Image courtesy of The Hindu.
The Indian government has invited a delegation led by Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of Sri Lanka’s leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front), to New Delhi, in a significant outreach to the island nation’s most popular politician at the moment.
Sources at the Indian High Commission said the delegation is scheduled to visit three cities —New Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Thiruvananthapuram — and hold meetings with government officials, members of the business community, in addition to visiting centres of excellence in agriculture and industry.
Further, the visit comes after a marked shift in the JVP’s position on India, nearly four decades after the party led an armed insurrection opposing, among other things, the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 that it deemed an expression of “Indian expansionism”.
Acknowledging the shift in the party’s stance, in an interview to The Hindu in December 2023, Mr. Dissanayake said: “We do know that India, who is our closest neighbour, has become a major political and economic centre. So, when we take economic and political decisions, we will always care about how it will impact India.”