“We discussed the fishermen’s issue. This complex issue involves livelihood and humanitarian concerns on both sides. We should handle it from this perspective. At the same time, we need to find a long-term solution to this issue. It is also important that fishermen's associations of India and Sri Lanka meet at the earliest to find a mutually acceptable arrangement. It can then be taken forward by both governments.”

This is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said during his first official visit to Sri Lanka back in March 2015. Nine years later, he has raked up the Katchatheevu (also spelt Kachchatheevu) issue again, casting a wide net to find an “emotional” issue that will resonate with voters in Tamil Nadu, given that the upcoming polls are one in which the BJP is desperate to make inroads into the southern states.

On Sunday, Modi tweeted that the Congress “callously gave away” Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka in the 1970s. A day later, he said these details had “unmasked the DMK’s double standards totally”.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar followed this up by saying the people of Tamil Nadu had been “misled” over the issue.

The coastal fishing community in Tamil Nadu may or may not be impressed by the prime minister’s sweeping anti-Nehru, anti-Congress rhetoric. The loss of the island is not as important to them as the real question that fisherfolk here want answered: What have Modi and his government done in the last decade to address the “livelihood and humanitarian concerns” arising from what he acknowledged in 2015 was “a complex issue”, and to find a “long-term solution”?

A reply to this needs a more nuanced look at the 1974 and 1976 agreements between India and Sri Lanka that settled the maritime boundary, rather than what Modi and S Jaishankar have offered with their favourite past-time of blaming long-gone governments and leaders. It would also have to include what India gained in return for giving up its claim on Katchatheevu.

A brief history

Katchatheevu is located north-east of Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and south-west of Sri Lanka's Delft Island. It’s no more than 1.6 km in length and, at its broadest, slightly over 300 metres. In 1960, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru famously told Parliament: “The island is 18 miles east of Pamban. Where Pamban is I do not know.”

The first time that Katchatheevu emerged as a dispute between the Madras Presidency and Sri Lanka was in 1921. Both sides were administered by the British colonial government. The representatives of the two colonial governments met in Colombo in October for a “conference” to discuss the “delimitation of the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar”, and pushed the case for their respective sides. 

B Horsburgh, the principal collector of customs who led the Ceylon delegation, argued for delimitation along the median line (that is, equidistant from the land on both sides), but a deviation “three miles westward” to include Katchatheevu. He asserted that the Sri Lankan claim over the islet had been part of previous correspondence with the Indian government and that this had not been contested by the Indian side.

The officials from the Madras Presidency pointed out that the Raja of Ramnad was receiving rent from the lease of the islet and thus it lay in his zamindari. But they had no instructions to contest or refute the claim any further.

Concerned that the meeting would end in a “dissolution” of the conference, the officials agreed to compromise. They said a deviation in the median line could be made as demanded by the Sri Lankan side without prejudice to the territorial claims of Madras Presidency or the government of India. But the agreement never came into effect because it was not ratified, as the secretary of state was not convinced of its validity.

India won independence in August 1947, Sri Lanka in February 1948. Fishing from both sides continued in the undemarcated waters but demands were growing on both sides to press the claim to the barren island. 

For India at the time, the biggest preoccupation in its ties with Sri Lanka was the question of citizenship for Indian-origin Tamils who had been made stateless by the first government of newly independent Ceylon. The issue had embittered relations between the two new nations.

“Unfortunately, certain politicians and some groups in Ceylon neither speak nor act wisely, and repeatedly come in the way of friendly settlement,” Nehru had said in 1954.

After the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh that broke up Pakistan, a confident Indira Gandhi reached out to Sri Lanka – which had provided refuelling facilities to Pakistan during the war and feared a backlash – in reassurance that India wanted friendly relations. 

Sirima Bandaranaike, then Sri Lanka’s prime minister, was close to Beijing. Further, in a world divided by the Cold War, the 1974 and 1976 agreements, while granting Sri Lanka the deviation of Katchatheevu, also ensured that no third parties could fish in troubled waters as the Palk Straits were divided between the two countries into their exclusive economic zones.

