Features
Coping with geopolitical challenges facing Sri Lanka
“… we find that an armed conflict exists whenever there is resort to armed force between States or protracted armed violence between government authorities and organized groups or between such groups within a State. International humanitarian law applies from the initiation of such armed conflict and extends beyond the cessation of hostilities…. (and) in the case of internal conflicts, a peaceful settlement is achieved”.
by Neville Ladduwahetty
The most recent challenge that Sri Lanka has had to face was associated with UNHRC Resolution A/HRC/46/L.Rev.1. This Resolution was primarily based on the Report of the UN appointed Commissioner for Human Rights. Despite the objections raised the Sri Lankan government on grounds that the Report of the Commissioner violates the mandate granted by General Assembly Resolution 48/141 and that the Resolution itself violates the UN Charter and lacks “impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity”, the Resolution was adopted by the Human Rights Council on March 23, 2021.
The compulsion to go to such extremes and adopt a Resolution violating due process established by the UN, is driven by internal politics within countries that initiated the Resolution and by geopolitical interests of major powers.
Internal political compulsions are driven by the priorities of the Tamil minority concentrations resident in defined electorates in countries such as U.K., Canada, Germany and other European countries. When prospective Members of Parliament in these countries, regardless of which political party they represent, campaign for the votes of the Tamil minorities, they when elected, become the torchbearers for the priorities of the Tamil minorities, because it is their vote that decided whether they are elected or not. Consequently, since accountability for issues arising from the non-international armed conflict in Sri Lanka is the single-minded focus of the Tamil minorities, accountability has become a government policy for elected governments in these countries.
On the other hand, geopolitical compulsions are driven by a coalition of democracies forging security alliances such as the Quad, headed by the U.S. to contain China’s global expansion in the South China Sea founded on the Chinese claim of nine-dash line and its inroads into the Indian Ocean Rim countries in pursuit of their Belt and Road Initiative. These developments have energized the U.S. to adopt the policy of “Pivot to Asia” through the stated policy of forging a new Indo-Pacific Maritime Order.; a policy that is being relentlessly pursued by the U.S. in the form of forging alliances. the latest being the Maldives and the consequent isolation of Sri Lanka in this part of the Indian Ocean.
ADDRESSING INTERNAL COMPULSIONS
Internal compulsions are driven by the call to address accountability arising from issues relating to the non-international armed conflict within the time frame of signing the Ceasefire Agreement on February 22, 2002 and May 19, 2009 when the conflict ended. Having established the time frame, the next step is to establish the context in which to address accountability. In this regard, a context that would be acceptability to all concerned should be those established by the Panel of Experts appointed by the UN Secretary General, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and by the Appeal Court of the International Tribunal of former Yugoslavia.
The UN appointed Panel of Experts in their report stated: “There is no doubt that an internal armed conflict was being waged in Sri Lanka with the requisite intensity during the period that the Panel examined. As a result, international humanitarian law is the law against which to measure the conduct of both government and the LTTE”.
The Report of Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Sri Lanka (OISL) states: “Paragraph 182 of The OHCHR report states: “Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions relating to conflict not of an international character is applicable to the situation in Sri Lanka”.
Paragraph 183 goes on to state: “In addition, the Government and armed groups that are parties to the conflict are bound alike by relevant rules of customary international law applicable to non-international armed conflict”.
FURTHERMORE,
Defining what constitutes an armed conflict, the Appeals Court of the International Tribunal on former Yugoslavia (1995) in the case of Prosecutor v. Dusco Tadic stated: “… we find that an armed conflict exists whenever there is resort to armed force between States or protracted armed violence between government authorities and organized groups or between such groups within a State. International humanitarian law applies from the initiation of such armed conflict and extends beyond the cessation of hostilities…. (and) in the case of internal conflicts, a peaceful settlement is achieved”.
Thus, it could justifiably be concluded that the context in which accountability issues should be addressed is International Humanitarian Law since the conflict in Sri Lanka was a Non-International Armed Conflict and the applicable law is International Humanitarian Law that acknowledges the derogation of Human Rights Law except for a defined few defined as the “hard core” of Human Rights during an officially declared emergency. Since these laws are codified in Additional Protocol II of 1977, issues relating to accountability should be addressed within the context of Additional Protocol II of 1077 that is acknowledged by the community of nations as a part of customary law.
