Meera Srinivasan
For over a decade, Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen have remained embroiled in a tense and sometimes violent conflict over fish stocks in the Palk Bay. The Sri Lankan navy’s murders of Indian fishermen who have illegally crossed the international maritime border between the two countries has prompted outrage on the part of Indian fishermen as well as the local Indian state government. Despite the issue reaching salience mere decades ago, the Palk Bay conflict is arguably one that is and has been politically entrenched, far beyond what is generally considered to be the beginnings of the conflict.
India and Sri Lanka’s Colonial Pasts
To truly understand the complex political and economic factors that led to the Palk Bay conflict and prevent its resolution, one must go back in time to shortly before either country won independence from the British Empire. In regards to both colonies, which were British India and British Ceylon prior to independence, the British occupation led to massive famine, poverty, and financial crises.
During the British occupation of the colony, India’s share of global GDP declined, while British standards of living increased. From 1870 to 1921, British colonial policy gave rise to serial famines, killing tens of millions of people and shortening life expectancies by an estimated twenty percent. Consumption surveys conducted in the northeast region of Bihar during the early nineteenth century found that Indian real wages declined dramatically under British rule, as well as that poverty in India increased after the occupation began.
Additionally, the forcible takeover of local land and economies in British India, as well as the orchestrated provocation of hostility between Hindus and Muslims, led to new economic and sociocultural dynamics that would last for generations. Some actions taken by the British in accordance with the “divide and rule” strategy were removing Muslims in power from their positions, as well as excluding Muslims from the English education policy in which Hindus were included. Under this strategy, the British also widened economic disparities between Hindus and Muslims, encouraging conflict along religious lines. In short, British rule left India hungry, impoverished, and with a host of ethno-religious conflicts that did not exist prior to the occupation.
In addition to the general negative impacts of British colonialism that plagued both colonies, such as famine and poverty, British Ceylon was forced to reckon with rising ethnic, religious, and linguistic tensions. Due to American Christian missionaries having a more substantial presence in the northern region of the colony, as well as the fact that most Sri Lankans living in the northern region around the city of Jaffna were of the Tamil ethnolinguistic group, Sri Lankan Tamils were afforded more opportunities to learn English. These opportunities led to Tamils being disproportionately represented within higher-paying occupations, such as medicine and law, as well as within the native civil service (engineered by the British), despite comprising a minority of the island’s population. The Sinhalese-speaking majority, most of whom were poor laborers, did not take kindly to the preferential treatment Tamils received from the British, especially given that the governing elite of the colony was not representative of the actual population. The above factors exacerbated ethnic tensions, which only worsened following British Ceylon’s independence and Sri Lanka’s establishment as a sovereign nation.
Transitioning from British Colonies to Independent Nations
Prior to the former colonies’ independence from the British Empire in the late 1940s, Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen worked together in the Palk Bay. Most fishermen from the Northern region of Sri Lanka and the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu (translated literally as ‘Tamil Country’) shared ethnolinguistic ties, making it easier for the two communities to share culture, fishing technology, and conversations. Due to the close-knit bonds between the two communities, frequent migrations between India and Sri Lanka and intermarriages took place.
The blood-soaked Partition of British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had its own impacts on the economies of the two newly independent countries. Splitting the colony into two separate nations—now in conflict with each other—had the effect of depriving both economies of resources that were previously shared between regions. For instance, this split deprived Pakistan of millions of acres of irrigation land in the northern region of the subcontinent, which fed the population via foodgrains. Thus, to cope with the shakeup of industries brought about by the Partition, India adopted a strategy of rapid industrialization and investment. The new Indian government believed it would not be prudent to continue the national economy’s prior focus on agriculture, as they foresaw agricultural supply outpacing demand; additionally, they considered dependence on agriculture to be markings of an inferior, developing economy. Therefore, in the early 1950s, the new Indian government shifted its economic focus towards industrialization.
This shift was successful for a few years. Industrialization proved a moderate success, with the newly established public enterprises producing steel, chemicals, and other industrial products that were generally associated with developed economies. However, given India’s overall impoverishment and lack of preexisting infrastructure, this strategy also proved quite expensive. Thus, the government turned to creating new money in order to finance new projects. This strategy led to high inflation that, along with wars against China and Pakistan and widespread drought, plunged the country into recession by the mid-1960s.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka was facing economic issues of its own. Due in large part to the island nation’s specific climate, it was difficult for the British colonizers to construct roads or other meaningful infrastructure; it was also quite challenging to grow many of the crops that were easily grown in India’s climate. At the time of independence, the country’s economy relied heavily on the income brought in from exports of tea, rubber, and coconut, with over 90 percent of its exports being plantation products, while also heavily relying on imports for essentially all other basic consumer goods. Diversification of the nation’s economy had been a longtime goal, even prior to independence, but the execution of this goal was an entirely different story. As a result, the newly independent Sri Lankan economy was narrowly based and lacked the strength to withstand significant economic changes. The Sri Lankan government attempted many times to diversify its economy, but this goal was never accomplished. The rigidity of the Sri Lankan economy would be the cause of multiple financial crises that would continue to plague the nation for decades to come.
Illegal Poaching by Indian Fishermen
In response to the economic crises of the 1960s, the Indian government looked to exports as a means of improving the economy—specifically, seafood exports, such as prawns. Over the next few years, the government granted subsidies to fishermen, enabling them to buy more advanced boats and ramp up operations. One such development that came about as a consequence of this investment was the widespread use of trawlers—boats that drop weighted nets and scrape the ocean floor for fish.
