Author: Tarun Vijay
Publication: Rediff.com
Date: August 1, 2008
URL: http://www.rediff.com//news/2008/aug/01guest.htm
It is not enough. The formation of R K Pachauri
committee to look into the feasibility of Setu Samudram and relocation of
channel in a way that Ram Setu can be protected looks attractively reasonable
and yet shows a skin deep respect and knowledge about Hindu beliefs.
It took enormous amount of protest organization
for the last one-year at-least to make this government see a little light
of reason. 35 lakh signatures on a protest memorandum were submitted to the
then President A P J Abdul Kalam, a massive congregation on national level
was held in Delhi attended by more than three lakh men, women and children
from Kanya Kumari to Kargil. Stilll this government which is scornfully dismissive
of any Hindu protest wouldn't have budged an inch if, yes, its a really big
IF, elections were not round the corner. Its buying time.
Otherwise the Setu Samudram project, about
which serious security, ecological, economical and religious concerns have
been raised by objective stalwarts like Vice Admiral Contractor (DG, Coast
Guards), Justice K T Thomas, Justice V R Krishna Aiyar, et al should have
been scrapped and the Ram Setu declared a national monument. There is now
ample data to show that the Setu Samudram project is a non-viable project
and a threat to security and the environment.
If the government wills, it takes decision
in a day, if it wants to confuse and dither, committees are appointed. The
Ram Setu issue too is facing the same 'slap and balm' tactics. First they
refused to accept the existence of Ram, then said, ok Ram was there but he
destroyed the Setu and in support of this contention misquoted scriptures,
then a committee is appointed. If government was sure of any one point it
submitted to the Supreme Court, why now the committee? If it wants to respect
Hindu sentiments why not come clean and say, ok, we are sorry to have recognised
the reality too late, now the Setu is declared national heritage . Done.
But they wont do it. For the simple reason
it is Ram Setu and not a Nehru bridge, which would have needed no proofs and
no committees.
There is an old haveli in Allahabad where
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was born. We learnt from our textbooks that he was
born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It is an old British idiom, meaning
his family was very rich. That house has been declared a national monument
and all his spoons, clothes, almirahs, achkans etc have been preserved as
national heritage for public viewing. The expense for this is paid by the
Indian public and not by the family of the person who was born with a silver
spoon in his mouth and whose descendants are not below the poverty line either.
Another house in the heart of New Delhi, a
palatial one since the viceroy used to live there, which Nehru used as our
first prime minister, has also been declared a national monument, and all
his belongings including spectacles and churidars are well-preserved for posterity.
This too is done using public money because he was a beloved leader of the
people.
There are important roads in Delhi and all
over the country named after Motilal Nehru, Kamla Nehru, Swarup Rani Nehru
and of course Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi. Quite justifiably so, because they
were all leaders of India. The other family-wallahs were just followers and
hence can be forgotten like Veer Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, K B Hedgewar,
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Lal Bahadur
Shastri, etc. The best way to protect your illegal slum colony and get into
the voters list is to name it after the Nehru clan. No one would dare to touch
it, ever. It becomes instantly sanctified and a national heritage. It's true
of Delhi, Mumbai and other metros.
But Ram Setu? Isn't it named after a person
who called himself Ram? He has become a new icon for saffron communalism and
hence should be discarded. The millennium-old collective memory all over the
globe about the bridge he built is unprovable by any document.
So, our learned counsel, Fali S Nariman, whose
Parsi ancestors were driven out of their homeland Iran by Islamic zealots
and given refuge by the ardent followers of Ram, said in the Supreme Court
on July 29 that the coral structure known as Adam's bridge or Ramar bridge
cannot be declared a national monument because there is no proof of it having
been built by Ram.
Nariman had presented an affidavit in the
Supreme Court on July 22 too on behalf of the Union government to justify
Ram Setu's destruction. He indeed did a great injustice to Ram, god of the
Hindus and ancestor to all Indians. He misquoted the Padma Purana and Kamba
Ramayanam to stress that Ram had himself destroyed the Setu after his victory
over Lanka.
