Speech by Mahishini Colonne, High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to India

CALM WATERS, RISING TIDE: Stability as the Foundation for Indian Ocean Growth
Centre for Peace Studies
&
India International Centre, New Delhi
Friday, 10 July 2026

The Centre for Peace Studies (CPS), in collaboration with India International Centre (IIC), hosted a special talk by H.E. Mahishini Colonne, High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to India, on 10 July 2026 in New Delhi. The event was chaired by Dr Ashok Behuria, Chairman of the Centre for Peace Studies, New Delhi.

With this, Centre for Peace Studies launched “Peace Dialogue: Shared Risks to Shared Futures”, as part of its commitment to promoting informed dialogue on regional and global issues with a bearing on peace and development.

The speech by Her Excellency Mahishini Colonne, was titled: “Calm Waters, Rising Tide: Stability as the Foundation for Indian Ocean Growth.”

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This important lecture at the India International Centre framed the Indian Ocean not merely as a theatre of strategic contestation but as a shared neighbourhood whose prosperity depends on peace, dialogue, and trust. Drawing on history, she reminded the audience that the ocean has always thrived when it connected peoples rather than divided them, and that stability is the indispensable foundation for growth.

The central message was clear: declarations alone cannot secure peace; it must be built patiently through institutions, law, and cooperative architecture led by regional states themselves. India’s proactive role, Sri Lanka’s resilience, and the collective responsibility of littoral nations were presented as essential to shaping an ocean defined by openness and shared prosperity.

By weaving together civilisational ties, contemporary challenges, and future opportunities, Her Excellency Ms. Colonne underscored that dialogue and partnership are the true anchors of stability. Peace in the Indian Ocean, she argued, is not an abstract aspiration but a practical necessity—one that safeguards livelihoods, sustains commerce, and ensures that calm waters can indeed lift all tides.

We are presenting here, the complete text of the High Commissioner's address for the benefit of scholars, policymakers, practitioners, students, and all those interested in the future of the Indian Ocean region.

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Dr. Ashok Behuria, Chairman, Centre for Peace Studies,

Distinguished Guests, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good evening. Namaskar.

Let me begin by expressing my sincere appreciation to the Centre for Peace Studies and the India International Centre for inviting me to speak here this evening.

For nearly seven decades, the India International Centre has been one of India's foremost spaces for dialogue and reflection, bringing together scholars, diplomats, policymakers, artists and citizens from many walks of life. It describes itself as a place where ideas grow. I am honoured to contribute, in some small way, to that tradition.

I also hope that I honour through my words and ideas this evening, the vision and tireless work of the founder of the Centre for Peace Studies, Prof. Riyaz Punjabi.

I want to say something at the outset that I mean quite genuinely. I am not an academic. I am not a security analyst. And I don't think I am qualified to pronounce on maritime doctrine.

What I am is a diplomat, and a Sri Lankan. A Sri Lankan who cares rather deeply about this ocean. Not only in my professional capacity, but as someone who believes, without embarrassment, in the civilisational friendship between India and Sri Lanka. A friendship older than both our republics. A friendship that has, at times, been complicated – as all deep relationships are – but which has never, at its core, been broken.

Two days ago, at the NATO Summit in Ankara, President Trump declared the US-Iran ceasefire over. The Strait of Hormuz through which one-fifth of the world's traded oil passes is, as a result, no longer stable. I raise this not to comment on the politics of the situation, but because it is directly connected to the topic that we are focusing on this evening.

Sri Lanka, like many in this region, is deeply concerned. We are concerned that the uninterrupted flow of energy supplies and commerce through these waterways is hampered. For countries like ours, that flow is not a strategic interest. It is an economic lifeline.

As I reflected on the theme for this evening – 'Calm Waters, Rising Tide: Stability as the Foundation for Indian Ocean Growth' – I realised I was thinking about it not only as a diplomat, but as a Sri Lankan.

For Sri Lanka, the Indian Ocean is not a distant strategic concept. It is our neighbourhood. It is our livelihood. It is the space through which our history has unfolded and through which our future will be shaped.

