The protests in Tamil Nadu over the alleged shooting of a fisherman by the Sri Lankan navy has snowballed into a bilateral issue with India raising the incident with its neighbours. Such shootings have occurred with alarming frequency due to Indian fishermen ignoring Sri Lanka’s diktats to not cross over to its side of the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL). In March 2015, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wikremasinghe warned that Indian fishermen intruding into Sri Lankan waters would be shot. He gave the analogy of a thief entering a house and the owner being allowed to shoot in self-defence. However, such simplistic and cavalier rhetoric also serves to exacerbate a problem that has its origins in geographical, historical, ecological and economic reasons.
India and Sri Lanka share a very proximate maritime boundary which is as less as 12 nautical miles on the Palk Strait. The Palk Bay is a fertile fishing ground and for centuries Tamil fishermen from the Indian and Sri Lankan sides have cohabited peacefully in this area. The attempt to settle the Katchatheevu dispute, which was claimed by both India and Sri Lanka, with India ceding its rights over the island in 1974, was not accepted by the fishing community. Though the agreement did not affect fishing rights, India and Sri Lanka agreed in 1976 not to fish in each others waters. However, fishermen refused to pay heed. Throughout the Sri Lankan civil war it was mostly Indian fishermen, or Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka’s northern districts to India who had more freedom to fish in these waters. The onset of mechanised fishing and trawling in the 1990s led to a depletion of catch and complaints from the Sri Lankan side that trawling by Indian vessels was damaging the marine ecology.
While Sri Lanka demanded a complete ban on mechanised trawlers, India has preferred regulation. The Tamil Nadu Marine Fisheries Regulation Act of 1983 mandated that mechanised boats should not fish three nautical miles from the coast, and the area was reserved for traditional fishing boats. But there is no clarity on which “coast”, and anyway, traditional fishermen rue that this Act is being violated even on the Indian side. Meanwhile, traditional fishermen, unable to compete with the mechanised trawlers, have been forced to work on the mechanised trawlers and the multi-day boats on both sides. A return to the more sustainable traditional fishing methods is practically impossible now. Mindful of the impact the issue can have on bilateral ties, Sri Lanka has resorted to temporarily detaining fishermen and their boats. In 2014, 787 fishermen were released from Sri Lankan jails along with 158 fishing boats while in 2015, 23 boats and 151 fishermen were apprehended by the Sri Lankan navy. But this has not proved to be a deterrent as the call of livelihood forces them to return to the troubled waters again.
But firing on unarmed fishermen is not the solution and the Indian and Sri Lankan governments must sit together and sort out the issue before emotions boil over in Tamil Nadu where a weak state government is in power. In February 2016, following foreign minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Colombo, both sides agreed to “find a permanent solution” to the fishermen issue. Over a year later, the delay in ironing out a solution has taken another precious life and put Tamil Nadu on the boil again.
