Katchatheevu and the Ghosts of Forgotten Treaties

Ahead of his Sri Lanka visit, Prime Minister Modi finds his stance on Katchatheevu echoed by an unlikely ‘ally’ - Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister M.K. Stalin.

As Narendra Modi steps onto Sri Lankan soil, the spectre of Katchatheevu looms large in this state visit. For beneath the surface of diplomatic niceties, an old ghost has stirred. Katchatheevu, a tiny islet in the Palk Strait that India ceded to Sri Lanka in 1974, has once again entered the bloodstream of Indian politics.

Last year, prior to the Lok Sabha polls, Modi, whilst campaigning in Tamil Nadu, had spoken about the need to revisit this historical error, dubbing it a blunder of the Congress era. Now, ahead of his visit to Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin - leader of the DravidaMunnetraKazhagam (DMK) and a fierce critic of Modi - has passed a resolution in the Tamil Nadu Assembly urging the Union government to retrieve Katchatheevu. In doing so, Stalin is unwittingly toeing Modi’s line.

Katchatheevu’s history, much like the larger Indo-Lankan relationship, has been shaped by colonial borders and the ghosts of forgotten treaties. The island, a rocky outcrop between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka’s Jaffna Peninsula, was once the domain of warring kingdoms, claimed at various points by the Jaffna kings, the Pandyas of Tamil Nadu, and later, the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. By the early 20th century, the British, who ruled both India and Ceylon, found little need to resolve the island’s ambiguous sovereignty—until, of course, the empire dissolved and two new nations emerged.

In the 1920s and 1930s, British administrators in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) argued that Katchatheevu fell under Ceylonese control, citing old revenue records. Indian officials in the Madras Presidency disagreed but saw little urgency in pressing the issue. The ambiguity persisted until the 1970s, when the governments of Indira Gandhi and Sirimavo Bandaranaike sought to settle lingering territorial disputes as part of a broader effort to cement post-colonial ties.

In 1974, after years of deliberation, the Indira-Sirimavo Accord was signed. India formally ceded any claim over Katchatheevu, recognizing Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over the island. The deal was supposedly meant to resolve maritime disputes amicably, but in hindsight, it appears to have been one of the gravest strategic miscalculations of independent India.

At the time, the decision stirred outrage in Tamil Nadu, where fishermen had traditionally used Katchatheevu as a resting point. Tamil Nadu’s then Chief Minister, M. Karunanidhi, railed against the deal, calling it a betrayal of Tamil interests. But the Congress dismissed Tamil Nadu’s opposition as regional dissent. The island had been used for centuries by Tamil Nadu’s fishermen, but Delhi’s bureaucratic calculus deemed it expendable.

In 1976, Indira Gandhi’s government compounded the mistake by signing a supplementary agreement that stripped Indian fishermen of their rights in Katchatheevu’s waters. Successive Sri Lankan governments then treated the area as their exclusive domain, routinely arresting Tamil Nadu’s fishermen who ventured too close.

Over the decades, Tamil Nadu’s leaders from Karunanidhi to Jayalalithaa have demanded that Delhi reclaim Katchatheevu. But it was Modi, during his 2014 and 2019 election campaigns, who gave the issue national prominence. He accused Congress of gifting away Indian territory without parliamentary approval and vowed to correct the historical wrong.

Now, ahead of the 2025 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, Stalin is reviving the issue out of political necessity. With the BJP making inroads in Tamil Nadu, the DMK cannot afford to be seen as weaker on Tamil rights than Modi himself.

By raising Katchatheevu just before Modi’s visit, Stalin is reinforcing an issue that Modi himself had championed. More importantly, he is signalling that the DMK is not willing to cede the Tamil nationalist vote to the BJP.

For Modi, this is an unexpected advantage. If even a DMK-led Tamil Nadu government believes that Katchatheevu must be retrieved, then Modi’s long-standing position is validated. Stalin’s move strengthens India’s bargaining hand. If New Delhi decides to reopen the discussion with Colombo, it can do so with the claim that there is cross-party consensus on the issue.

For decades, the BJP has struggled to gain political traction in Tamil Nadu. The state’s Dravidian political culture has resisted the party’s Hindutva narrative, and it has remained an electoral outlier. But in the past few years, the BJP has been making steady inroads, leveraging issues like Katchatheevu to gain support among Tamil Nadu’s disaffected fishing communities. If the DMK is forced to echo Modi’s stance, it only reinforces the BJP’s argument that Congress-era blunders continue to haunt Tamil Nadu.

Beyond the political gains, the Katchatheevu issue is also an opportunity for Modi to assert India’s regional influence. Sri Lanka, still recovering from its economic crisis, is heavily dependent on Indian assistance. By bringing up Katchatheevu in some form, Modi can remind Sri Lanka that India is not a passive observer in regional politics.

Sri Lanka, predictably, will resist any discussion of sovereignty. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake cannot afford to be seen conceding territory. However, Modi’s visit presents a moment for diplomatic pressure, if not for outright territorial negotiations, then for significant concessions on fishing rights.

If Modi can push for stronger protections for Tamil fishermen, or even force Sri Lanka to acknowledge the illegitimacy of the 1976 agreement, he will have achieved something no Indian leader has managed in 50 years.