The Palk Strait separating India and Sri Lanka, 82 km at its widest, did not prevent India from sending its mili­tary to Sri Lanka in 1987, purportedly to save the Tamil minority from the excesses of the Sinhalese government in Colombo. Tamil extremists would later be crushed with Chi­na’s military support. Likewise, even though around 4,000 km separates Sri Lanka and China, the Middle Kingdom has been more and more active in the smallish South Asian country of 21 million souls. Most notably, in 2017, Sri Lanka was forced to hand over the strategic port of Hambantota to China on a 99-year lease after being unable to service its debts—to India’s horror. This old geopolitical competition between India and China is once again being played out in Sri Lanka with President Maithripala Sirisena’s unexpected sacking of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Oct 26. In Wickremesinghe’s place Sirisena appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa, a former president known for his cozy ties with Beijing. (It was Rajapaksa who had negotiated the building of Hambantota with China.) Sirisena in fact was elected as the executive president in 2015 on an explicit anti-Ra­japaksa platform. He had promised to help his coun­try emerge from China’s debt trap. His prime minister, Wickremesinghe, had been particularly keen to improve ties with India.

While this political drama in Sri Lanka still unfolding, it is nonetheless a stark reminder to Nepal that navigating the choppy waters of India-China geopolitics will not be easy in the days ahead. Rumors are already swirling inside the rul­ing Nepal Communist Party of how India is plotting to bring down the ‘pro-China’ KP Oli. Reportedly, party co-chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has of late been assuring India that he is firmly in their camp. This in turn has raised the hackles of the Oli faction that sees deepened ties with China as indis­pensable to balance the ‘big brother’.

Recently, Nepal government extended a warm welcome to the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marx­ist), Sitaram Yechuri, a harsh critic of the BJP-led government in India. One of the goals of his visit was said to be to keep Oli from sidling too close to Modi. The BJP leadership will see it as yet another ‘provocation’ of Oli government.

Be it the blockade in Nepal, recent elections in the Mal­dives, or the Sri Lankan PM’s sacking, no big political devel­opment in South Asia remains untouched by the new great game in South Asia.