Suryanarayan, V. "India-Sri Lanka Equation: Geography as Opportunity". In The Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy, edited by David Malone, C. Raja Mohan, Srinath Raghavan, 412-423. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Suryanarayan, V. "India-Sri Lanka Equation: Geography as Opportunity". In The Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy, edited by David Malone, C. Raja Mohan, Srinath Raghavan, 412-423. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

• India and Sri Lanka are deeply linked by culture and geography. This proximity to India has always made Sri Lankans, primarily the Sinhala majority, very nervous and anxious to avoid Indian domination. Sri Lanka has thus sought to maintain ties with Britain and other external powers (412-413).
• The Indian stance towards Sri Lanka has been an assumption that Sri Lanka would be forced to accept Indian hegemony, a belief first articulated by Jawaharlal Nehru (413).
• India has historically provided a lot of help to Sri Lanka, backing the government militarily during the 1970s and 1990s against the People's Liberation Front and the Tamil Tigers, respectively. Sri Lanka has never been grateful for this assistance and has often painted it as evidence of Indian imperialism (413).
• One of the early international issues between India and Sri Lanka was the status of Indian Tamil migrant workers in Sri Lanka, whom the Sri Lankan government foreign aliens in the country distinct from native-born Tamil and Sinhala. Following independence in 1948, Indian migrants in Sri Lanka were rendered stateless as Sri Lanka and India both refused to recognize them as citizens (414).
• This situation was only resolved in 1964, when Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike agreed to grant citizenship to 300,000 Indians and their descendants in Sri Lanka in return for Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri recognizing the Indian citizenship of the 5.25 million remaining migrants (415).
• Another agreement in 1974 dealt with the last batch of 150,000 stateless persons: granting half Indian citizenship and half Sri Lanka citizenship. It also put in place a plan for the registration, and possible deportation, of all Indians in Sri Lanka by 1981 (415). 
• Mobs of poor, landless Sinhala began to gather outside of major tea plantations -- where the majority of Indian migrant workers were employed -- in 1981, threatening to force Indian migrants to leave. Sri Lanka President Junius Richard Jayewardene used force to disperse the mobs after India began to discuss invading to protect Indian migrants (415-416).
• The issue of statelessness was only resolved in 1988, when the government of Ranil Wikramasinghe agreed to confer citizenship on all Indian migrants who remained in the country. This concession was the result of an Indian refusal, beginning in 1982, to accept additional deportations and pressure from Indian Tamil labor unions, led by Savumiamoorthy Thondaman, that openly called for Indian invasion were the stateless issue not resolved (416).
• India and Sri Lanka previously had a disputed maritime boundary over Palk Bay and the waters around Katchatheevu. The Sri Lankan Navy used to detain Indian fishermen, and during the 1970s shot some Indians on the assumption that they were Tamil Tigers in disguise (416).
• The border dispute was settled in two agreements in 1974 and 1976, settling a fixed maritime boundary and ceding control over Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka (416-417).
• Indian fishermen have exploited ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s by fishing illegally in Sri Lankan waters during a time when Sri Lankan military resources were stretched too thin to stop them. They have been loath to stop despite the end of the civil war and a stronger Sri Lankan naval presence, leading to continued conflict between the countries (417).
• Indian-Sri Lankan relations began to cool during the 1970s, when Sri Lanka believed that Indian refusal to prosecute or extradite Tamil militants reflected a secret Indian plan to destabilize and control Sri Lanka (417).
• Indian policy towards the Sri Lankan Civil War had two objectives: prevent countries hostile to India from exploiting the situation to gain ground in Sri Lanka, and prevent the war from reigniting Tamil separatism within India. These two goals often contradicted, leading India to intervene on both sides of the conflict to appease the Sri Lankan government and demonstrate its legitimacy to Indian Tamils (417).
• In 1987, India forced the Sri Lankan government to agree to a new constitution that devolved more power to provincial governments. This led some segments of the Sri Lankan government to reject the new constitution as illegitimate, and all subsequent governments have sought to avoid implementing any devolution (418-419).
• The inconsistency of Indian support for either side of the conflict ended up making both Sinhala and Tamil in Sri Lanka suspicious and distrustful of India. This is demonstrated by the failure of the Indian Peace Keeping Force, operating between 1987 and 1990, which was universally unpopular and faced combined attacks by the Tamil Tigers and Sinhala militias. The utter failure of the peacekeeping mission, which triggered the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, led India to actively interdict Tamil Tiger bases within India, crippling the organization (418).
• Over 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees currently live in India, mostly in Tamil Nadu, with the majority living in refugee camps. Return to Sri Lanka has been very slow since the end of the civil war, with only 12,000 refugees turning home by 2013. Most refugees are reluctant to return, as they have been welcomed by the Tamil Nadu government and will still face anti-Tamil discrimination back in Sri Lanka (419-420).