We are an island nation. Every barrel of fuel that powers our economy, every container that carries our exports, every tourist who arrives on our shores – all of it depends, in one way or another, on these waters remaining open, peaceful and secure. The ocean has never separated Sri Lanka from the world. It has always connected us to it. For many countries, the sea defines a border. For Sri Lanka, it has always defined a bridge.

William Dalrymple, in his recent book The Golden Road, captures something of what this ocean has always been. He argues that for nearly fifteen centuries, India was the world's greatest exporter – not only of goods, but of ideas. Mathematics, Buddhism, astronomy, medicine, architecture – all of it travelled outward from this subcontinent, reaching Rome, Baghdad, Java, Cambodia, China, and of course, Ceylon.

The archaeological evidence places us at the literal centre of that ancient commercial world. Roman gold coins have been found along the coasts of India and Sri Lanka — the same coins appearing at Aden and along the Red Sea. Think about what that tells us. Two thousand years ago, Roman currency was reaching our shores. Not because Rome invaded. Because Rome traded. The Indian Ocean was a connected commercial system – and India and Ceylon were at its heart.

And the mechanism, Dalrymple is careful to note, was not conquest. It was trade. It was the fact that India had something the world wanted. And the ocean between them was the road.

Sri Lanka was never simply a stopping point along those routes. Our ports welcomed merchants from distant shores. By the first century, Greek and Roman writers knew our island as Taprobane – a flourishing centre of maritime trade. The Chinese monk Fa-hsien found in Anuradhapura one of the great centres of Buddhist learning in Asia. During the reign of King Devanampiyatissa, the arrival of Arahat Mahinda from the court of Emperor Ashoka forged one of history's most enduring civilisational links. This is a bond that is still celebrated in Sri Lanka more than twenty-three centuries later.

I think the Indian Ocean flourished at the time because people trusted that the monsoon would return. They trusted that ports would welcome strangers. They trusted that agreements, in whatever form they existed at the time, would be honoured.

Perhaps the importance of trust is one of the oldest lessons this ocean has taught us.

Nearly a century ago, Mahatma Gandhi visited Ceylon. He described it as "a fragrant beautiful pearl dropped from the nasal ring of India." Modern diplomacy requires us to be a little more careful than Mahatma Gandhi could afford to be. But I understand entirely the sentiment he wished to convey. He was speaking not of ownership, but of proximity. Not of hierarchy, but of familiarity. Of two peoples whose histories have been intertwined for millennia.

Today, India and Sri Lanka are two sovereign republics. Yet our relationship cannot be understood through geography alone. The teachings of the Buddha crossed the Palk Strait more than twenty-three centuries ago and became part of Sri Lanka's identity. Pilgrims and merchants crossed these waters long before passports existed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described India and Sri Lanka as 'civilisational twins.' Twins have their own personality, their own aspirations, their own voices. But they instinctively understand one another.

President Anura Kumara Disanayaka chose India for his first State Visit in December 2024 after assuming office. That decision was both symbolic and substantive. It reaffirmed that while Sri Lanka's friendships extend across the world, our relationship with India occupies a unique place, shaped by geography, history, culture and the simple reality that neighbours have a special responsibility towards one another.

The Palk Strait is some twenty-two miles wide at its narrowest. It has never been wide enough to separate what two thousand years have woven together.

Today, the Indian Ocean has once again become central to the global conversation. The numbers alone make the case. Around eighty percent of the world's seaborne oil trade passes through this ocean and its chokepoints. Over five trillion dollars in trade transits it annually. Nearly one third of humanity lives in countries bordering its shores.

Three straits on its rim govern the energy and trade flows of the entire global economy.

• The Strait of Hormuz: the sole maritime exit for roughly one-fifth of the world's traded oil.

• The Strait of Malacca: carrying roughly forty percent of global trade and the overwhelming share of East Asia's energy imports.

• The Bab el-Mandeb: the only maritime entry from this ocean to the Suez Canal, and therefore to Europe.

So, this ocean is one of the principal arteries of the global economy.

From where Sri Lanka sits, however, there is another way of looking at this ocean. And that is – as a shared neighbourhood. Neighbourhoods have a very simple logic. When one household prospers, the whole street benefits. When one household faces difficulty, neighbours feel the consequences. The question before us is not simply who will shape the Indian Ocean. It is what kind of Indian Ocean we wish to shape – one defined by rivalry, or one characterised by trust, by openness and shared prosperity.

