Resolving India-Sri Lanka Territorial Disputes: The Case of Katchatheevu

Among South Asia’s many contested borders, the India-Sri Lanka maritime boundary stands out as a rare success story. Unlike the unsettled frontiers India shares with some of its other neighbours, almost every territorial question between New Delhi and Colombo has been formally resolved through negotiation. At the heart of this settlement lies a tiny, uninhabited speck of land in the Palk Strait called Katchatheevu. Barely 285 acres in size, this islet has shaped fishing rights, triggered Supreme Court petitions, and resurfaced in national election campaigns decades after it was settled. Understanding how it was handled tells us a great deal about how territorial disputes can be managed peacefully, and why “resolved” on paper does not always mean “forgotten” in practice.

Where Katchatheevu sits and why it matters 🔗

Katchatheevu lies in the Palk Strait, the narrow band of sea separating Tamil Nadu from the Jaffna region of northern Sri Lanka. It sits northeast of Rameswaram and southwest of Jaffna. The island is small, no more than 1.6 km long and about 300 metres wide at its broadest point. It has no freshwater source, which is why nobody lives there permanently. Its only structure is St. Anthony’s Church, an early 20th-century Catholic shrine that still draws pilgrims from both countries during an annual festival.

Despite its size, the island carries real significance. The Palk Strait is one of the richest fishing grounds in the region, and Katchatheevu sits near waters that fishermen from both shores have used for generations. The island also matters as part of the wider maritime boundary in the Indian Ocean, where even small features help determine who controls fishing zones and the continental shelf.

A history of shared and shifting control 🔗

Katchatheevu’s ownership has never been simple. During the early medieval period it fell under the Jaffna kingdom of Sri Lanka. By the 17th century, control had passed to the Ramnad kingdom (the Ramnad zamindari) based in Ramanathapuram, in present-day Tamil Nadu. Under British rule, the island was administered as part of the Madras Presidency. The former Raja of Ramnad even claimed his estate had collected taxes there until the abolition of the zamindari system in the late 1940s.

The problem was that the colonial arrangement left the boundary genuinely ambiguous. Both India and Sri Lanka asserted claims over the island as early as 1921, mainly to settle where the fishing boundary should run. For decades the question stayed unresolved, with neither side able to demonstrate clear, exclusive ownership.

The 1974 and 1976 agreements 🔗

The dispute was finally addressed through two bilateral agreements. In June 1974, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Sirimavo Bandaranaike signed an accord defining the maritime boundary in the waters stretching from the Palk Strait to Adam’s Bridge. The agreement placed Katchatheevu on the Sri Lankan side of the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL). A joint statement declared that the boundary had been drawn in line with historical evidence and accepted international legal principles.

The 1974 accord had an unusual technical feature. Rather than using the standard equidistance or median-line method set out under maritime law, the two governments negotiated an “adjusted equidistant line”. The two sides divided roughly 2,100 square nautical miles in a ratio that gave India a marginally larger share. India also preferred to keep the matter strictly bilateral, avoiding any third-party involvement in deciding the boundary.

The fishing rights gap 🔗

The 1974 agreement allowed Indian fishermen and pilgrims to visit Katchatheevu without travel documents, but it did not clearly settle the question of fishing rights in the surrounding waters. This gap was significant. A second agreement in 1976 was meant to clarify the boundary between the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and it restricted fishermen from each country from fishing in the other’s waters. The 1976 accord also recognised the Wadge Bank, a rich continental-shelf fishing zone off Kanyakumari, as part of India’s exclusive economic zone.

The principle established was straightforward: each country would have sovereignty and exclusive control over the waters and islands falling on its own side of the boundary, while preserving only navigational rights across each other’s waters. The crucial point, and the source of friction ever since, is that traditional fishing rights were not preserved.

Why the fishermen problem persists 🔗

If the boundary is settled and the island clearly belongs to Sri Lanka, why do tensions keep flaring up? The answer lies almost entirely with the fishing communities of coastal Tamil Nadu. For generations, fishermen from districts like Ramanathapuram have fished in the waters around Katchatheevu, treating them as traditional grounds long before any line was drawn on a map. The IMBL changed the legal reality but not the habits or the economic dependence of these communities.

The result is a steady stream of incidents. The Sri Lankan Navy regularly arrests Tamil Nadu fishermen for crossing the IMBL and seizes their boats. In one recent episode, the navy detained 22 fishermen and four mechanised boats near Katchatheevu for allegedly crossing into Sri Lankan waters. Such arrests are not isolated; they recur month after month, and each one triggers anxiety in fishing villages around Rameswaram and Mandapam, where families wait for news and for the release of their relatives and vessels.

