The reported Indian proposal for licensed fishing for southern Tamil Nadu fisher-folks in Sri Lankan waters may have come to a naught
following stiff resistance from the nation’s Tamil fishers in the Northern Province, backed by their politicians, starting with MPs cutting across party-lines. This followed a meeting of fishers from the two countries, at Kachchativu islet during the
annual St Anthony’s Church feast on 3-4 March, facilitated by Sri Lankan Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda, with support from both governments.
New Delhi has proposed a licence scheme, and a
decision will be taken after internal discussions, both within the officialdom and also the local fishers who may be affected by the same, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry had told Parliament in February. That was after he had discussed the matter with visiting Indian counterpart S Jaishankar. The matter later came up for
discussions when India’s Minister of State, Fisheries, L Murugan, met with Minister Douglas Devananda in Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna town. The two were present when President Ranil Wickremesinghe inaugurated the India-funded Jaffna Culture Centre recently.
The fisheries issue is a long-standing irritant in bilateral ties, and minister Devananda said the issue would be discussed further when President Ranil Wickremesinghe ‘visits New Delhi soon’.
Between them, Ministers Ali Sabry and Devananda had clarified that they could consider any arrangement for permitting Indian fishers to fish in the nation’s waters, if and only if India was able to
ban ‘destructive’ bottom-trawlers and accompanying gear (like the purse seine nets), and enforce it too. Sabry, in particular, had underscored the need for discussing the issue with local (Tamil) fishers in the country, and also to fix how far the Indian fishing vessels could be allowed in Sri Lankan waters. As an aside, he said, the government could then consider distributing the licence fee collected from the Indian fishers among their Sri Lankan counterparts.
Exhausting local stocks
The fisheries issue is a
long-standing irritant in bilateral ties, and minister Devananda said the issue would be discussed further when President Ranil Wickremesinghe ‘visits New Delhi soon’. Separately, in Colombo, the Foreign Minister said that while the proposal was being discussed, the interest of the local fishermen was the government’s priority.
Over the years,
multiple ways have been discussed to try and resolve the fishing issue. At the heart of the problem is the pre-Independence history of fishing in these parts, when both nations were under the common British colonial rule and yet, had the issue raging from time to time. Post-Independence, when India began facing a huge economic crisis in the sixties (so did Sri Lanka), the government decided to adopt bottom-trawling techniques, that were in vogue in the West, as a way to boost forex reserves through increased marine exports. Norway was ready to help and also train the local fishers across Tamil Nadu’s southern coastline as elsewhere in the country.
That was also the time when the two governments began discussing the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) under UNCLOS-1, leading to the boundary line agreements of 1974 and 1976. In between, the Indian fishers in the southern Rameswaram belt had exhausted the exportable near-shore shrimp stocks in their waters and were continuing to fish for the same along the coastal waters of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, going all the way close to the Jaffna shoreline.
The intervening ethnic war in Sri Lanka, with the LTTE having a formidable ‘Sea Tigers’ wing and local support, meant that the Colombo government banned fishing for the Tamil fishers of the North and the East.
There was, however, a difference. Though fishers from either country had been fishing in the other’s waters from ancient times, with families too settled there, they were artisanal vessels of different kinds, followed in recent times by mechanised fishing boats. The problem cropped up only when the Indian fishers began employing a large number of bottom-trawlers, which, using the large purse seine nets, scooped all marine lives, including fish eggs and fish lings, and destroying fish habitats in the process.
The intervening ethnic war in Sri Lanka, with the LTTE having a formidable ‘Sea Tigers’ wing and local support, meant that the Colombo government banned fishing for the Tamil fishers of the North and the East. From time to time, however, Indian fishers, from Tamil Nadu and Karaikal enclave of the union territory of Puducherry, had a free run of the shared waters, until normalcy was sought to be restored in the years after the conclusive end of the war in May 2009.
Twin issues
There are twin issues here. One, the Sri Lankan fishers from the North and the East charge their Tamil counterparts, respectively, from the southern Rameswaram belt and the Nagapattinam-Karaikal zone, with poaching their fish from their waters. They blame it almost entirely on the indiscriminate use of bottom-trawlers and purse seine, which affected their livelihoods that they were trying to reconstruct, first after three decades of war and now, in the face of the post-Covid economic crisis that has otherwise affected family incomes and lifestyles across the country as never before.