History reminds us that this ocean has always been at its best when it connected people rather than divided them. That remains our challenge today.

History has a way of testing ideas. If we believe that stability matters, events have a way of asking us to prove it.

The past few years have been one such test. When commercial shipping came under sustained attack in the Red Sea, what appeared at first to be a regional security challenge quickly became a global economic issue. Ships were diverted around the Cape of Good Hope. Voyages became longer. Freight rates increased significantly. Supply chains slowed. Egypt's Suez Canal revenue, which reached a record $10.25 billion in 2023, collapsed to under four billion dollars in 2024.

Then the crisis in West Asia escalated beyond anything the ceasefire of last month had promised to contain. As we know now that ceasefire is not quite holding. Oil prices have jumped. The naval blockade – lifted as part of the ceasefire deal – is now threatened again. So, the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world's traded oil passes, is once again an active conflict zone.

The IMF's July 2026 World Economic Outlook Update, released on the very same day the ceasefire collapsed, projects India to remain the fastest-growing major economy in the world – at 6.4 percent in the coming year. That projection rests on the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz begins reopening in mid-July and conditions broadly return to their pre-war state by March 2027.

The connection between stability in this ocean and growth across the entire region could not be more directly or more uncomfortably illustrated.

The lesson is unmistakable: geography still matters. Perhaps more than ever. Distance has not disappeared. It has become more interconnected. The consequences of instability travel faster than ever before – through shipping lanes, through financial markets, through insurance premiums, through commodity prices, through energy costs, and ultimately through the daily lives of ordinary people.

The invoice for instability always arrives. The question is not whether we pay it. The question is whether we invest enough in stability to avoid receiving it again.

For Sri Lanka, this is not an abstract proposition. Energy costs rose. A regional air hub that connects us to our tourists was disrupted. Remittances from Sri Lankans working across the Gulf were affected. And when a naval incident occurred approximately forty nautical miles off our southern coast earlier this year, Sri Lanka was called upon to act; not as a party to the conflict, but as a responsible maritime nation, on the principles of humanitarian obligation and the law of the sea.

For an island nation, maritime stability is not really foreign policy. It is economic policy. And economic policy is ultimately about people.

That is why discussions on maritime stability cannot remain only the preserve of security specialists or naval planners. Calm waters do not only create prosperity. They create predictability. And in today's economy, predictability is one of the most valuable assets any nation can possess. Investors will not commit without it. Shipping companies will not extend routes without it. Manufacturers will not build supply chains without it. And families – in the cost of fuel, of food, of medicine – will feel its absence long before any analyst names it.

We talk about shipping lanes. We talk less about what lies beneath them. The Indian Ocean floor carries an undersea cable network that handles over 99 percent of international digital data traffic. This is the invisible backbone of the global internet. Disruption to these cables is not a theoretical risk: there have been incidents, deliberate and accidental, in the Red Sea and elsewhere. A conversation about Indian Ocean stability that focuses only on surface shipping is an incomplete one. The digital economy runs through this ocean too.

Last month, the United States announced that its Indo-Pacific Command would revert to its older name – Pacific Command, dropping the word 'Indo' that was added in 2018. Officials stated carefully that the area of responsibility and the mission remain unchanged. I make no judgment on what that decision reflects about any bilateral relationship. It is not my place, and this is not the occasion either. What I will say is what it illustrates. The frameworks that external powers construct for this ocean – what they call it, how they organise their presence within it – will always shift with their own strategic priorities, and their own politics.

The same is true of ceasefires, and of the diplomatic frameworks constructed around them. What does not shift is the ocean itself. Its geography is permanent. Its chokepoints are permanent. The trade that must flow through it is permanent. No press release anywhere – and no declaration of any kind – reorganises any of that.

