Will India kiss and make up with the Rajapaksa brothers? Wait and watch

Appointing his China-friendly brother Mahinda the prime minister ahead of India visit marks a testing point for the new president's neighbourhood policy

When Gotabaya Rajapaksa, President of Sri Lanka, visits New Delhi on November 29, he will only be representing 50 per cent of the government. The other half of Sri Lanka’s dynamic duo, Prime Minister (caretaker) Mahinda Rajapaksa, will be in Colombo, on the phone to Beijing. During the years the Rajapaksa brothers were in power in Sri Lanka (2005 to 2015), Mahinda was president and Gotabaya was defence secretary. It was also around the time the geo-strategic eclipse of India in the region began.

At that time, the biggest challenge for Sri Lanka was controlling the Tamil insurgency in the