There is a battle going on out there. It is not the battle for land or people, but a battle about fish. On the one side, Sri Lankan fishermen rely on fishing as the source of economy. And on the other side, you have their counterparts, Indian fishermen along the southeastern coast of India. And out here on the water there’s an invisible line that marks where India’s territorial waters end and where Sri Lanka’s begin. Underneath this border, there’s treasure- not gold, but seafood. The communities on either side of this strait used to be friends, but now they’re locked in conflict. One side has bigger, faster boats. The other side has a well-armed navy equipped with war boats that they’re using to patrol this border. This is the fish war between India and Sri Lanka.
The Ram Setu, one legend goes that the Hindu god Rama hired an army of monkey men to build a bridge from India to Sri Lanka so that he could go in and rescue his wife from a demon king. Geology suggests that there indeed may have been a walkable land bridge here, until a few thousand years ago when it was eroded back into the sea, erasing any land borders between modern-day India and Sri Lanka. The only border that exists now between India and Sri Lanka is in the water. This border made it officially illegal for fishermen from either side to cross over into each other’s water to fish and it was the start of what would eventually turn into a violent conflict.
In the 1960's India was facing a financial crisis and in response, the government was looking for new ways to stimulate the economy. So they turned to seafood exports like prawns. The Indian government gave subsidies to fishermen to buy new boats so that they could harvest a huge number of prawns, which would feed demand all over the world. So Indian fishermen in this town of Rameswaram cashed in on the opportunity, dramatically ramping up their fishing activities with these new boats called trawlers which can drop nets with heavyweights on them to rake the bottom of the seabed in search for prawns and other seafood. It’s an incredibly effective method for harvesting fish and shrimp, but these heavy metal weights rip up the seabed, damaging the sea floor’s ecosystem, and this method if uncontrolled depletes fish supplies very quickly. The Indian fishermen quickly adopted these new boats and shortly there have been thousands of those trawlers. Armed with their new boats and tied to international demand, the Indian fishermen sharply fished these waters, tearing up the seafloor and depleting abundant of their fisheries. By the late Seventies, the Indian fishermen required new waters to fish. This water border had recently been set by the 2 countries, however even still the Indian fishermen been moving across it illegally fishing in Sri Lankan waters. The large quantity of fishing contributed to the explosion in food exports from India. While India was cashing in on food products from Sri Lankan waters, Ceylon was degressive into war.
By the early 1980s, armed rebels were taking over large swaths of land in the north of the country, trying to create a new country for the oppressed Tamil people, the ethnic minority group that the residents of these fishing villages identify with. It descended into a violent, long-lasting civil war that would result in over 150,000 deaths and these fishing villages in Sri Lanka were caught right in the middle of it. As a security precaution during the war, the Sri Lankan Navy started setting up security zones in much of the water, banning most fishing activities and prohibiting boats with motors. All of these were done in an attempt to weaken the Tamil rebels, but the result was a severe gutting of the economies here, which are reliant on fish. The catch in these districts declined immensely during the war and not only did this affect the economies, but this fishing ban left Sri Lankan water open for Indian trawlers to fish freely. The violent civil war and the fishing ban in Sri Lanka dragged on through the 1990s and into the early 2000s, allowing the Indian fishermen to illegally fish these waters with little repercussion. But then everything changed.
The war ended and the security zones in the water were lifted. Sri Lankans could fish freely again, breathing new life into an economy that runs on fish. But as these fishermen went out on their boats what they found were fleets of Indian trawlers in their waters, tearing up the seafloor, illegally digging for seafood treasure. And these Sri Lankan fishermen coming out of a fishing ban and a 25-year civil war had much smaller weaker boats. They could never compete. This is where things start to heat up.
Sri Lankan Navy, which had previously been fighting a war, now turned its efforts cracking down on Indian fishermen poaching in Sri Lankan waters. The fish wars had begun. The Sri Lankan Navy came down hard, routinely arresting Indian fishermen and detaining them, sometimes for years. When the Navy detains the fishermen, they also take their boats. They eventually release the fishermen, but the boats remain impounded in navy bases around. Across the strait, this poaching by Indian Fishermen has had ramifications in these villages. Experts estimate that the direct monetary loss to Sri Lankan fishermen due to Indian poaching is anywhere from 16 to 56 million US dollars per year. This conflict over seafood has turned two Tamil communities, once allies, into enemies.
The Indian government has done little to resolve this conflict. They occasionally step in to free a group of detained fishermen, but none of their actions have led to a concrete solution to the problem. The Indian government, both national and local, seems to be turning a blind eye to these fishermen’s practice of crossing the border. That’s because these communities are already neglected and underserved by their faraway government. Stopping processes that have bolstered their economy for years would create more disdain and frustration among the people.
So, not much is likely to change anytime soon. And as the Navy and the fishermen continue to spar in these waters. The real losers in this situation continue to be these communities over here. The Sri Lankans were barred from fishing during the decades-long civil war. And now they have no chance of competing with their Indian neighbours.