These agreements were the Agreement between Sri Lanka and India on the Boundary in Historic Waters between the two Countries and Related Matters of 1974 and the Agreement between India and Sri Lanka on the Maritime Boundary Between The Two Countries In The Gulf Of Mannar And The Bay of Bengal And Related Matters of 1976. In the same month as the 1974 agreement on Katchatheevu, Gandhi and Bandaranike signed the Indira-Sirima pact, which completed a process begun under the prime ministership of Lal Bahadur Shastri towards resolving the issue of stateless Indian Origin Tamils.

DMK and Katchatheevu

Which brings us to present day. Modi’s rhetoric on Katchatheevu is based on the  information that Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annanamlai says he obtained through the RTI Act. But contrary to their allegations of DMK’s complicity, the information reveals that the state government was only informed of Indira Gandhi’s decision by then foreign secretary Kewal Singh and asked to concur.

That must have been an Article 370-like moment for Tamil Nadu, 45 years before Modi scrapped the article without consulting the people of Jammu & Kashmir  or even the courtesy of informing it. And, of course, Indira Gandhi did not jail Chief Minister M Karunanidhi for the next eight months, and the DMK was allowed to protest.

Some have argued that Karunanidhi should have taken the matter to the Supreme Court like BC Roy did for Berubari in West Bengal. Nehru had wanted to transfer Berubari to East Pakistan, but the Supreme Court ruled a transfer of territory to another country was illegal without a constitutional amendment. But unlike Berubari, Katchatheevu was never officially part of any Indian map. The DMK government did go to court several years later, after J Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK leader then in opposition, posted a legal challenge.

An underplayed exchange

Importantly, from the point of view of Delhi ,in return for Katchatheevu, Sri Lanka gave up its claim over Wadge Bank, and accepted Indian sovereignty over a portion of the sea off Kanyakumari. At the time, this was considered more strategic than an unpopulated island in the Palk Straits. The Modi government does not speak about this exchange, even though it has more than a passing interest in Wadge Bank.

In the run up to the Katchatheevu treaties, geological experts had pointed to the possibility of an undersea oil and gas reserve in Wadge Bank. It is no coincidence that the agreements of 1974 and 1976 contain paragraphs setting down the terms and conditions of how each side would deal with finds of oil, gas or mineral deposits in the Palk Straits, and specifically in Wadge Bank. The name is in fact a geographical descriptor of an area that is a fertile and richly biodiverse part of an ocean sheltered from strong currents and waves. Only 20 wadge banks are said to exist across the world.

The one off Kanaykumari is a portion of the continental shelf of the southern tip of India, extending about 50 miles seaward from Cape Comorin. According to an in-depth study in 1955, the Wadge Bank off Cape Comorin lies between E. longitude 77° and 78° 10’, measuring approximately 3,000 sq km, and about 189 km from Colombo.

Before the 1974-76 agreements, the area was being used by both Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen. The area was so rich in marine resources that, as a gesture of goodwill, India agreed in the 1974 treaty to permit Sri Lankan boats to fish in the area for three years after the treaty came into force. When that period ended, India agreed to compensate with supplies of fresh fish to Sri Lanka for five years.

Over the years, while the search for fossil fuel in Wadge Bank did not take off, it has been a huge reservoir of marine life, and a lifeline for fishers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

In January this year, the Modi government invited bids for oil and gas exploration in Wadge Bank, triggering protests by fishers in both states who are worried about the threat this will pose to the marine resources in the area and to their livelihoods. Since last year, fishermen have also been flagging the threat to Wadge Bank from the traffic to and from Vizhinjam port.

‘Ceding’ territory

Neither Modi nor Jaishankar are ignorant of the fact that Katchatheevu was not “ceded” as it was never officially demarcated as part of India. It was disputed territory. Their own legal officers have said as much in court and in an RTI reply. It was given up, and having Wadge Bank on the Indian map shows it was not for nothing.

Clearly, thinking of a constructive solution to the fishing crisis is far more difficult than deploying the lazy ‘blame Nehru/Indira/Congress’ trope.

Of course, if territory is all important, it’s still a puzzle as to why the BJP ceded territory transgressed by the Chinese PLA in 2020 at the Line of Actual Control through agreements for so-called “buffer zones”. Lots of people in Ladakh have complaints about Chinese soldiers stopping them from taking their sheep into pasture lands that they used even two years ago. 

Update on Apr 2: The headline and strap of this piece was changed.

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