On April 1, in the midst of an election campaign, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accused the Opposition Congress party of surrendering Katchathivu island to Sri Lanka when it was in power in 1974.
Located 33 km away from Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu (TN), the uninhabited island measures just 1.6 km in length and 300 metres wide, with a total land area of under 2 Sq Km. The only important landmark on the island is the 120-year-old St Anthony’s Church, which attracts devotees from India and Sri Lanka for an annual festival. Indians are allowed to attend the festival sans passports and visas. The island has no source of drinking water.
Referring to information secured by the TN Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief K. Annamalai using the Right to Information (RTI) Act, Modi said that it was the Congress under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi which had handed over Katchathivu to Sri Lanka in 1974.
He described the discovery as “startling” but not surprising as it was part of the Congress’s consistent policy of weakening India’s integrity. He dubbed the decision on Katchchativu as “callous” and added that it angered every Indian.
“We cannot ever trust Congress. Weakening India’s unity, integrity, and interests has been Congress’ way of working for 75 years and counting,” Modi said on X. Aiming his salvos at the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the ruling party in TN, he said: “Rhetoric aside, DMK has done nothing to safeguard TN’s interests. New details emerging on Katchathivu have unmasked the DMK’s double standards totally.”
“Congress and DMK are family units. They only care that their own sons and daughters’ rise. They do not care for anyone else. Their callousness on Katchathivu has harmed the interests of our poor fishermen and fisherwomen in particular.”
The Indian Prime Minister cited a report in Times of India (TOI) which claimed that the then TN Chief Minister (CM) M. Karunanidhi had given his concurrence to the agreement despite his party’s public posturing against the 1974 Katchathivu deal.
Jumping into the fray, External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar slammed the Congress and the DMK, saying that ceding it to Sri Lanka resulted in the seizure, detention, or apprehension of a large number of Indian fishermen and fishing vessels by Sri Lanka.
“The Congress and the DMK, have approached this matter as though they have no responsibility for it, as though the situation is for today’s Central Government to resolve. We now know not only who did it but also who hid it,” he charged.
Addressing the media, Dr. Jaishankar quoted former External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh in 1974 as saying in Parliament: “I feel confident that the agreement demarcating the maritime boundary in the Palk Bay will be considered as fair, just and equitable to both countries. At the same time, I wish to remind the honourable Members that in concluding this agreement, the rights of fishing, pilgrimage and navigation, which both sides have enjoyed in the past, have been fully safeguarded for the future.”
But in less than two years (that is in 1976), Dr Jaishankar added, there was another agreement between India and Sri Lanka in which India proposed that the fishing vessels and fishermen from India shall not engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Sri Lanka.
“In 1974, assurance is given. By 1976, an agreement is concluded which gives away this assurance. The consequence was that 6,184 Indian fishermen have been detained in the last 20 years. In the same period, 1,175 Indian fishing vessels have been seized,” Dr. Jaishankar said.
The Katchathivu issue, Dr. Jaishankar said, has been repeatedly raised in Parliament by various parties over the past five years. “In fact, the TN CM has written to me numerous times. My record shows that I have replied to the current CM M.K. Stalin 21 times on this issue. This is not an issue which has suddenly surfaced. This is a live issue,” he said.
“But the Congress and DMK have approached the matter as though they have no responsibility. We believe that the public has a right to know how this situation came about. We know who did this, how the situation arose. What we do not know is who hid this and what has been concealed from the public,” Jaishankar said.
India’s claim, he explained, was that Katchathivu Island belonged to the Raja of Ramnad and that he had it from the British era. Later on, his rights moved to the Madras (now Chennai) Government.
“The Indian view was that there was no documentary evidence that Sri Lanka had an original title,” Dr. Jaishankar said. But the Sri Lankan argument was that they had records going back to the 17th century.
Congress Riposte
Responding to Premier Modi’s scathing remarks, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said the Katchathivu Island was given to Sri Lanka as part of a “friendly agreement” in 1974, and reminded Modi that his Government too had made a similar “friendly gesture” towards Bangladesh, pertaining to border enclaves.
Kharge said that the Modi Government’s Attorney General, Mukul Rohtagi, had told the Supreme Court (SC) in 2014, that Katchathivu went to Sri Lanka by an agreement in 1974 and asked how it could be taken back. “If you want Katchathivu back, you will have to go to war to get it back,” Rohatgi said.
Kharge went on to ask Modi: “Did your Government take any steps to resolve this issue and take back Katchathivu?”
Far from being quiet on the issue, both the AIADMK and the DMK had gone to the Indian SC in a bid to get a ruling that the 1974 agreement which recognised Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over Katchathivu was “unconstitutional” as it had redrawn the Indian boundary without a constitutional amendment.
AIADMK leader J. Jayalalithaa was the first to raise the issue in the early 1990s. And in 2003, she filed a case in the Supreme Court. The DMK did the same in 2018. But the Central Government’s argument in the SC was that Katchathivu was a “disputed territory” and therefore recognising Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over it in 1974 was not unconstitutional.
However, the dispute between TN on the one hand and the Central and Sri Lankan Governments on the other, was over the interpretation of the 1974 and 1976 agreements over fishing rights.
Article 6 of the 1974 agreement said that the vessels of Sri Lanka and India will enjoy in each other’s waters such rights as they have traditionally enjoyed therein. TN politicians have argued that “traditional rights” meant fishing rights too. But Sri Lanka had disagreed.
After the signing of the 1976 agreement, there was an exchange of letters between Kewal Singh, India’s Foreign Secretary, and W.T. Jayasinghe, Sri Lanka’s Defence and Foreign secretary. The letter said: “The fishing vessels and fishermen of India shall not engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the EEZ of Sri Lanka nor shall the fishing vessels and fishermen of Sri Lanka engage in fishing in the historic waters, territorial sea and the EEZ of India, without the express permission of Sri Lanka or India, as the case may be.”
Come elections, political parties do rake up emotive issues to gain a decisive advantage over their rivals. Seen in this light, Premier Modi’s charge can be seen as an election ploy (TN will vote in the first phase of the General Election on April 19).
He did not say that his Government would retrieve Katchathivu from Sri Lanka. He only blamed the Congress for giving it away back in 1974. There was no hint of renegotiating the 1974 Indo-Lanka Maritime Border Pact or the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) between the two countries. Nor was there a hint of it in Dr. Jaishankar’s assertions.
However, so long as the Katchathivu issue is restricted to TN politicians for whom the fishermen are a key vote bank, their utterances on the issue will not make a difference to Indo-Lanka relations, which are now excellent and has been so for quite some time. But if it is raised by the ruling party in the Centre frequently, it could ruffle some feathers in Colombo.
Already Modi has spoken about it twice. In August 2023, he said in Parliament: “Katchathivu is an island between TN and Sri Lanka. Somebody gave it to another country. It happened under the leadership of Indira Gandhi. Wasn’t that a part of Maa Bharati (Mother India)?”
Then in April 2024, he made a more detailed and frontal attack on the Congress on the same issue from a public platform and over X, aimed at a larger audience.
On Wednesday, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, PC, said in a TV interview that Colombo does not see a need to reopen talks with India over Katchathivu. “This is a problem discussed and resolved 50 years ago and there is no necessity to have further discussions on this. I don’t think it will come up,” he said.
In Sri Lanka, politicians across the ethnic divide are united on this issue, with both Sinhalese and Tamil politicians saying that the island belongs to Sri Lanka and any negotiations to the contrary are out of the question.
