if it is a BJP. For instance, 199899 Vajpayee was the Prime Minister for six years. Even in 2004 the central government was very clear not to commit itself or comment on any
of these things. That will be seen as affecting good neighbourly relations and they should not become anti India. That was an extra care they took at that time. I think that is slipping up or that has slipped up here on this recent months. Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh and Sahil Gupta. For a daily spotlight on people, ideas and stories that matter, subscribe to us. We're available on Ty Plus, Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, and all other platforms of your
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