Third-party pulls and pressures should not deter Indo-Lanka ties: Acting Indian High Commissioner

Acting High Commissioner of India Dr. Satyanjal Pandey and Minister of Health and Mass Media Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa hold a toast at the celebrations. 
Pic by Samantha Perera

By Yohan Perera   
While stressing that both India and Sri Lanka are civilisational partners, sharing history, language, religion and ethos while stories of both countries have intertwined and futures are interlinked, Acting High Commissioner of India Dr. Satyanjal Pandey said the relationship of the two nations should not be unencumbered by third-party pulls and pressures.   
“Sri Lanka just as India has remained a steadfast democracy and a republic through its independent years. India and Sri Lanka not only are fellow democracies, sharing in our diversity and dynamism, but we are also civilisational partners, sharing our history, language, religion and ethos. Our stories have intertwined, and our futures are interlinked. 

Our geographical proximity makes us natural partners and the same proximity demands a mutual sensitivity to each other’s interests. It also requires each of us to support the other with an unmatched spontaneity, unencumbered by third-party pulls and pressures,” the Acting High Commissioner told a reception which was held to mark the 76th Republic Day of India.   
The Acting High Commissioner also said the following during the reception.   
India has time and again demonstrated that it is a dependable partner and a reliable friend for Sri Lanka. Whether it is natural disasters, mishaps at sea, the COVID pandemic or the recent economic crisis, India has come to Sri Lanka’s assistance always as the first responder. Our support has been timely, quick and unconditional.   
India as the co-chair of the Official Creditors Committee remains involved in the financial stabilisation effort for Sri Lanka through its engagement with the IMF. In addition to the ongoing debt restructuring, India has created additional fiscal headroom for Sri Lanka by converting USD 100Mn worth of developmental debt assistance to grants. This takes India’s grant assistance to Sri Lanka to USD780 million, making India the principal development partner for Sri Lanka. India’s development assistance projects exist in each of the 25 districts of Sri Lanka. Completed projects amount to USD390 million, ongoing projects are approx. USD211 million and committed grant projects in the pipeline stand at nearly USD180 million.   
As Sri Lanka turns a corner from economic recovery to growth, our leadership has indicated a strategic shift from debt-driven models towards investment-led partnerships across different sectors. This is a major highlight of the Joint Statement agreed upon by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake during the latter’s visit to India in December 2024. These investment projects are focused on enhancing physical, digital and energy connectivity - the key pillars of our partnership.   
The energy projects include establishing electricity grid connectivity and multi-product petroleum pipelines between both nations. We have jointly decided that, post the successful launch of the Nagapattinam - Kankesanthurai Ferry service, we will also initiate a ferry service between Rameshwaram and Talaimannar. You must have seen that IndiGo has emerged as the largest foreign carrier in Sri Lanka. On the digital connectivity front, we are working to implement the Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity project in mission mode. In keeping with the promise of the Sri Lankan government for people-centric digitisation, SL UDI will be the foundational DPI to unlock benefits of the Digital Stack. A Joint Working Group has been established to explore the implementation of DPI stack in Sri Lanka.   
We will also be assisting Sri Lanka in training 1,500 Sri Lankan civil servants across ministries and departments, with a focus on e-governance including the Government e-Marketplace, India’s multimodal logistics digital dashboard - PM Gati Shakti, digitised customs and other taxation procedures. India’s capacity-building initiatives extend to students as well, through the offer of nearly 1,000 scholarship slots under various schemes.   
Friends, while capacity building remains a major pillar of our defence partnership, we are continually expanding and strengthening this dimension further given our mutual and inseparable security interests. Last year saw the establishment of the Maritime Rescue and Coordination Centre in Sri Lanka amongst other assistance vital for Sri Lanka to enhance its maritime domain awareness. Both sides have now decided to work on a Security Cooperation Agreement. We have also agreed to cooperate on Hydrography. The Colombo Security Conclave as an important platform for regional peace, security and development will continue to be buttressed.   
As you can see, the India-Sri Lanka partnership today is all-encompassing. India’s growth and its capacities have been made available for Sri Lanka to partake in, as per Sri Lanka’s needs and priorities. It is not often that one country tells another to exploit its markets and its scale. We do that - for the intent is to transform the bilateral relationship into a new standard for friendly and neighbourly ties. These ties may be non-reciprocal in benefits but are underpinned by a significant measure of trust and goodwill that is very much reciprocal and mutual.   
The foundation of the comprehensive partnership between the two countries rests on the bonds of longstanding religious and spiritual links, filial friendships, language exchanges, traditional trading routes and business exchanges between our peoples. When India declared the Pali language as a Classical Language, Sri Lanka joined us in this celebration. We have recently supported the reprinting of the Pali Grammar book Namamala. This World Hindi Day, Sri Lanka’s first-ever open learning certificate course in Hindi was also launched. Legend and devotion connect our people through the Ramayana Trail in Sri Lanka and the Buddhist Circuit in India. It is no surprise that India remains the largest source of tourists for Sri Lanka.   
As is evident, the India-Sri Lanka partnership just as democracy, is people-led and people-centred. People lie at the core of each project, and every initiative undertaken by the two countries. To strengthen that core, to ‘Foster Partnerships for a Shared Future’, I look forward to your continuous cooperation and support.   
This day marks the completion of 75 years since the Constitution of India commenced. It is an occasion to celebrate the edifice of the Indian democracy. This a landmark achievement, for when Bharat gained independence, there were numerous hesitations, and several skeptics of having the longest written Constitution govern a country that had been impoverished over the years by its colonial masters. However, the Indian Constitution defied and nullified all such doubts, guiding us to where we stand today, as the fifth largest economy in the world and on our way to soon becoming the third largest with a 5 trillion dollar GDP. ‘We the people’ have resolutely upheld the values of the republic for three-quarters of a century.   
Democracy is not a mere political construct, it is a tradition in India. India is the Mother of Democracy. Evidence has it that the ethos of a limited government and countervailing institutions prevailed in ancient India, in the age of the Buddha. Allow me to indulge you in some trivia. A quote by the Chinese traveller and Buddhist Monk Xuanzang has stayed with me, “People of distant places, with diverse customs, generally designate the land they most admire as India”. This is from the account of Xuanzang’s travels in the ‘Indosphere’ in about the 6th century CE. India was then an exporter of its civilisation - from religion, art, and philosophy, to textiles, technology, even mathematics, medicine, and literature, India was the cradle of it all.   
Today, the nation is in the early years of Amrit Kaal, the period leading to the centenary of Independence. This is the time of an epochal transformation. India is ‘happening’ at a pace and scale that is unprecedented. Let me give you a readout of highlights from my country from just these last couple of weeks.   
We saw the launch of the Genome India Project - a new platform and framework for sharing10,000 human genome datasets sequenced from 99 ethnic populations. A fillip to India’s Bio-Economy, which was valued at 10 billion dollars in 2014, and has now grown to over 150 billion dollars. With more than half a billion already having digital health IDs, this will usher in an era of targeted medicine in India.   
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*Says India is Sri Lanka’s largest development partner with $780M in grant assistance