Therefore, the task at hand is to evaluate any and all evidence of any violations of International Humanitarian Law as stated in the OISL Report, in the context of provisions in Additional Protocol II of 1977, subject to derogation of International Human Rights Law that is recognized by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and by Article 15 (7) and (8) of the Constitution during a declared emergency. In this regard, Paragraph 175 of the OISL Report states: “OISL notes that Sri Lanka has submitted a Declaration of a State of emergency dated 30 My 2000, derogating from articles 9 (2), 9 (3), 12 (1), 12 (2), 14 (3), 17 (1), 19 (2), 21 and 22 of the ICCPR. Measures taken pursuant to derogation are lawful to the extent they comply with the conditions set out in international human rights law…”.
In explaining the relationship between international human rights law and international humanitarian law during armed conflict, the International Court of Justice has stated: “…. the Court considers that the protection offered by human rights conventions does not cease in case of armed conflict, save through the effect of provisions for derogation of the kind to be found in article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. As regards the relationship between international humanitarian law and human rights law, there are thus three possible situations: some rights may be exclusively matters of international humanitarian law; others may be exclusively matters of human rights law; yet others may be matters of both these branches of international law” (Applicable International Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Framework – UN).
Considering the material presented above, it is recommended that a document should be prepared on the basis of principles of Distinction, Proportionality and Military Necessity on which is founded International Humanitarian Law an embodied in Additional Protocol II of 1977 that addresses any alleged violations stated in the OISL Report by a group nominated by the Ministry of Foreign Relations. Such a document should include material proposed by the international experts appointed by the Paranagama Commission together with material from Lord Naseby, as well as any other related material for distribution to all countries, in order to convey to them a perspective that thus far has not being presented at repeated sessions of the UN Human Rights Council and other International forums.
The mandate of the three Member Commission of Inquiry appointed by the President as part of the Domestic Mechanism to address accountability states: (a) “Find out whether preceding Commissions of Inquiry and Committees which have been appointed to investigate into human rights violations, have revealed any human rights violations, serious violations of the international humanitarian law and other such offences”. Since the mandate does not specify the criteria and the time frame that should be used to distinguish human rights violations from humanitarian law violations, it would be up to Commission to decide how to distinguish between the two types of violations bearing in mind that the two types of law are applicable over different time frames.
UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION
The UNHRC 46/1 Resolution calls for the Office of the High Commissioner “to collect, consolidate, analyse and preserve information and evidence…to advocate for victims and survivors, and to support relevant judicial and other proceedings, including in Member States, with competent jurisdiction” (Paragraph 6). In short the evidence is gathered at a cost of US $ 2.8 Million to facilitate Member States to exercise universal jurisdiction. Thus far, universal jurisdiction has been exercised in regard to violations that come within the framework of a “Grave Breaches” regime that have occurred during certain internal conflicts that were governed by International Human Rights Law. However, in the case of Sri Lanka the conflict is categorized as a non-international armed conflict that is governed by International Humanitarian Law. Therefore, while the international community has accepted universal jurisdiction in the case of international armed conflicts along with Protocol I, the jury is still out as to whether it applies to non-international conflicts as in Sri Lanka as expressed by the ICRC comment cited below made to the General Assembly.
A document that addresses accountability from a Sri Lankan perspective would stand in good stead in the event a country or countries attempt to exercise universal jurisdiction relating to issues arising from the armed conflict. However, since the conflict in Sri Lanka was a non-international armed conflict the application of universal jurisdiction is fraught with fundamental issues as is evidenced by the statement of the ICRC to the UN General Assembly at its 71st session Sixth Committee, when it stated: “The updated commentaries also address other fundamental issues, such as the time frame for fulfilling the obligation to investigate alleged grave breaches and either prosecute or extradite those responsible; the challenges encountered by States when implementing universal jurisdiction; the state of international law today with regard to the potential immunities from jurisdiction and prosecution for alleged perpetrators of serious violations of IHL; and the possible applicability of the grave breaches regime to serious violations of IHL in non-international armed conflict” (emphasis added).
