STORM IN A FRAGILE TEACUP

Just a month and a half back, on February 23 and 24, over 4,000 Indians attended the annual St Anthony's Feast in Katchatheevu Island, with an equal number of Sri Lankan devotees also present. For the feast of the guardian saint of fishermen, the Lankans provided food, drinking water and sanitary facilities.

- Pradin R. Sagar

The sudden irruption of controversy over the island and its sovereignty, involving India's top politicians on the eve of the general election, would have come as a surprise to them. Especially given the seemingly unambiguous 1974 maritime agreement between the two countries signed by the then prime ministers of India and Sri Lanka, Indira Gandhi and Sirima R.D. Bandaranaike.

Meant to demarcate their maritime boundaries from the Palk Strait to Adam's Bridge, it put Katchatheevu-a barren 1.9 sq. km island in the Palk Strait, located about 14 nautical miles from the Indian coast at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and 10.5 nautical miles from North Sri Lanka-in Lankan waters. Under the agreement, Indians can visit the church in Katchatheevu on St Anthony's Day. After India thus recognised Sri Lankan sovereignty over the tiny island, a subsequent 1976 agreement also recognised Indian sovereignty over Wadge Bank—a 10,000 sq. km area of the sea rich in biodiversity near Kanyakumari.

The long spell of calm ended this March. First, the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit chief K. Annamalai trotted out the allegation that the Congress government of Indira Gandhi “gave away” Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka. Based on an RTI (Right to Information) response, he was clearly trying to craft a poll plank by playing on Tamil sentiments. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself took up the issue on March 31. In a post on X, he wrote that the Congress, which was in power at the Centre in 1974, “callously gave away” Katchatheevu. He also added that the details had “unmasked the DMK’s double standards”. He was alluding to the fact that the alleged ceding of the island had taken place when Tamil Nadu had a DMK chief minister, M. Karunanidhi, while subsequent DMK leaders, including current CM M.K. Stalin, have sporadically expressed concern about the island’s status.