The UPA government has deservingly received all the flak for the affidavit on Sri Rama. Having said that the Government’s contention that the Sethu is not man-made has to be conceded. The Sethu was monkey-made with a little but significant contribution from the squirrels (remember what Grandma told about how the squirrels have 3 parallel lines running through their back).
The Sethu seems to have suddenly received religious importance. The question as to what religious and cultural significance the Sethu commands begs to be answered. Does one perform Pooja to the Sethu or visit it and offer ‘baguna’. Do people go in sea diving or snorkeling to pay tribute to the bridge that helped Rama cross the Palk Straits.
While religious, cultural and archaeological heritage needs to be preserved, one wonders whether a particular "monument" which was hitherto neglected develops religious value all of a sudden.
If the "monument" has no other cultural significance but for having been created for Rama’s use I do not see much harm in pulling part of it down to put through a canal ( assuming of course that the canal will bring in untold dividends in the area of shipping and the cost and time savings impact on our exports and imports and supply chain). Admittedly, the Sethu is unlikely to yield benefits akin to what the Canal yielded to Panama or the Suez to Egypt but someone in his right mind can be expected to have done his math.
Considering the economic impact on the Sri Lankan economy and the commercial implications on the Colombo port one might hazard a guess as to the likely promoters of the recent "Stop Sethu" agitation. IF this speculation is to be true, it gives re-birth to the charge of being under the influence of a foreign power, except this time it is neither Congress nor Sonia Gandhi.
The DMK has gone on record with its historical belief. The party which fields Periyar to masquerade atheism as rationalism and believes it is blasphemy (sic) to concede to history.
Let us face it. There are far too many points for the Ramayana not to be true.There are far too many temples littered all over the subcontinent right from Ayodhya in the North to Rameshwaram in the South which are evidence cast-in-stone to the story of Ramayana ( giving allowances for minor regional variations). It would be beyond the capacity of any man (x number of years back in evolutionary history) to have conceived of such a complex seamless story without any loose ends and then visit of each of the places and plant the temples as evidence.
The DMK’s man T R Baalu (the faithful follower of Karunanidhi) sees the Sethu as his chance to be immortalised in the Canal. A fair hope considering that there is little else that can be considered his legacy for all the 11 years that he has been a Union Minister. TR Baalu, the lucky MP from Chennai (South) – the constituency where Yours Truly is a registered voter - has been a Minister for 11 of the last 12 years under 4 Prime Ministers in 5 Governments.
