The political debate over the Katchatheevu island in the Palk Strait is domestic politics trumping foreign policy. The peaceful ceding of a 285-acre uninhabited island in 1974 resulted from the demarcation of the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) between India and Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon).
The “median line” principle was applied as per customary international law or as laid down in various Geneva conventions on the subject. In 1982 all these principles were collated in the UN Convention on the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS) and accepted almost universally. There are exceptions like the United States, but India is a signatory. India in fact has been urging China to accept these laws to counter China’s unilateral claims in the South China Sea. The Philippines took the matter to the International Court of Justice and obtained an order negating Chinese claims.
Therefore today it is not simply a case of India abandoning some bilateral agreement with a neighbour. The “median line” principle, which UNCLOS endorses, was used to determine the line dividing the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. Katchatheevu fell on the Sri Lankan side of that line. The demarcation of India’s southern maritime boundary also involved Maldives. In a trilateral understanding India got control of the Wadge Bank, to the southwest of the Palk Strait. With every island that a nation gains sovereignty over it gets control over the surrounding maritime zone and seabed, as per UNCLOS.
It is therefore baffling why a seasoned diplomat like the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar could not dissuade his government from a shortsighted ploy that may get BJP marginal or no gain in the election to Tamil Nadu’s Parliament seats. The controversy was originally raked up by the then newly elected chief minister of Tamil Nadu, J Jayalalithaa, in 2011 by filing a petition in the Supreme Court. The issue had assumed a political dimension in that state due to Sri Lanka’s aggressive naval patrolling in the Palk Strait because of the Tamil insurgency, which collapsed after the death of LTTE supremo V Prabhakaran in May 2009. The 1974 agreement talks of continued free access to Indian fishermen to the island, but is silent on fishing rights.
Katchatheevu is uninhabited, but has one structure of a Catholic Church of Saint Anthony, the patron-saint of seafarers. Indian and Sri Lankan pilgrims get free access to it during religious festivals. The church was constructed by an Indian devotee. The present union government has chosen to revive the issue with deliberate guile. The aim is to sow differences between the DMK and its smaller allies, which have more strident views on the issue. The diplomatic implications of using Katchatheevu to whip up jingoism generally and Tamil pride locally is unlikely to work. In politics, what worked in 2019 with the Balakot air strike by Indian planes, on a supposed militant training facility in Pakistan, is not easy to re-enact.
The cost of the gambit is easy to decipher. Sri Lanka had realised the price of overdependence on Chinese infrastructure loans. It had rebalanced its relations with India and China to be more evenhanded. Recently it barred Chinese intelligence gathering ships from its ports. By reopening settled maritime territorial issues India will strengthen the pro-China lobby in that nation. India is also sending a signal to all neighbours that any international agreement with the ruling Indian government can be reopened by successor regimes. Already India’s relations with Maldives are testy after a change of presidency.
The Opposition parties quite appropriately countered with two questions. One, why is not the government showing similar concern about disputed areas in eastern Ladakh that the Chinese army has been sitting on since 2020? India has not even acted to restrict import of Chinese goods to create leverage. Two, the government has settled with Bangladesh the outstanding boundary dispute involving enclaves jutting into each other’s territory. Consequently India ceded more acreage, benefiting Bangladesh disproportionately. It is hypocritical to call the Bangladesh border settlement as a diplomatic masterpiece while dubbing a half-century-old agreement with Sri Lanka as surrender.
Unfortunately, this kind of diplomatic flip is hardly unique to India. Former US President Donald Trump was a master at rewriting past accords, including multilateral ones. He pulled the US out of the historic Paris climate change treaty. He also re-negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, in force since 1994. But these actions sprang from his ideological leanings. The Katchatheevu issue has been literally pulled out of the hat. An application to the Information Commission receiving an almost instantaneous reply from the Ministry of External Affairs indicates a preconceived plot. It is doubtful if a minister like Jaswant Singh would have let such a move proceed without intervening strongly with the then prime minister A B Vajpayee. In turn, it is unlikely he would have failed. But these are different times.
KC Singh is former secretary, Ministry of External Affairs