The deeper causes of conflict 🔗

Several factors drive these recurring confrontations. First, the maritime boundary is not physically marked at sea, so fishermen sometimes stray across it without realising. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin has repeatedly pointed out that fishermen often cross unknowingly because the line is not clearly demarcated on the water.

Second, the rise of mechanised bottom-trawling by Indian boats has worsened the friction. These trawlers deplete fish stocks and damage the seabed, pushing fishermen further into Sri Lankan waters in search of a catch and angering their counterparts across the strait. Third, after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, Colombo began guarding its northern maritime boundary far more strictly to prevent the return of insurgents, which increased the frequency of arrests.

The economic stakes are high. Repeated arrests, long detentions, and heavy fines have pushed many in the coastal community into serious financial distress. This is why the fishermen’s issue, rather than the ownership of the island itself, is the live problem in India-Sri Lanka relations today.

The political and legal afterlife of a settled dispute 🔗

Although the central government treats the matter as closed, Katchatheevu has had a long political afterlife in Tamil Nadu. In 1991, the Tamil Nadu Assembly passed a resolution demanding that the island be retrieved from Sri Lanka. This was not a one-off; the Assembly has passed similar resolutions on more than one occasion, most recently urging the Centre to act on retrieval. These resolutions reflect genuine local anger over the treatment of fishermen, even though, as constitutional experts note, a state assembly resolution on a subject that falls under the Union’s control is not legally binding.

The constitutional argument 🔗

The legal challenge to the 1974 and 1976 agreements rests on an important constitutional principle. Former Chief Ministers J. Jayalalithaa and M. Karunanidhi both filed petitions in the Supreme Court seeking to declare the agreements void. Their core argument drew on the Supreme Court’s 1960 ruling in the Berubari Union case, which held that ceding any Indian territory to a foreign country requires a constitutional amendment passed by Parliament. Since Katchatheevu was handed over without such an amendment, the petitioners argued the transfer was unlawful.

The central government has consistently rejected this framing. In submissions to the Supreme Court, the Centre argued that no Indian territory was ceded because the island had always been in dispute and had never been formally demarcated as part of India. In this view, the 1974 agreement settled an undecided boundary rather than giving away established Indian land. The government has also made clear that the agreements grant Indian fishermen access to visit the island but do not confer fishing rights in the surrounding waters. The case has continued for over a decade and remains before the courts.

When the issue returned to national politics 🔗

The controversy resurfaced dramatically in 2024 ahead of national elections. After a Right to Information request revealed details of the 1974 handover, senior leaders publicly criticised the then-Congress government’s decision to “cede” the island. Analysts warned, however, that any move to unilaterally reopen or invalidate the agreement could damage India’s credibility, since other countries might then question whether India would honour its other bilateral commitments. This episode showed how a question settled fifty years earlier could still be revived as a potent political symbol.

A model of peaceful settlement, with lessons 🔗

Despite the periodic friction, the India-Sri Lanka case remains a strong example of how neighbours can resolve territorial disputes without conflict. The two countries negotiated directly, accepted a defined boundary, and have largely kept the peace for half a century. There is no active territorial dispute over Katchatheevu between the two governments; what remains is a humanitarian and livelihood problem centred on fishermen, not a contest over sovereignty.

The episode also carries a clear lesson for managing disputes anywhere. A boundary agreement that resolves the legal question can still leave human and economic problems unaddressed. The 1974 and 1976 accords fixed the line but did not adequately protect the traditional fishing communities whose livelihoods depended on the contested waters. That unresolved gap, rather than any disagreement over the island itself, is why the issue keeps returning. Lasting peace on contested borders, in other words, requires attention not only to maps and sovereignty but to the people whose daily lives those lines disrupt.

What do you think? Should a boundary agreement that is legally settled and decades old be reopened because it failed to protect affected communities, or does honouring such agreements matter more for a country’s credibility? And is the real solution to the fishermen’s crisis a change in the boundary, or better-regulated and more sustainable fishing practices on both sides?

References

1. https://www.shankariasparliament.com/current-affairs/gs-i/katchatheevu-island-dispute
2. https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/katchatheevu-row-island-history-controversy-and-handover-to-sri-lanka-124040100312_1.html
3. https://www.stimson.org/2024/cartographic-anxiety-the-case-of-katchatheevu-in-india-sri-lanka-relations/
4. https://www.orissapost.com/861012-2/
5. https://www.thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/three-tn-fishermen-arrested-by-sri-lankan-navy-for-crossing-maritime-boundary
6. https://theprint.in/india/explained-katchatheevu-and-political-controversy-around-it/2576781/
7. https://www.adaderana.lk/news.php?nid=106875