ADDRESSING GEOPOLITICAL COMPULSIONS
The strategic position of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean has been increasingly coming into focus with the conclusion of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka. This, together with China’s policy to pursue its expansion founded on its Belt and Road Initiative has increased the focus on Sri Lanka. The need for the U.S. to contain China’s expansion in the South China Sea and in the Indian Ocean Rim countries has prompted the U.S. and its allies to build alliances such as the Quad that include India, Japan and Australia. India’s inclusion in the Quad was a recent development and an even more recent development was the Maldives entering into security related agreements with the U.S. and India.
This has isolated Sri Lanka. With the Quad attempting to extend its influence to countries East of the Malacca Straits, Sri Lanka’s isolation would be even greater. However, Sri Lanka would not be facing such isolation had it succumbed to U.S. pressures and signed the MCC Compact and SOFA after having signed ACSA. Although Sri Lanka managed to emerge ostensibly unscathed by not caving into U.S. pressure, its repercussions were experienced in Geneva. However, for all intents and purposes, the perceived isolation of Sri Lanka in the current context is bound to be taken advantage of by China to build even stronger bonds than those existing today. This is inevitable since China’s foot print is already well established in the Colombo Port City, the Colombo International Container Terminal and the harbour at Hambantota for the next 35 to 99 years.
It is most likely that the U.S., India and the rest of the Quad are going to extract a heavy price for the presence of China to the extent it has. This compels Sri Lanka to make hard choices similar to the ones that countries East of the Malacca Straits would have to face in the coming years. As for Sri Lanka, it cannot afford to offer planned infrastructure projects such as the West Container Terminal to India/Japan in the hope of appeasing one or more members to the Quad to balance the influence of China. This would amount dividing national projects between the Quad and China.
The way out for Sri Lanka to prepare the tender documents and call for open international bids in a transparent manner, and award the contract to the successful bidder regardless of geopolitical considerations. For instance, the solar power project in the three islands off the Jaffna peninsula should be awarded to China because China was chosen by the ADB as the successful bidder after addressing the security concerns of India, but Sri Lanka certainly need not abandon the project because of India’s concerns.
Since Sri Lanka’s stated Foreign Policy is Neutrality; and Non-Alignment, entertaining unsolicited bids for projects would amount to violating that policy. How Sri Lanka could live up to the promise of its stated policy and engage with all countries is to be open and transparent in the manner it implements its planned developments.
CONCLUSION
The challenges facing Sri Lanka, apart from the effects of COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the economy and the livelihood of the people are primarily from two sources. One is from internal pressures from the Tamil concentrations in defined electorates in countries such as U.K., Canada, Germany and other European countries that determine who gets elected to their respective Parliaments. Consequently, to these politicians the cause of their Tamil concentrations relating to accountability has become a policy for these governments. The second challenge is from geopolitical rivalries between major powers and others aspiring to be major powers attempting to control the Indo-Pacific Oceans. It was the role of the Oceans in maintaining the super power status of the U.S. that made US Navy Admiral Mahan to recommend to President Roosevelt the importance of oceans, especially the Pacific, to the U.S. The Indian Maritime Doctrine-2004 is based on this U. S. concept (Khan, May 23, 2010). The rivalry arose when China’s claims in the South China Seas and the concept of Belt and Road Initiative announced in 2013 were superimposed on the U.S. formulations.
The impact of these developments was the emergence of the Quad security alliance headed by the U.S. involving Japan and Australia and recently India, and even more recently the Maldives. The Quad started out as a humanitarian exercise to address the disaster following the 2004 tsunami. The transformation into a security alliance was to be expected in the wake of China’s claims. However, the impact of all these developments is to isolate Sri Lanka. What is recommended is a strategy for Sri Lanka to meet the challenges arising from the geopolitical rivalries in the Indo-Pacific.