And yet, earlier this year, the United States Special Envoy for South and Central Asia, Ambassador Sergio Gor, visited the Port of Colombo and stated on record that Colombo is 'a critical hub connecting South Asia to global markets, and that watching operations there makes it clear why maritime security matters.' He added, that this is why the US-Sri Lanka partnership is helping advance secure and transparent trade, support ongoing efforts to improve port efficiency, and protect the integrity of supply chains that have a direct impact for US manufacturers and consumers. The interest of the world's largest economy in the security of these waters is not rhetorical. It is commercial and immediate. What changes is the language. What does not change is this ocean's indispensability.

That is precisely why the work of building durable regional architecture – owned and operated by the states who actually live here, is so important.

There is a tendency today to cite certain established instruments of Indian Ocean governance as though their authority is self-evident. I want to say something on this that I think deserves honest examination.

In 1971, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 2832 – the Declaration of the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace. Sri Lanka was an original co-sponsor. We put that resolution forward as a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement. But Sri Lanka also, I think, has both the right and the obligation to assess clearly where that instrument stands today.

Earlier this year, former Foreign Secretary and former High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to India, Prasad Kariyawasam, writing in the Daily FT after the 9th Indian Ocean Conference in April, set out why honest examination of this resolution is overdue. The declaration was never legally binding. It created no treaty obligations, no enforcement mechanism, no compliance body. It was never implemented. The Ad Hoc Committee established to take it forward met year after year and achieved nothing. And most tellingly, the major naval powers whose behaviour the resolution sought to constrain all abstained on the vote. They never accepted its premise. As he wrote: 'A declaration that the parties it targets refuse to acknowledge has no practical way forward.' His conclusion was direct, and I share it with you today. He said: we do a disservice to the Indian Ocean Region by hiding behind outdated instruments rather than building something that actually addresses today's realities.

Sri Lanka also contributed to the making of another instrument during those same Cold War years – one that did work. Under the leadership of Ambassador Shirley Amarasinghe, Sri Lanka guided the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea for many years. The result was UNCLOS, which is today called the Constitution of the Oceans. This is a binding legal framework that actually governs maritime behaviour. An initiative that produced results.

Peace in this ocean cannot, I think, be declared into existence. It must be built – through institutions, through law, through the daily, patient work of states that understand what the alternative costs.

What must replace outdated instruments therefore, is not another declaration. It is, perhaps, architecture. And India is, without question, its most important builder.

Prime Minister Modi is on a visit to Australia, Indonesia, and New Zealand this week. During the last week of June, he was in the Seychelles where he also met the Prime Minister of Mauritius. Connect those points on a map and the importance of the Indian Ocean Region becomes clear.

In Jakarta, one outcome was a commitment to jointly develop Sabang Port at the north-western entrance to the Strait of Malacca – architecture placed at precisely the chokepoint that needs it, in the same week that Hormuz came under attack.

The MAHASAGAR vision – Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions – is an important framework that demonstrates India's approach not as dominance but as partnership. Security and development not as competing objectives, but as mutually reinforcing ones. In a region where the temptation to frame every relationship as a great power contest is considerable, that framing matters.

The Colombo Security Conclave has now been transformed into a formally institutionalised regional security organisation, growing to six members, a permanent Secretariat in Colombo, and with a Secretary-General appointed. What began in 2011 as a conversation between three countries is now becoming something more durable.

India is also building physical architecture in the east. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands – forty nautical miles from the Malacca approach – are becoming a forward presence in the eastern Indian Ocean. New facilities, extended airstrips, deepened jetties. The eastern Indian Ocean is being watched and engaged as never before.

India's sustained, present, principled engagement in the Indian Ocean Region is important, and there is no substitute for a neighbour who shows up.

There is another reason why this conversation on a stable Indian Ocean has particular meaning for Sri Lanka. Over the past four years, our country has travelled an extraordinary journey. We experienced one of the most severe economic crises in our independent history. Recovery demanded courage. It required painful reforms, fiscal discipline, and political resolve. But above all, it required confidence.

Among those who demonstrated that confidence at our most difficult moment, India's role was exceptional. As External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar said at the time, India decided 'not to wait for others.' India took proactive steps to support Sri Lanka's recovery and became the first bilateral creditor to provide financing assurances for Sri Lanka's IMF programme. That decision sent a powerful signal. Confidence, demonstrated by one trusted partner, encouraged confidence from others. India's support at the time was not simply an investment in Sri Lanka. It was an investment in regional stability.

