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As President Sahodara Anura Kumara Dissanayake prepares to call on neighbouring India, his first official visit abroad in a few days, he is taking his first step into what could well turn into a foreign quagmire in the coming years, if not months.

As I said last week, it has become traditional now for Sri Lanka’s leaders, including the president and prime minister, to head north and pay respects to the huge, quickly growing economic and military power just a few miles to the north of us.

One might add that not all our leaders paid respects. Some were more than inclined to pay pooja. I suppose some are still living under the influence of Chola and Pandya rule. And some even in the ‘Dixit era’ when Jyotindranath ‘Mani’ Dixit was dictating terms to our high and mighty during his diplomatic tenure here.

The Roman Caesars would have called him a proconsul. I don’t quite know what the UNP ministers of the day called him (one can guess what they said in private), but then we do know somebody who might be able to enlighten us, don’t we?

After all, he still wants President Sahodaraya to implement every deal that Modi and he struck last year, which means plenty of Indian footsteps and chappal marks all over our once-splendid isle.

Some might consider this a joke. But another Adani stamping his presence around our key installations and power lines, or a whole contingent of Modi’s military tanks rolling along a land link graciously proposed and provided by Sri Lanka, is hardly a comic opera.

Those of us who still remember the old days would recall the ‘parippu’ drop over Jaffna by Indian aircraft in the name of humanitarian aid. That generosity was then—those free bags of parippu. Now it is called trade, so we have to buy what is sold as Masoor dhal.

Still later came the paratroop drop, with military aircraft flying in from nearby Indian airfields to land troops in Jaffna, a story I broke early that morning as my friend the army chief tipped me off when the Indian aircraft were still in the air. Some other news agency chap stole it, but that’s another story.

What is intended here is not to recall history. It is to say what could befall our motherland in modern times when we know what we know and at a time when the whole geopolitical and geostrategic scenario has changed—except perhaps one.

That is a simple geographical reality. We are where we are and remain where we are unless and until a big bang blasts this splendid little island elsewhere.

So we have to deal with India carefully and circumspectly. But does that mean Sri Lanka’s foreign policy needs to be subservient to the point we turn into a vassal state?

Pro-China Sri Lankans and some others see Beijing as a counterweight to India and another powerful country that would come to Sri Lanka’s aid in the event that we fall prey to another powerful nation not too far from us and growling as other Indo-Pacific nations expand their presence in the Indian Ocean, which India considers its backyard and sphere of influence.

But the truth is that if ever India becomes even more belligerent than it has been in the past, there is very little that China could do to physically assist our nation other than strong diplomatic support as it has provided at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) or at other international fora to present to the world a bullied nation.

So, Sri Lanka does have an emerging problem that might not seem like an issue now, but it will before long. The NPP government might not consider it a developing bilateral or multilateral problem because it is more concerned with other domestic and international issues, and right now foreign policy has been pushed to the back burner.

These words might all sound simple and lack the finesse and linguistic niceties of high-sounding academic discourse or even rich quotations from the learned. But 22 million people in this country are not enamoured of high-flown rhetoric. They wish to know whether they would be safe from avaricious and voracious neighbours, despite all the talk of “neighbours first,” unless, of course, it means to grab your neighbour first.

The difference between what has gone before in our relations with our enormous and increasingly powerful neighbour has been largely bilateral, including the little islet of Kachchativu, which Prime Minister Modi raked up recently after India had settled the issue 50 years ago.

What lies ahead is much more serious and concerns a third nation—China—with which India is increasingly in contention as Beijing spreads its tentacles and its burgeoning economic and military power in the Indian Ocean and strengthens its relations with littoral states and nations in the African continent.

As the two big powers flex their muscles and missiles more and more, Sri Lanka is caught in the middle of a territorial issue, to which Sri Lanka had laid legitimate claim, as far back as 2009 via official institutions, but India has suddenly determined that this territory in the centre of the Indian Ocean is theirs and is a threat to its national security.

The current issue concerns a seabed territory in the central Indian Ocean named Afanasy Nikitin Seamount, as mentioned last week, which lies 650 miles from Sri Lanka and 840 miles from India and its cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, which are becoming increasingly valuable in today’s technologically fast-spreading world.

Sri Lanka had laid claim to this area as far back as 2009 with the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UN-CLCS). The next year, India showed no objection to Sri Lanka’s claim, but suddenly, 14 years later, in January 2024, it filed an application appealing for the right to engage in seabed exploration in this territory.

Colombo’s appeal in turn asked that the Indian application be held back until the Sri Lanka appeal is first settled.

While India’s sudden interest in this part of the ocean might seem genuine in terms of national interest, the real interest seems to be to stall China from exploring the named seabed and its increased presence in this part of the ocean and deny it open passage, so to say.

It might be recalled that two years ago India raised strong objections to Sri Lanka permitting a Chinese research ship, which some in India called a spy ship, to dock in our waters. Caught in this diplomatic tussle between two nations that were close friends of Sri Lanka, the then Colombo government imposed a moratorium this January on foreign military and research ships docking in our ports and entering our waters.

That moratorium ends in January 2025. It would come as no surprise if the Afanasy Nikitin comes up, even in passing, when President Dissanayake visits New Delhi in a few days and China probably in January. He cannot delay the Beijing visit for too long after an official visit to India.

Even if Beijing lets the seabed issue pass by, the continuation of the moratorium is a matter of serious concern to China, for it denies access to Sri Lankan waters.

So the NPP government is confronted with a foreign policy dilemma, and how diplomatically it handles it will matter domestically and internationally. Who advises the government on foreign affairs besides the foreign ministry remains rather shrouded, for nothing much has been said about it.

Whoever he/she is, better be good and not play foreign affairs with lecture notes. Otherwise, we might well find the Indian Ocean big power contestation being swept onto our shores moratorium or not.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)