The two recommendations presented above to overcome these challenges are: 1. To prepare a comprehensive document as suggested above that addresses the Internationally recognized Humanitarian Law violations as alleged by the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the OISL Report, in the context of Additional protocol II of 1977, and circulate and canvass through Sri Lanka’s Missions, all the Member States of the UN, in order to convey Sri Lanka’s perspective that hitherto has not been presented to the Human Rights Council or to any other international forum. 2. In keeping with Sri Lanka’s declared Foreign Policy of Neutrality and Non-Alignment, follow due process in the award of contracts relating to infrastructure projects by not entertaining unsolicited proposals from any quarter and call for international bids based on tender documents prepared in Sri Lanka independently or with external collaboration when necessary, without assigning them to designated entities based on geopolitical compulsions; an example being the West Container Terminal.
These recommendations are presented with a view to ensuring that Sri Lanka retains its independence, its sovereignty, its territorial integrity and develop as a free Nation State.
In one of India’s coldest and most remote regions, a group of women have taken on an unlikely role: protecting one of Asia’s most elusive predators, the snow leopard.
Snow leopards are found in just 12 countries across Central and South Asia. India is home to one of the world’s largest populations, with a nationwide survey in 2023 – the first comprehensive count ever carried out in the country – estimating more than 700 animals, .
One of the places they roam is around Kibber village in Himachal Pradesh state’s Spiti Valley, a stark, high-altitude cold desert along the Himalayan belt. Here, snow leopards are often called the “ghosts of the mountains”, slipping silently across rocky slopes and rarely revealing themselves.
For generations, the animals were seen largely as a threat, for attacking livestock. But attitudes in Kibber and neighbouring villages are beginning to shift, as people increasingly recognise the snow leopard’s role as a top predator in the food chain and its importance in maintaining the region’s fragile mountain ecosystem.
Nearly a dozen local women are now working alongside the Himachal Pradesh forest department and conservationists to track and protect the species, playing a growing role in conservation efforts.
Locally, the snow leopard is known as Shen and the women call their group “Shenmo”. Trained to install and monitor camera traps, they handle devices fitted with unique IDs and memory cards that automatically photograph snow leopards as they pass.
“Earlier, men used to go and install the cameras and we kept wondering why couldn’t we do it too,” says Lobzang Yangchen, a local coordinator working with a small group supported by the non-profit Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) in collaboration with the forest department.
Yangchen was among the women who helped collect data for Himachal Pradesh’s snow leopard survey in 2024, which found that the state was home to 83 snow leopards – up from 51 in 2021.
The survey documented snow leopards and 43 other species using camera traps spread across an area of nearly 26,000sq km (10,000sq miles). Individual leopards were identified by the unique rosette patterns on their fur, a standard technique used for spotted big cats. The findings are now feeding into wider conservation and habitat-management plans.
“Their contribution was critical to identifying individual animals,” says Goldy Chhabra, deputy conservator of forests with the Spiti Wildlife Division.
Collecting the data is demanding work. Most of it takes place in winter, when heavy snowfall pushes snow leopards and their prey to lower altitudes, making their routes easier to track.
On survey days, the women wake up early, finish household chores and gather at a base camp before travelling by vehicle as far as the terrain allows. From there, they trek several kilometres to reach camera sites, often at altitudes above 14,000ft (4,300m), where the thin air makes even simple movement exhausting.
The BBC accompanied the group on one such trek in December. After hours of walking in biting cold, the women suddenly stopped on a narrow trail.
Yangchen points to pugmarks in the dust: “This shows the snow leopard has been here recently. These pugmarks are fresh.”
Along with pugmarks, the team looks for other signs, including scrapes and scent‑marking spots, before carefully fixing a camera to a rock along the trail.
One woman then carries out a “walk test”, crawling along the path to check whether the camera’s height and angle will capture a clear image.
The group then moves on to older sites, retrieving memory cards and replacing batteries installed weeks earlier.
By mid-afternoon, they return to camp to log and analyse the images using specialised software – tools many had never encountered before.
“I studied only until grade five,” says Chhering Lanzom. “At first, I was scared to use the computer. But slowly, we learned how to use the keyboard and mouse.”
The women joined the camera-trapping programme in 2023. Initially, conservation was not their motivation. But winters in the Spiti Valley are long and quiet, with little agricultural work to fall back on.
“At first, this work on snow leopards didn’t interest us,” Lobzang says. “We joined because we were curious and we could earn a small income.”
