DailyBrief: Land simply given away? What to know about the Kachchatheevu island row

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What is the Kachchatheevu island row all about?

It all started with an RTI response which revealed that after independence, Sri Lanka - then Ceylon - began to assert its claim over Katchatheevu Island, which former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi finally ceded to Sri Lanka in 1974.

What did the RTI response disclose? It didn’t look good for the Congress. In 1961 Jawaharlal Nehru expressed a willingness to cede the island to avoid prolonged contention. “I attach no importance at all to this little island and I would have no hesitation in giving up our claims to it,” Nehru had said.

• India's Ministry of External Affairs as well as the Attorney General at the time, believed India had a stronger legal claim to Katchatheevu. They contended that the Raja of Ramnad enjoyed rights over the island from 1875 to 1948.

Not surprisingly, the BJP took the opportunity to pounce on the Congress, claiming that the party has had a history of such “unilateral magnanimity”. They have a point, as evidenced from:

• the Kabaw Valley issue (Manipur), which was given to Myanmar under the Rangoon Agreement of 1967;
• giving up extraterritorial rights to Tibet under the Panchsheel Agreement in 1954;
• giving up India’s claim to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council to China in 1967;

However, the BJP has been no less “magnanimous”. Under the Vajpayee government, India formally recognized Tibet as China’s Tibet Autonomous Region in 2003, essentially giving up our Tibet card.

• Fast-forward to 2015, and under the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, India transferred 111 enclaves (17,161 acres) of land to Bangladesh, getting only 55 (7,110 acres) in return.

Yes, but: As PM Modi noted at the time, the issue was not “just about the realignment of land, it is about a meeting of hearts.”

• This also happened to be the exact same reasoning Indira Gandhi gave - that maintaining positive relations with our neighbours comes first - so why then is the BJP going after the Congress over the issue?

It could be the Tamil Nadu issue. The RTI request that started the whole issue was filed by BJP’s Tamil Nadu stalwart K Annamalai. Just a day after the news broke, “new information” came to light that Indira Gandhi took late DMK chief Karunanidhi into confidence while handing over the island to Sri Lanka.

• This sought to paint a picture that the DMK was complicit in this handing over of the island; however, given how often Indian fishermen - particularly from Tamil Nadu - frequent the waters around the island, it is only natural that he be kept in the loop of such developments.

So did India actually administer the Island? No, the island was under the control of the Raja of Ramnad from 1875 to 1948, and since then, until the 1974 agreement (which gave it to Sri Lanka) the status of the uninhabited island was under question.

The intrigue: Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh have not been mentioned here yet. For the BJP to be so vociferous over an island off the Sri Lankan coast, their silence on the allegations of land lost to China in Arunachal and Ladakh is deafening.

• On April 7, Sonam Wangchuk is planning a border march with Ladakhi locals to show how much of their land they now have no access to. The march would be taken out in the north and south banks of Pangong Tso lake, Demchok, Chushul, among others along the Line of Actual Control with China.
• Wangchuk says “We know from the shepherds that they are not allowed [anymore] to go to the places that they always used to go. In particular areas, they are stopped kilometres before where they used to go earlier.”
• And its not just in Ladakh, the situation is as tense in Arunachal Pradesh too. Here's a BJP MP from Arunachal saying China has taken 50-60 sq km of land in the state (1:03 to 1:59) ??.

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