The on-going visit of a high level team from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Deputy Leader of the Party in the Rajya Sabha, is non-political, says Sunimal Fernando, one of the main organisers of the five-day tour.
“It is meant to rekindle the civilizational links between Sri Lanka and India, and not to form an alliance between political groups,” Fernando told Express here on Wednesday.
The visit is being coordinated by the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS) and the India Foundation based in New Delhi. The Lankan participants at the discussions to be held at the BCIS on Friday would be drawn from opposition parties and the government. To enable free airing of views, the Chatham House rules would be followed, Fernando said.
He, however, said that the BJP was much loved in Sri Lanka for the quiet way in which it supported the Government of India during the last crucial phase of the war in 2009. The party spoke neither for or against the war, he recalled.
“But our interest in the BJP is really rooted in the civilizational links that exist between the Hindu and Buddhist cultures. We want to mainstream these links and hold them up as an alternative to Western models,” Fernando said.
The BJP team would get an opportunity to see various ethnic groups living in harmony in Sri Lanka, he said.
In appreciation of the contribution of the Hindu/Indian civilisation to the world, President Mahinda Rajapaksa would release a Sri Lankan postage stamp featuring Swami Vivekananda on Friday.
“And we plan to get India to issue a stamp featuring Anagarika Dharmapala next year,” Fernando said.
Jaffna Visit
On Wednesday, the BJP team interacted with Tamil political parties and civil society in Jaffna. Back in Colombo they would hold talks with President Rajapaksa and Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa besides other government and opposition leaders, before flying home on Sunday.