The women earn between 500 ($5.46; £4) and 700 rupees a day.
But beyond the money, the work has helped transform how the community views the animal.
“Earlier, we thought the snow leopard was our enemy,” says Dolma Zangmo, a local resident. “Now we think their conservation is important.”
Alongside survey work, the women help villagers access government insurance schemes for their livestock and promote the use of predator‑proof corrals – stone or mesh enclosures that protect animals at night.
Their efforts come at a time of growing recognition for the region. Spiti Valley has recently been included in the Cold Desert Biosphere Reserve, a Unesco-recognised network aimed at conserving fragile ecosystems while supporting local livelihoods.
As climate change reshapes the fragile trans-Himalayan landscape, conservationists say such community participation will be crucial to safeguarding species like the snow leopard.
“Once communities are involved, conservation becomes more sustainable,” says Deepshikha Sharma, programme manager with NCF’s High Altitudes initiative.
“These women are not just assisting, they are becoming practitioners of wildlife conservation and monitoring,” she adds.
As for the women, their work makes them feel closer to their home, the village and the mountains that raised them, they say.
“We were born here, this is all we know,” Lobzang says. “Sometimes we feel afraid because these snow leopards are after all predatory animals, but this is where we belong.”
[BBC]
If elephants are truly to be given “freedom” in Udawalawe, the solution is not simply to open gates or redraw park boundaries. The map itself tells the real story — a story of shrinking habitats, broken corridors, and more than a decade of silent but relentless ecological destruction.
“Look at Udawalawe today and compare it with satellite maps from ten years ago,” says Sameera Weerathunga, one of Sri Lanka’s most consistent and vocal elephant conservation activists. “You don’t need complicated science. You can literally see what we have done to them.”
What we commonly describe as the human–elephant conflict (HEC) is, in reality, a land-use conflict driven by development policies that ignore ecological realities. Elephants are not invading villages; villages, farms, highways and megaprojects have steadily invaded elephant landscapes.
Udawalawe: From Landscape to Island
Udawalawe National Park was once part of a vast ecological network connecting the southern dry zone to the central highlands and eastern forests. Elephants moved freely between Udawalawe, Lunugamvehera, Bundala, Gal Oya and even parts of the Walawe river basin, following seasonal water and food availability.
Today, Udawalawe appears on the map as a shrinking green island surrounded by human settlements, monoculture plantations, reservoirs, electric fences and asphalt.
“For elephants, Udawalawe is like a prison surrounded by invisible walls,” Sameera explains. “We expect animals that evolved to roam hundreds of square nationakilometres to survive inside a box created by humans.”
Elephants are ecosystem engineers. They shape forests by dispersing seeds, opening pathways, and regulating vegetation. Their survival depends on movement — not containment. But in Udawalawa, movement is precisely what has been taken away.
Over the past decade, ancient elephant corridors have been blocked or erased by:
Irrigation and agricultural expansion
Tourism resorts and safari infrastructure
New roads, highways and power lines
Human settlements inside former forest reserves
Sameera
“The destruction didn’t happen overnight,” Sameera says. “It happened project by project, fence by fence, without anyone looking at the cumulative impact.”
The Illusion of Protection
Sri Lanka prides itself on its protected area network. Yet most national parks function as ecological islands rather than connected systems.
“We think declaring land as a ‘national park’ is enough,” Sameera argues. “But protection without connectivity is just slow extinction.”
Udawalawe currently holds far more elephants than it can sustainably support. The result is habitat degradation inside the park, increased competition for resources, and escalating conflict along the boundaries.
“When elephants cannot move naturally, they turn to crops, tanks and villages,” Sameera says. “And then we blame the elephant for being a problem.”
The Other Side of the Map: Wanni and Hambantota
Sameera often points to the irony visible on the very same map. While elephants are squeezed into overcrowded parks in the south, large landscapes remain in the Wanni, parts of Hambantota and the eastern dry zone where elephant density is naturally lower and ecological space still exists.
“We keep talking about Udawalawe as if it’s the only place elephants exist,” he says. “But the real question is why we are not restoring and reconnecting landscapes elsewhere.”