India acted again when Cyclone Ditwah struck Sri Lanka last November. On the very day the cyclone made landfall, India launched Operation Sagar Bandhu. INS Vikrant happened to be in Colombo for the Sri Lanka Navy’s 75^th International Fleet Review (IFR 2025). Joined by INS Udaygiri, they undertook immediate humanitarian operations. There is no more direct illustration of what neighbourhood means in the Indian Ocean than an aircraft carrier in your port, turned to relief work as soon as disaster strikes.

Cyclone Ditwah caused an estimated $4.1 billion in direct damage – the equivalent of approximately four percent of Sri Lanka's GDP.

Climate scientists have found that storms of this intensity are now significantly more intense over Sri Lanka because of climate change. The Indian Ocean's stability challenge is not only geopolitical. It is environmental. And for island economies, the two cannot be separated.

Today, Sri Lanka is no longer speaking only about recovery. We are speaking about renewal. Economic growth has returned. Inflation has fallen. Tourism is recovering. Foreign reserves have improved. Debt restructuring is nearing completion.

Only days ago, on the 1st of July, the World Bank once again classified Sri Lanka as an upper-middle-income country. We welcome that recognition – but we do so with humility and caution. We have occupied that category before, in 2019. Economists have rightly reminded us that sustainable prosperity depends not simply on growth, but on stronger exports, greater private investment, structural reform, and institutions that inspire confidence. The lesson of our recent history is that resilience matters more than rankings. That is the work that still lies ahead.

The IMF also reminds us that energy-importing economies with limited participation in the technology upswing face the greatest strain from current disruptions. Sri Lanka is precisely that economy. The foreign reserves we rebuilt at such cost are directly exposed to what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz today. That is not a reason for pessimism. It is a reason for urgency – about the work of building the stability this ocean needs.

Yet there is every reason for measured optimism. Confidence is returning. Investor interest is growing. And next week, President Disanayaka travels to Paris where he is expected to meet the leadership of CMA CGM – one of the world's three largest shipping companies – to discuss future maritime investment in Colombo. That meeting is the most direct possible illustration of the title of this evening's talk. Calm waters make a rising tide possible. When the conditions are right, investment can follow.

Living in New Delhi has given me the privilege of witnessing an India that is increasingly confident about its place in the world. A confident, outward – looking India creates opportunities for the entire region. Sri Lanka welcomes that confidence. This is not simply because India is our closest neighbour, but because we believe our futures are most secure when they are built together.

Let me say something specific about what Sri Lanka brings to this partnership – and to this ocean.

Sri Lanka's GDP per capita now stands at $5,002 – and alongside the Maldives, Sri Lanka is now one of two South Asian nations classified as upper middle income by the World Bank.

According to the UNDP's 2025 Human Development Index, Sri Lanka ranks 89th among 193 countries and leads South Asia on human development with stronger performance in education, health and income indicators.

I raise these figures not to make a comparative point, but to make a partnership point. A country with this human capital profile, this geographic position, this port infrastructure, is an economy with genuine complementary strengths – strengths that, when connected to India's scale and dynamism, can produce something valuable.

The Port of Colombo is South Asia's largest transshipment hub – handling a record 8.29 million TEUs in 2025, over eighty percent of which is transshipment cargo. The primary beneficiary of that function is India. Approximately seventy percent of India-bound transshipment cargo moves through Colombo. When Indian exporters and importers send goods to and from the world's markets, Colombo is most often the node through which those goods pass.

The record year at Colombo was driven by four terminals. This includes one operated by an Indian company and one managed by a Chinese company – working side by side in the same port, contributing to the same record. This is a practical illustration of what complementary engagement looks like. Colombo does not ask shipping lines to choose. It asks them to call.

Colombo and Vizhinjam are sometimes described as rivals. The same Indian company that built Vizhinjam also operates the West International Terminal in Colombo.

Ultra-large vessels calling at Vizhinjam will still need a feeder network across South Asia and East Africa – and that network runs through Colombo. These are not rival ports competing for the same function. They are nodes in the same network, serving the same trade. That, I would suggest, is the model the Indian Ocean needs more of. Not ports fighting for market share, but ports integrating into a regional architecture where each plays to its geographic strength.