While the introduction of trawlers rapidly increased the scale of Indian fish exports, they also wrought havoc on the marine ecosystem. The unregulated use of trawlers—now numbering in the thousands—quickly depleted existing fish stocks in a classic tragedy of the commons. The Indian government’s failure to regulate fisheries meant that there was no incentive for fishermen to scale back their individual harvests, leading to overharvesting and the depletion of fish populations. By the late 1970s, fish stocks in Indian waters were significantly diminished.
Only years prior, India and Sri Lanka had agreed on a maritime boundary between the two nations, defining what parts of the Palk Bay belonged to which country. Motivated by declining catches and international demand, Indian fishermen began to cross the maritime boundary and illegally fish in Sri Lankan waters, leading to a dramatic increase in Indian seafood exports.
Sri Lankan Civil War
At the same time that India was enjoying the economic benefits of its seafood exports, Sri Lanka had begun to descend into a civil war that would last over twenty-five years and lead to an estimated death toll of 80,000–100,000 people. A group of separatist rebels known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) began to claim large territories in the northern part of the nation in their attempt to create a new country for Tamils, who were the minority in Sri Lanka and faced economic, linguistic, and educational oppression.
The Sri Lankan navy banned most fishing activities in the Palk Bay, purportedly as a matter of national security. Many Indian Tamils in the nearby state of Tamil Nadu were sympathetic to their ethnic kin’s fight for freedom, and some even aided LTTE fighters by providing arms and other supplies. While the goal was to weaken rebel forces, another unintended effect was the weakening of local economies, which were nearly entirely reliant on fishing. Sri Lankan fishermen were prohibited from using engine-powered boats and were severely restricted in the areas in which they could fish. This had the resultant effect of leaving Sri Lankan waters free for Indian fishermen to unlawfully harvest for over two decades.
When the war ended with the assassination of the rebels’ leader in 2009, Sri Lankan fishermen were now again free to fish. However, what they found when reentering Palk Bay were hundreds of Indian trawlers harvesting and depleting Sri Lankan fish stocks. If that was not unfortunate enough, the war’s consequences for the Sri Lankan economy meant that Sri Lankan fishermen were severely behind in the latest technologies and boats—they had no chance of competing with Indian trawlers.
To counteract this, the Sri Lankan navy quickly began arresting, detaining, and, in some cases, killing Indian fishermen as well as seizing their boats in order to counteract illegal poaching, leading to massive outcry. In all cases, even those in which the fishermen are released, their trawler boats remain impounded by the Sri Lankan navy. However, this has done little to solve or even mitigate the issue. While the prospect of being arrested or having one’s boat taken by the Sri Lankan navy frightens many Indian fishermen, the prospect of not being able to put food on the table leads many to cross the boundary regardless.
The Conflict Today
There have been numerous calls by Sri Lankan fishermen for the Indian central government or for the Tamil Nadu state government to step in and handle the issue. However, neither the central nor the state governments have done more than occasionally call for the release of detained fishermen.
Several solutions to the conflict have been presented. For one, the Indian central government and Tamil Nadu state government could better regulate fisheries and ensure that Indian fishermen do not illegally cross the maritime boundary. Additionally, the government could render obsolete the need for fishermen to cross the maritime boundary at all. This could be done through a variety of strategies, namely by banning trawler fishing, developing methods to help reverse population decline in local species, and incorporating sustainable harvesting methods in order to prevent a future tragedy of the commons.
While the Sri Lankan Navy has been somewhat effective in defending their side of the maritime boundary, the Sri Lankan government has simultaneously allowed foreign fishing companies into its waters, which could, in time, deprive local fishermen of their livelihoods. This has led some to believe that the Sri Lankan Navy is simply protecting economic interests (i.e., preserving national fish stocks), which just so happens to align somewhat with the dilemma of the local fishermen.
As of September 2024, India’s economy is expected to grow more than 7% between FY24 and FY25. Meanwhile, since April 2019, Sri Lanka has faced its worst economic crisis since it gained independence in 1948. Sri Lanka’s GDP has contracted dramatically since the start of the financial crisis; tourism has not yet risen back to pre-pandemic levels, placing an unwelcome strain on the Sri Lankan economy. Though the economy has shown signs of stabilization as of August 2024, poverty remains high at nearly double the rate it was prior to the crisis.
The Sri Lankan government is starting to become somewhat desperate to achieve an end to the fisheries conflict and is considering a proposal from the Indian government to begin providing licenses to Indian fishermen, allowing those fishermen to fish on the Sri Lankan side of the maritime border. The Sri Lankan government claims that allowing Indian fishermen into Sri Lankan waters to fish would bring in money that could be utilized for the betterment of Sri Lankan fishermen. Sri Lankan fishermen continue to reject this notion.
There isn’t an easy answer to this conflict. Much of it is exacerbated by or due at least in part to economic inequality, government inaction and corruption, and a lack of education surrounding sustainable harvesting practices. Over ninety percent of the fishing families in Tamil Nadu, who number around 200,000, live at or below the poverty line, even lower than the national average of sixty percent; families like these don’t have much of a reason to cease their current practices, especially if it means that their catches might decline. It’s not as if the Indian fishermen are completely unwilling to change their ways—many recognize the harm that their fishing practices have on both the environment as well as on Sri Lankan fishermen. In the end, it all comes down to income. When faced with the question of choosing between halting their unsustainable practices or receiving their daily earnings, the choice for many is to continue fishing even at the cost of the marine environment.
A solution is likely out of reach—for the time being, at least. Without concrete policy change, it's hard to see how this conflict could come to an end, and considering the current state of affairs, it's difficult to determine whether that day will come soon, if at all.
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