China Ship Row Is Just Another Sign of ‘Mutual Suspicions’

India harbours no such negativity from a historic past, but the Indian strategic community has not forgotten how Colombo had offered a re-fuelling facility to the Pakistan Air Force at the height of the 1971 war, only months after New Delhi had rushed Indian Air Force (IAF) choppers to help tackle the ‘First JVP insurgency’. The mutual suspicions began there but did not end there, as no serious effort was made in this regard.

Indian and western analysts and strategic experts have got an even more recent piece of contemporary Sri Lankan history wrong. It relates to China, yes, and the resultant perception is that the Rajapaksas, during their first innings in office (2005-15), handed over the Hambantota Port to Beijing.

The truth is more complicated. First, the port was not offered to China directly. Instead, it was offered to India, and more than once. Two, the blame, if any, for this should fall not on the Rajapaksas when Mahinda was President during said the period, but on his predecessor and party boss, Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga (CBK), considered the West’s blue-eyed person in Sri Lankan politics at the time.

Truth be told, President Kumaratunga offered the Hambantota project only to India, first. It made political, economic and strategic sense. Even now, 70% of the Colombo Port’s business is centred on south India, whose ports act as feeders to Colombo for international shipping for goods originating or destined for India. The Chandrika government signed an MoU with Chinese firms only after India declined the offer – on sound economic principles that are proving true since.

After Chandrika’s term, President Mahinda Rajapaksa even suspended the China MoU to offer the project to India, all over again. India declined one more time, for the same reasons. That was when China finally got the contract. To blame it on either the Rajapaksas or Sri Lanka as a government would be wrong, as they were possibly ready to make the ‘sacrifices’ that the project entailed, and which have proved true. It is another matter whether China’s cheque-book diplomacy was a debt trap or not.