The Hambantota MER (Managed Elephant Reserve), for instance, was originally designed as a landscape-level solution. The idea was not to trap elephants inside fences, but to manage land use so that people and elephants could coexist through zoning, seasonal access, and corridor protection.
“But what happened?” Sameera asks. “Instead of managing land, we managed elephants. We translocated them, fenced them, chased them, tranquilised them. And the conflict only got worse.”
The Failure of Translocation
For decades, Sri Lanka relied heavily on elephant translocation as a conflict management tool. Hundreds of elephants were captured from conflict zones and released into national parks like Udawalawa, Yala and Wilpattu.
Elephant deaths
The logic was simple: remove the elephant, remove the problem.
The reality was tragic.
“Most translocated elephants try to return home,” Sameera explains. “They walk hundreds of kilometres, crossing highways, railway lines and villages. Many die from exhaustion, accidents or gunshots. Others become even more aggressive.”
Scientific studies now confirm what conservationists warned from the beginning: translocation increases stress, mortality, and conflict. Displaced elephants often lose social structures, familiar landscapes, and access to traditional water sources.
“You cannot solve a spatial problem with a transport solution,” Sameera says bluntly.
In many cases, the same elephant is captured and moved multiple times — a process that only deepens trauma and behavioural change.
Freedom Is Not About Removing Fences
The popular slogan “give elephants freedom” has become emotionally powerful but scientifically misleading. Elephants do not need symbolic freedom; they need functional landscapes.
Real solutions lie in:
Restoring elephant corridors
Preventing development in key migratory routes
Creating buffer zones with elephant-friendly crops
Community-based land-use planning
Landscape-level conservation instead of park-based thinking
“We must stop treating national parks like wildlife prisons and villages like war zones,” Sameera insists. “The real battlefield is land policy.”
Electric fences, for instance, are often promoted as a solution. But fences merely shift conflict from one village to another.
“A fence does not create peace,” Sameera says. “It just moves the problem down the line.”
A Crisis Created by Humans
Sri Lanka loses more than 400 elephants and nearly 100 humans every year due to HEC — one of the highest rates globally.
Yet Sameera refuses to call it a wildlife problem.
“This is a human-created crisis,” he says. “Elephants are only responding to what we’ve done to their world.”
From expressways cutting through forests to solar farms replacing scrublands, development continues without ecological memory or long-term planning.
“We plan five-year political cycles,” Sameera notes. “Elephants plan in centuries.”
The tragedy is not just ecological. It is moral.
“We are destroying a species that is central to our culture, religion, tourism and identity,” Sameera says. “And then we act surprised when they fight back.”
The Question We Avoid Asking
If Udawalawe is overcrowded, if Yala is saturated, if Wilpattu is bursting — then the real question is not where to put elephants.
The real question is: Where have we left space for wildness in Sri Lanka?
Sameera believes the future lies not in more fences or more parks, but in reimagining land itself.
“Conservation cannot survive as an island inside a development ocean,” he says. “Either we redesign Sri Lanka to include elephants, or one day we’ll only see them in logos, statues and children’s books.”
And the map will show nothing but empty green patches — places where giants once walked, and humans chose. roads instead.
By Ifham Nizam
SAARC or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has been declared ‘dead’ by some sections in South Asia and the idea seems to be catching on. Over the years the evidence seems to have been building that this is so, but a matter that requires thorough probing is whether the media in South Asia, given the vital part it could play in fostering regional amity, has had a role too in bringing about SAARC’s apparent demise.
That South Asian governments have had a hand in the ‘SAARC debacle’ is plain to see. For example, it is beyond doubt that the India-Pakistan rivalry has invariably got in the way, particularly over the past 15 years or thereabouts, of the Indian and Pakistani governments sitting at the negotiating table and in a spirit of reconciliation resolving the vexatious issues growing out of the SAARC exercise. The inaction had a paralyzing effect on the organization.
Unfortunately the rest of South Asian governments too have not seen it to be in the collective interest of the region to explore ways of jump-starting the SAARC process and sustaining it. That is, a lack of statesmanship on the part of the SAARC Eight is clearly in evidence. Narrow national interests have been allowed to hijack and derail the cooperative process that ought to be at the heart of the SAARC initiative.
