PM Narendra Modi’s tweet reignites Katchatheevu dispute between India and Sri Lanka.
The annual feast for the devout at St Antony’s church on the Sri Lankan island of Katchatheevu, located in the choppy waters of Palk Strait, was revived in March 2010 after nearly three decades.
The century-old church bells had remained silent since the 1980s because of the civil war between Tamil rebels and the Sri Lankan government.
A group of fishermen from India, Tamil devotees from the northern part of Sri Lanka, local government officials and Lankan navy officers were among those who attended the celebration on the barren piece of land, located 18km off Dhanuskodi ,near Rameshwaram, that year.
The festival, celebrated under the watchful eyes of the Sri Lankan navy, has continued on the 285-acre island every year since then.
This year, however, Indian fishermen boycotted it in protest against the arrest of members of their community by Sri Lankan authorities.
The boycott did not really make more than local news though; Indian fishermen have frequently got into trouble in Sri Lankan waters for apparently fishing in foreign seas and using bottom-trawling boats.
Just over a month later, however, a political controversy is raging in India over the small island, used for drying fishing nets and for fishermen to rest, pray and gossip, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that the Congress “callously gave away” Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka in the 1970s.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar waded in at a press conference, saying the issue had been “hidden too long from the gaze of the public”.
Former Tamil Nadu chief ministers J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi had brought up the issue of the island’s ownership with New Delhi earlier.
The rights of Indian fishermen are often linked to the island and its surrounding waters as it has been argued that by “ceding” it to Sri Lanka, the Indian government curtailed the livelihood rights of its own people in the southern state.