And Colombo is not our only story. Trincomalee – one of the world's finest natural harbours on our northeast coast holds what is described as the largest oil tank farm between the Middle East and Singapore, comprising ninety-nine tanks built during the Second World War, with a combined capacity of over 1.2 million tons. In April 2025, India, Sri Lanka and the UAE signed a trilateral Memorandum of Understanding to develop Trincomalee as a regional energy hub. Colombo handles containers. Trincomalee, once this project is implemented, will handle energy.

The same logic applies to the proposed India-Sri Lanka power grid interconnection. When implemented, it will allow Sri Lanka to import electricity during domestic shortages and, critically, to export surplus renewable energy into the Indian grid.

Sri Lanka aims to generate seventy percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030. That ambition, connected to India's grid, creates the possibility of Sri Lanka becoming an energy contributor to the region.

I raise all of this not to present a catalogue of projects. I raise it to make a point about what Sri Lanka is trying to be: a reliable, stable, open node and hub in the Indian Ocean's emerging infrastructure.

We spend considerable time in diplomatic and academic circles discussing the security architecture of this ocean. All of it is necessary. But I think we have paid insufficient attention to the economic architecture. This asymmetry is itself a form of instability. An ocean that is militarily patrolled but economically under-integrated is not a stable ocean.

The global ocean economy, valued at roughly $1.5 trillion in 2015, is projected to reach $3 trillion by 2030.

But that blue economy potential is itself at risk. The Indian Ocean is the fastest warming ocean on earth. Rising sea temperatures are bleaching coral reefs, disrupting fisheries, intensifying cyclones and threatening the coastlines of the very countries that depend on this ocean most. Ocean health and ocean stability are not separate conversations. A warming, degraded Indian Ocean cannot be a stable Indian Ocean. And for island nations like Sri Lanka, this is not a distant warning. Cyclone Ditwah reminded us last November that it is already the present. 

The fisheries, the offshore energy, the tourism, the shipping services – these are the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the countries that border this ocean. Most of them are developing economies. Most of them have never had a seat at the table where the rules of this ocean are written.

The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) is the one forum that brings together the littoral states across the full arc of this ocean, on terms of sovereign equality, with a mandate that is explicitly economic as well as security-oriented. India chairs IORA at this moment. It is, to my mind, an opportunity not merely for dialogue, but for genuine ambition – to make IORA the primary vehicle through which the states of this ocean collectively invest in their shared maritime commons. A forum that agrees to shared commitments, shared financing, shared standards – and then implements them.

The same applies to BIMSTEC. The Bay of Bengal has, for centuries, connected South Asia to Southeast Asia. BIMSTEC reminds us that it is not a dividing line but a bridge – for trade, energy, digital connectivity, tourism and people-to-people exchange. Sri Lanka believes BIMSTEC has an increasingly important role in connecting two of the world's most dynamic regions.

Trust and confidence, however, do not emerge from institutions alone. They are built through every direct flight between our countries. Through every ferry service across the Palk Strait. Through every investment, every student exchange, every business venture. Business leaders, scientists, teachers, artists, entrepreneurs – they too are diplomats of a kind. For centuries, India and Sri Lanka have been connected by people – by monks and merchants, by pilgrims and traders, by families separated by some twenty-two miles of water who found ways to reach each other across it. People-to-people connectivity remains one of our deepest strengths even today. 

The India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement – India's first bilateral free trade agreement – was signed in 1998 and has governed our commercial relationship for a quarter century. The Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement which remains under negotiation points to how much further it can go.

India is Sri Lanka's largest trading partner. Indian investments accounted for approximately fifty percent of total foreign investment into Sri Lanka last year. The physical connectivity being built is tangible: five hundred kilometres of railway line rebuilt or restored with Indian assistance, a new signalling system on the Maho-Omanthai corridor, the Kankesanthurai port modernisation project, the Nagapattinam-Kankesanthurai ferry service now a regular feature, and work on restoring the Rameswaram-Talaimannar link.

One hundred and eighty weekly flights connect our two countries. FitsAir, a Sri Lankan budget airline started direct flights between Ahmedabad and Colombo last month. Between Delhi and Colombo there are about 5 daily flights now with three airlines operating between the two cities – Air India, SriLankan Airlines, and Indigo.

