Nizam Kariyappar and the Perils of Performing Foreign Policy
There are moments in politics when silence is mistaken for absence, and restraint is misread as indifference. Sri Lanka Muslim Congress MP Nizam Kariyappar appears to have fallen squarely into that trap.
His decision to boycott President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s Iftar gathering — coupled with the rather theatrical suggestion that others ought to follow suit — rests on a single contention: that Colombo has failed to issue an ოფიციcial statement condemning the attacks on Iran. In Kariyappar’s calculus, the absence of declaratory outrage is, it seems, evidence of moral failure.
It is an argument that reveals less about the government’s foreign policy than it does about the MP’s own grasp of it.
For while statements may satisfy the immediate appetites of political audiences, they are rarely the currency in which serious diplomacy is conducted. States act; they do not merely emote. And in this instance, Sri Lanka has acted — quietly, deliberately, and, by most accounts, responsibly. The dignified handling and repatriation of deceased Iranian naval personnel, reportedly undertaken despite external pressure, is not the behaviour of a government indifferent to Tehran. Nor is the decision to shelter hundreds of Iranian nationals stranded at sea — a logistical and humanitarian undertaking that speaks more eloquently than any communiqué drafted for domestic consumption.
Mr Kariyappar’s intervention therefore raises an uncomfortable question: when did foreign policy become a performance measured by the decibel level of its statements rather than the substance of its actions?
There is, of course, a domestic audience to consider. In a political culture increasingly addicted to instant signalling, the temptation to reduce complex geopolitical balancing acts into binary moral declarations is strong. But it is also profoundly unserious. Sri Lanka, positioned delicately within an increasingly polarised global order, cannot afford the luxury of rhetorical absolutism. Its survival has long depended on a more nuanced craft — one that understands when to speak, and when to act without speaking.
To demand a public denunciation, absent regard for these constraints, is to confuse diplomacy with activism.
That confusion is particularly striking in a figure trained in the law. One might reasonably expect a lawyer to appreciate the distinction between evidence and assertion, between what is demonstrable and what is merely declared. Yet Mr Kariyappar’s critique seems to rest entirely on the latter — the absence of a statement — while disregarding the former: the material record of humanitarian conduct.
His proposed boycott of the President’s Iftar event thus feels less like a principled stand and more like a gesture — a piece of political theatre calibrated for visibility rather than effect. And like much theatre, it risks collapsing under the weight of its own exaggeration.
There is, finally, an irony at play. The very government he accuses of silence has chosen to engage through action — an approach that, in diplomatic terms, often carries greater credibility than words. To dismiss such actions as insufficient simply because they were not accompanied by a press release is to elevate form over substance in a manner that borders on the absurd.
Sri Lanka’s foreign policy challenges are real, and they are growing. They require seriousness, discipline, and above all, an appreciation of the difference between symbolism and strategy.
On this occasion, Mr Kariyappar appears to have mistaken one for the other — and in doing so, rather conspicuously lost the plot.