World: Crisis over 160 Acres

• Share

Kachcha Tivu, a square-shaped island nesting among the waves of the Palk Strait between India and Ceylon, is about a fifth as large as New York City's Central Park. One-half mile long and barely one-half mile wide, it serves mostly as a fishermen's stopover and a smugglers' base. Once a year pilgrims from Ceylon and India come to the island to pay homage to its patron saint, St. Anthony, in a tiny church that measures only 12 ft. by 14 ft. and can hold at most 100 worshipers. Last week Kachcha Tivu, Tamil words that mean barren island, gained a measure of international prominence by becoming the center of one of history's more ridiculous disputes.

It began when Ceylon, apparently emboldened by last month's decision of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to cede 350 sq. mi. of the worthless Rann of Kutch to Pakistan, suddenly announced that it, and not India, controlled the uninhabited island. The Ceylonese, who are predominantly Buddhist, based their claim largely on the fact that St. Anthony's church on Kachcha Tivu fell within the diocese of the Roman Catholic bishop of the northern Ceylonese city of Jaffna.

When word of Ceylon's claim reached New Delhi, no one at first knew which island the Ceylonese were laying claim to; after all, there is little on Kachcha Tivu but cacti. Indira Gandhi, deeply involved in such major problems as a stagnant economy, overpopulation, food shortages and the disintegration of her own Congress Party, would dearly have loved to sidestep the entire issue. In today's India, however, the absurd and obscure seem frequently to become major affairs of state. Once they got a fix on the island, the opposition parties, led by the nationalist Jana Sangh, demanded that Indira send troops and warships to hold all 160 acres of it for India.

Bowing to the outbursts, Indira was forced to trot out India's claim to Kachcha Tivu, which dates back hundreds of years to ownership of the islet by landlords on the Indian mainland. Meanwhile, in an escalation of absurdity, the Ceylonese government of Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake became increasingly persistent in its claims. Reason: a wild and highly unlikely rumor swept through Ceylon that there was oil beneath Kachcha Tivu's sand-and-coral surface.