In the digital domain, the Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity project (SLUDI) is moving toward implementation, which will enable the full stack of digital public infrastructure in Sri Lanka, modelled on India's own transformative experience. Energy connectivity, as I have described, is advancing on multiple fronts. India's total development assistance to Sri Lanka now stands at over seven and a half billion dollars, including grants of over eight hundred and fifty million.

The India-Sri Lanka partnership is one that has been tested – by our crisis, by regional turbulence, by the complexity of being close neighbours with distinct sovereign interests – and has deepened through each test over time. That, I would suggest, is what a model bilateral relationship in the Indian Ocean looks like. Two countries building infrastructure that benefits the region around them.

Sri Lanka knows that geography alone does not attract investment. Reliability is what keeps it – and reliability is earned, decision by decision, year after year.

President Disanayaka has said very clearly, both during his first State Visit to New Delhi in December 2024 and again during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka in April 2025, that Sri Lanka will not allow its land or the oceans around it to be used in any manner inimical to India’s interests. That public assurance, at the highest level, is perhaps the clearest expression of what reliability means in practice.

Every time India has opened itself more fully to Sri Lanka – through the Free Trade Agreement, through emergency support at our moments of need, through investment in our ports and energy infrastructure – Sri Lanka, and the Sri Lankan people have responded. The return on India's confidence in us has always been positive. Also, we have not taken access for granted. We have used it.

Brandix, one of Sri Lanka’s leading companies, operates a Special Economic Zone in Visakhapatnam employing approximately 20,000 Indians. This is not something that is well known, but this is what it looks like – this is the positive impact of the relationship working in both directions.

Sri Lanka's ask is that India makes it easier, not harder, for Sri Lankan goods and services to reach Indian markets. And when Sri Lankan businesses and professionals come to India – as Brandix did, employing 20,000 Indians in Visakapatnam – ask not whether they compete with India, but what they contribute to India. Because the evidence answers that question clearly.

A Sri Lanka that is prosperous, stable, and integrated with India is not a liability on India's doorstep. It is an asset at the centre of the Indian Ocean.

As I reflected on what I wanted to say this evening, I found myself returning repeatedly to one simple question: what ultimately keeps an ocean peaceful?

Is it naval power? International law? Economic interdependence? Diplomacy? The answer, I think, is all of these. But beneath them lies something even more fundamental: confidence.

Confidence between neighbours. Confidence between governments. Confidence between trading partners. Confidence that agreements will be honoured. Confidence that sea lanes will remain open. Confidence that when challenges arise, countries will choose cooperation over confrontation.

For more than two thousand years, the Indian Ocean has rewarded those who built that confidence across its waters. Dalrymple's Golden Road was not kept open by a resolution. It was kept open by the daily logic of commerce – by the trust that accumulated through every transaction honoured, every port that welcomed strangers, every agreement kept across seasons and centuries.

When I first reflected on the title of this talk – Calm Waters, Rising Tide – I thought it described a sequence. First stability. Then growth.

I have since come to a different conclusion. The relationship is not linear. It is circular. Calm waters create prosperity. Prosperity builds confidence. Confidence attracts investment. Investment creates opportunity. And opportunity gives nations an even greater stake in preserving calm waters. That, perhaps, is the enduring lesson of the Indian Ocean.

For Sri Lanka, this is not an academic proposition. It is lived experience. We know what instability costs. We know what trusted partnerships can achieve. And we know that the work of building stability – in our own institutions, in our bilateral relationships, in the regional architecture we share – is never finished. It is simply continued.

History has once again placed the Indian Ocean at the centre of global affairs. Whether it becomes an ocean characterised primarily by rivalry or by cooperation will depend on the choices we make – collectively, patiently, responsibly, with the confidence that our futures are more closely connected than ever before.

The Indian Ocean is not where Sri Lanka happens to be. It is, in the deepest sense, who we are. And that is why Sri Lanka will continue to work with India and with all our partners across this region to ensure that these waters remain peaceful, open, stable and prosperous – not only for our generation, but for those that follow.

Thank you.