Sri Lankan reset

Gotabaya's election presents challenges and opportunities

India’s foreign-policy establishment is unlikely to have viewed with equanimity the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the feisty former wartime defence minister, to the Sri Lankan presidency. But the development is not entirely negative from India’s point of view. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first leaders to tweet his congratulations to the brother of a former president (Mahinda Rajapaksa) with whom he scarcely enjoyed warm relations, a strong signal that the Indian government was keen to reset relations with the island-nation’s most powerful political family. Indeed, it is a little-known fact that as defence minister, the younger Rajapaksa enjoyed