By: V. Sundaram
Map of Rama Sethu and environs
Simon Cameron said, ‘An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought’. Karunanidhi is a rabidly racist and dishonest politician who even after he has been bought lock, stock, barrel, will politically bolt in the opposite direction and assert his rational Dravidian right with fervour based upon his grandiloquent and self-deluding notions of ‘self-respect’ founded upon anti-Aryan Dravidian racism, not to stay bought. No wonder he stabbed Atal Behari Vajpayee with delectable Dravidian delight just 2 or 3 months before Parliamentary Elections in 2004 and switched over to Sonia Gandhi – a non-Aryan Kannagi from Italy! As a politician Karunanidhi has always approached every controversial public question during the last 40 years with an open mouth, twisted tongue and a closed mind. As the senior most Dravidian politician, on the fundamental issue of the historical or literary or epigraphic evidence relating to the existence or otherwise of the Rama Sethu Bridge, he always strives to rise above established truth and principle. On this issue whenever he shakes your hand, he does so in the hope of shaking you down. On the controversial issue of his deliberate attempt in close political (commercial not excluded!!) collaboration and collusion with T R Baalu to somehow destroy by hook or by crook the Rama Sethu Bridge, a timeless symbol of Hindu faith and culture which has withstood the onslaught of centuries, Karunanidhi loves to talk in circles while standing foursquare. In his style of politics, no abominable absurdity is ever an impediment to his cosmic self-delusion. With him, a blatant untruth is not always a Himalayan lie. Romancing rationally, as he often revels in it, it only means the telling of ‘secular’ untruths that are not ‘communal’ falsehoods. Thomas Jefferson (1743 -1826), one of the founding fathers of the American state had very honorable and scrupulously truthful men like Karunanidhi in view when he declared: ‘it is untruth alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself’.
I am not therefore surprised that in the Tamilnadu Legislative Assembly Karunanidhi recently came down heavily on ‘religious fundamentalists’ opposing the Sethusamudram Project under the pretext of saving Rama’s bridge, appealing to them not to obstruct a scheme that would lead to prosperity. Karunanidhi also spoke like the Imam of Jamma Masjid when he said that the opponents of the scheme were ‘religious fundamentalists’ who wanted to create a situation similar to the one that obtained after the demolition of the Babri mosque. Further he has even put a great comedian like Kalaivanar N S Krishnan to shame by declaring in the Tamilnadu Legislative Assembly: ‘Majority of those fundamentalists belong to north India and they do not want South India to prosper. By making this charge I am not raising the demand for a Dravidian country once again’.
In my view, Union Shipping Minister T R Baalu, Union Minister for Culture Ambika Soni, Tamilnadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi are all guilty of uttering unabashed falsehood when they say in unison: ‘There is no credible or valid or tenable or acceptable archaeological or scientific evidence about the existence of Rama Sethu Bridge’. Their falsehood either individually or collectively or severally not only disagrees with historically established truths but also raucously (if not rationally!!) quarrel among themselves! Das Munshi, Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, has squarely beaten the virulently anti-Hindu trio of T R Baalu, Ambika Soni and Karunanidhi by declaring that Sethusamundaram (Rama Sethu Bridge) would not be allowed to be destroyed during the UPA rule like the Babri Masjid that was demolished when BJP was in power in Uttar Pradesh in December 1992! More and more original fireworks can be expected from other Union Ministers like Arjun Singh, Antuley, Mani Shankar Iyer on this very exciting and excitable ‘secular’ theme of planned destruction of Rama Sethu Bridge as an integral part of the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP).
When other politicians somersault on any public issue, Karunanidhi will always attack them as betrayers. When Karunanidhi himself indulges in the same game, he would expect the world around him to view it as a new article of his revised rational faith! I have browsed through the pages of Ramanathapuram District Gazetteer in Tamil published by Tamilnadu Government in 1972. In his forward dated 14 June 1972, Karunanidhi wrote as follows: ‘To those policy-makers, scholars and public interested in ascertaining authentic and reliable information related to social, political, economic, and traditional lives, this district-wise gazetteer has been compiled as an encyclopaedic reference’. By publishing this Ramanathapuram District Gazetteer, a means will be provided for researches on this district’s social history.
