Mangala asks Lankans not to be paranoid about India

New Indian Express: Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera has asked fellow Lankans not to be paranoid about India but see ties with the latter as “an opportunity and not a threat.”

Speaking at the Sri Lanka-India Society on Sunday, in the context of local fears that signing the Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) with India will trigger a massive influx of Indians into Lanka, Samaraweera said that Lankans should shed their “minority complex.”

Describing the fear mongers as “neo-fascists,” the Minister said that they seem to see “an Indian under every bush and live in eternal fear of Indians swarming into  Lanka.”

Elaborating,  he said: “Whenever a bridge over the Palk Straits to connect our two nations is proposed, they get into a paranoid frenzy that all of India is waiting drive over that bridge and make Sri Lanka their home. When trade agreements are discussed they see swarms of Indian doctors and barbers coming across to flood the Sri Lankan market. Now they claim that their IT specialists are all waiting to come and take the jobs of Sri Lankan engineers.”

“This insecure, reactionary and muddled thinking does not do justice to the Sinhalese race’s great and long history, nor does it do justice to the gentle, compassionate and moderate majority of this country whose quiet observance of the Five Precepts and the best of Buddhist values in their daily lives is an example to the entire world.”

“With the proposed Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement we will build on this Free Trade Agreement to put in place a rules-based framework for the services trade, enabling the services sector, which accounts for  60 percent of the Lankan economy, to benefit from the same market access and dynamism that other sectors enjoy under the Indo-Lanka Free Trade Agreement.”

“In the 21st Century, as the world’s economic centre of gravity returns to the East, we cannot afford to think of India as a threat, rather we must think of her as our greatest opportunity. All our current superstitions and prejudices about India must not color our thinking. Most of all, Sri Lanka must get rid of its minority complex,” Samaraweera said.