For its part, the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) too sees the alleged violation of the IMBL, notified under UNCLOS-1, as a violation of their nation’s territorial waters, hence sovereignty, that they are sworn to stall. Over the past decade and more, there have been reported instances of SLN personnel scaring away Indian fishers mid-sea, at times leading to deaths and consequent protests in Tamil Nadu. Where they had arrested Indian fishers for such violations, along with their vessels and gear, the Tamil Nadu government, through the good offices of New Delhi, has been able to obtain freedom for them.
The Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) too sees the alleged violation of the IMBL, notified under UNCLOS-1, as a violation of their nation’s territorial waters, hence sovereignty, that they are sworn to stall.
The release of prisoners used to be a fast-track process at the height of the conclusive ‘Eelam War-IV’. It has been slowed down since then, also because the Sri Lankan Parliament, at the instance of Northern Tamil parliamentarian, M A Sumanthiran, made penal provisions for such violations much more stringent and long drawn-out during the prime ministerial term (2015-19) of incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Livelihood concerns
While in principle New Delhi, and even Chennai, is alive to the realities of the ground situation
vis a vis IMBL and the UNCLOS notification, to the governments in India, it is as much a livelihood issue of their fishers as that of the Sri Lankans’. Hence, all attempts at finding a negotiated settlement through the past two decades have centred around sharing the catch one way or the other, even while discouraging the Indian fishers from crossing the IMBL. This is because governments are alive to the reality of fisher communities seldom venturing out to the hinterland in search of new avenues of livelihoods as an alternative trade.
However, a solution has eluded the governments at negotiations at all levels, beginning with fishermen’s associations from the two countries all the way up to foreign and fisheries ministry officials, their ministers, and the respective heads of government. For its part, India, as a permanent solution to ending the coastal crisis has begun implementing deep-sea fishing as a sort of pilot project for fishers along southern Tamil Nadu coast so that the local fishers need not have to violate the IMBL or clash with their Sri Lankan brethren, which could have long-term socio-political consequences for both people, their governments, and nations.
By drawing a crooked line of their own instead of sticking to the UNCLOS norm of following the median-line, has ensured that third nations cannot ‘trespass’ into their shared waters.
It is, thus, that the Indian government has reportedly revived the idea of licensed fishing, which has since come up for discussion at different levels, but mostly within Sri Lanka. Five Sri Lankan Tamil parliamentarians from the northern Jaffna electoral district (as different from revenue districts), cutting across party-lines, sat with their fisher association leaders on Sunday, 5 March 2023, when they resolved to work together to ensure that their government did not give into pressures from India.
Greater realisation
According to the Sri Lankan Tamil media reports, speakers at the joint meeting emphasised that the ‘umbilical cord’ relations between the Tamil-speaking peoples of the two countries should not be confused with their own livelihood concerns that are more real. They also underscored the point that in future negotiations, they should insist on the Indian team comprising people with past experience in these negotiations. It was an unstated reference to a fishers’ leader from a Chennai suburb who led the Indian team at Kachchativu not having any direct experience with fishing in the contested areas or in past negotiations.
This notwithstanding, there is a greater realisation now in Tamil Nadu that taking back Kachchativu islet, which falls on the Sri Lankan side of the IMBL under the 1976 treaty, would not resolve the larger dispute. If anything, by drawing a crooked line of their own instead of sticking to the UNCLOS norm of following the median-line, has ensured that third nations cannot ‘trespass’ into their shared waters. The Rameswaram fishers also readily acknowledge the absence of abundant fish resources in the Kachchativu area, thus making a negotiated settlement that much easier.
It is another matter that at the recent Kachchativu talks, the focus was almost entirely on the Palk Bay region, involving Rameswaram fisher. The talks did not involve Nagapattinam fishers and their counterparts from Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province, as most pilgrims to the islet came from Northern Province in Sri Lanka and the Rameswaram belt in India. In future negotiations, they too need to be factored in.
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