In this Gazetteer, the following details have been furnished about SETHU BRIDGE (Sethu Palam) or Adam’s Bridge. Adam’s Bridge is a name which evokes Islamic traditions. Adam banished from heaven, travelled walking on this bridge to reach Sri Lanka. This is also referred to as Nala Sethu and as Tiruvanai (Sacred dam) in Tamil. This is also referred to as RAMA SETHU. There is also another name called ADI SETHU. This bridge is 110 miles east-south-east of Madurai, 43 miles along the same direction from Ramanathapuram. The bridge is 15.5 miles east of Rameshwaram. This is called Ramar Palam because this bridge was built under the leadership of Hanuman and with the participation of Vaanara Sena (Kuranguppadai) and facilitated the crossing by Rama to reach Sri Lanka and to attain victory. Upto 1480 AD, this bridge had served as a land bridge to Sri Lanka. Thereafter, a severe cyclone created fissures changing the dimensions to 30 miles long and 1.25 miles wide….During the south-west monsoon season, severe ocean currents and surges impact on the Adam’s Bridge.
In the same Gazetteer, it has also been stated ‘Sethu is the bridge that has linked India with Sri Lanka for centuries from times immemorial. According to Karna Parambarai (Karna Tradition), in order to render continued help and assistance to the countless pilgrims visiting Rameshwaram and Sri Lanka, Lord Rama appointed Raja Rama Sethupathy of Ramanathapuram as Trustee and Guardian to guard the Rama Sethu Bridge’.
Karunanidhi is misleading Tamilnadu State and the nation by saying that great intellectuals like Sir A Ramaswamy Mudaliar had recommended the implementation of the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP) and that his proposals were not implemented. It is very clear that he has not cared to read the official Report of Sir A Ramaswamy Mudaliar. His main recommendation was that a canal should be aligned through Mandapam to create a land-based canal like the Panama or Suez Canal. Sir AR Mudaliar specifically warned that any idea of cutting a channel passage through the Adam’s Bridge (that is, Rama Sethu or Sethubandha) SHOULD BE ABANDONED (see paragraph 16 of the official Report). Karunanidhi is now denying the above facts both in the Tamilnadu Legislative Assembly and outside. Perhaps, Rajaji had ‘great’ and ‘consistent’ men like Karunanidhi in view when he spoke in the Tamilnadu Legislative Assembly in the early 1950s: ‘Brutal and solid public facts do not cease to exist by our cussed refusal or voluntary ignorance to see or understand or recognise them’.
Lord Pentland was Governor of Madras from 1912 to 1919. He visited Rameshwaram in 1914 when Sir Alexander Tottenham (1873-1946) was the District Collector of Ramanathapuram. Lord Pentland was so overwhelmed by what he saw in Rameshwaram that he wrote as follows to Lord Hardinge, the then Viceroy of India: ‘For me Rameshwaram, very much like India as a whole is the real world. We English men live in a mad house of abstractions. Vital life in Rameshwaram has not yet withdrawn into the capsule of the head. It is the whole body that lives. No wonder the English man feels dreamlike: the complete life of Rameshwaram is something of which he merely dreams…. I did not see an English man in India who really lived there. They are all living in England, that is, in a sort of bottle filled with English air…. History can be events or memory of events…. along the Bay of Bengal the Madras Presidency runs, with the well-governed city of Madras at its centre and the sublime and glorious temples of Tanjore, Tiruchi, Madurai and Rameshwaram adorning its Southern boundaries. And then Adam’s Bridge- a reef of sunken islands’ beckons us across the Palk Straits to Ceylon, where civilisation flourished more than 2000 years ago….Linga stones may be seen in many places on the highways in my Presidency. Hindus break upon them the coconuts which they are about to offer in sacrifice. Usually the phallic ritual is simple and becoming; it consists in anointing the stone with consecrated water or oil, and decorating it with leaves. At the Rameshwaram temple, the Linga stone is daily washed with Ganga water, which is afterwards sold to the pious, as holy water or mesmerized water has been sold in Europe. All these are a little part of my beloved Presidency – indeed my favourite India. Right from the dawn of history, India is extraordinarily continuous in time. In space, on the other hand, it is extraordinarily discontinuous….from early times in India, it is ethnology, philology, and archaeology that give and will give us some notions of the truth. From archaeology much can be expected. I would earnestly request you to direct the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to undertake an extensive and intensive survey of Rameshwaram and its beautiful environs, particularly with reference to the historic and primordial Adam’s Bridge’. This very request of Lord Pentland has been made again by Dr Subramanian Swamy in his letter to Mrs Ambika Soni last month.
There is irrefutable and unassailable historic, literary, epigraphic and cartographic evidence about the existence of the Rama Sethu Bridge which can stand the strictest judicial scrutiny in any Court of Law. I will be presenting these facts in these columns in a serialized manner.This ought to put all the cowardly and unscrupulous politicians of Tamilnadu on the run!
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Related HJS section
>Save Sree Ram Setu