However, a dimension that has hitherto gone comparatively unaddressed is the largely negative role sections of the media in the SAARC region could play in debilitating regional cooperation and amity. We had some thought-provoking ‘takes’ on this question recently from Roman Gautam, the editor of ‘Himal Southasian’.
Gautam was delivering the third of talks on February 2nd in the RCSS Strategic Dialogue Series under the aegis of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, at the latter’s conference hall. The forum was ably presided over by RCSS Executive Director and Ambassador (Retd.) Ravinatha Aryasinha who, among other things, ensured lively participation on the part of the attendees at the Q&A which followed the main presentation. The talk was titled, ‘Where does the media stand in connecting (or dividing) Southasia?’.
Gautam singled out those sections of the Indian media that are tamely subservient to Indian governments, including those that are professedly independent, for the glaring lack of, among other things, regionalism or collective amity within South Asia. These sections of the media, it was pointed out, pander easily to the narratives framed by the Indian centre on developments in the region and fall easy prey, as it were, to the nationalist forces that are supportive of the latter. Consequently, divisive forces within the region receive a boost which is hugely detrimental to regional cooperation.
Two cases in point, Gautam pointed out, were the recent political upheavals in Nepal and Bangladesh. In each of these cases stray opinions favorable to India voiced by a few participants in the relevant protests were clung on to by sections of the Indian media covering these trouble spots. In the case of Nepal, to consider one example, a young protester’s single comment to the effect that Nepal too needed a firm leader like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seized upon by the Indian media and fed to audiences at home in a sensational, exaggerated fashion. No effort was made by the Indian media to canvass more opinions on this matter or to extensively research the issue.
In the case of Bangladesh, widely held rumours that the Hindus in the country were being hunted and killed, pogrom fashion, and that the crisis was all about this was propagated by the relevant sections of the Indian media. This was a clear pandering to religious extremist sentiment in India. Once again, essentially hearsay stories were given prominence with hardly any effort at understanding what the crisis was really all about. There is no doubt that anti-Muslim sentiment in India would have been further fueled.
Gautam was of the view that, in the main, it is fear of victimization of the relevant sections of the media by the Indian centre and anxiety over financial reprisals and like punitive measures by the latter that prompted the media to frame their narratives in these terms. It is important to keep in mind these ‘structures’ within which the Indian media works, we were told. The issue in other words, is a question of the media completely subjugating themselves to the ruling powers.
Basically, the need for financial survival on the part of the Indian media, it was pointed out, prompted it to subscribe to the prejudices and partialities of the Indian centre. A failure to abide by the official line could spell financial ruin for the media.
A principal question that occurred to this columnist was whether the ‘Indian media’ referred to by Gautam referred to the totality of the Indian media or whether he had in mind some divisive, chauvinistic and narrow-based elements within it. If the latter is the case it would not be fair to generalize one’s comments to cover the entirety of the Indian media. Nevertheless, it is a matter for further research.
However, an overall point made by the speaker that as a result of the above referred to negative media practices South Asian regionalism has suffered badly needs to be taken. Certainly, as matters stand currently, there is a very real information gap about South Asian realities among South Asian publics and harmful media practices account considerably for such ignorance which gets in the way of South Asian cooperation and amity.
Moreover, divisive, chauvinistic media are widespread and active in South Asia. Sri Lanka has a fair share of this species of media and the latter are not doing the country any good, leave alone the region. All in all, the democratic spirit has gone well into decline all over the region.
The above is a huge problem that needs to be managed reflectively by democratic rulers and their allied publics in South Asia and the region’s more enlightened media could play a constructive role in taking up this challenge. The latter need to take the initiative to come together and deliberate on the questions at hand. To succeed in such efforts they do not need the backing of governments. What is of paramount importance is the vision and grit to go the extra mile.
The SSC finally steps out of the sunshine and into the floodlights
SAARC journalists meet in New Delhi
Governor of Gujarat met with Sri Lanka PM to discuss exposition of Devnimori Relics
India chase sixth Under-19 World Cup title, England their first since 1998
Meet the women protecting India’s snow leopards
Louvre Museum crown left crushed but ‘intact’ after raid
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
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