The fact is, both the scriptures say that
Ram did not come to the Lankan shores after installing Vibhishana as king
but returned Ayodhya by the Pushpak Vimana along with his divine consort Sita.
The Padma Purana has 55,000 verses which we searched and in none of them is
a reference whatsoever to a breach caused by Sri Rama to the Setu.
In affidavit after affidavit (the first was
that Ram did not exist), this government has ridiculed the faith of the land,
and this attitude may not remain unanswered for long.
The question this approach raises is, why
is the government seen to be in such enthusiasm to find a way out or to collect
invalid data and offending propositions for just one purpose -- destroying
the Ram Setu? Should that be the prime concern or motive of democratic governance
that owns a responsibility to represent all people and their aspirations?
Who are the people this government considers worth listening to, and who are
the 'others' identified as expendables having discernibly worthless opinions?
First they said Ram did not exist and then
they filed another affidavit saying Ram destroyed the Setu, so we can blast
whatever remains. Why? Should a naked lust for money overpower our cultural,
security and biodiversity concerns?
Two young scholars, Sarvesh Tiwari and Jayashree
Saranathan, researched minutely both the scriptures quoted by Nariman and
found he has misled the court and offended the sentiments of Hindus, once
again, as far as this government is concerned. The Padma Purana comprises
55,000 slokas arranged into five books: the Shrishti Khand, Bhumi Khand, Swarga
Khand, Uttam Khand and Paataal Khand. The last book, Paataal Khand, contains,
among other subjects, a mysterious version of the story of the eight Vishnu
incarnations up to Krishna. The story of Ram is the largest among these.
The full text of the Paataal Khand, fifth
khand of the Padma Purana, which contains an account of the Ramayana, is available
in full here. In the scriptures there is no reference whatsoever to any breach
caused by Sri Rama to the Setu. Veteran Ram Setu-ologist Kalyan Raman says,
"Simply put, Nariman is hiding the fact that until 1480 (when a cyclone
caused breaches as recorded on an epigraph), the Setu served as a bridge between
Dhanushkodi and Talaimannar as recorded in the Royal Asiatic researches and
Rameshwaram temple epigraphs."
Nariman also said that if something has already
been destroyed, how could the Hindus worship it now? Dr Subramanian Swamy
has pleaded in his petition that the tradition of veneration of Setu is unquestionable
and continues even today, with over five lakh pilgrims going on ashadha amavasya
day to Rama Setu to offer pitru-tarpanam -- a worship for ancestors exemplified
by Sri Rama. The faithful argue, even if Nariman brings in some kind of an
argument that Ram had damaged the Setu, so what? Does it cease to be a place
of reverence and heritage?
Both the scriptures quoted by Fali Nariman
say that once having reached the Lankan shores through the Setu, Ram directly
climbed the Suvela hills and went ahead with his war plans. He did not return
to the Setu or the shores of Lanka or Rameshwaram. Both Kamba Ramayanam and
Padma Purana mention that Ram flew back to Ayodhya from Lanka in the Pushpak
Vimana. On the way he showed Sita the places he visited including the Setu,
which he praised for its greatness as a 'kshetra' (holy area) for propitiation
of the people of the three worlds'.
As far as the Setu Samudram Project is concerned,
it's proving to be good for nothing. There were alignments for its construction
that would have the kept Ram Setu unaffected, but they were not considered.
Why? There were serious objections raised by Vice Admiral R F Contractor,
director general of the Indian Coast Guard. That too was ignored. Why? The
objections of reasonable and independent scholars and jurists like Justice
V K Krishna Aiyar and Justice K T Thomas (who opposed Ram Setu's destruction
in an exclusive interview with me) were simply set aside without citing any
grounds.
International tsunami expert Dr Tadepalli
Sathya Narayana Murty, or Tad Murty, opined that the destruction of Ram Setu
might increase the volume of catastrophe on Kerala in the event of a tsunami
("Significant tsunami energy did not propagate through the waters separating
India and Sri Lanka during the December 2004 event and did not impact much
the southern part of Kerala. Deepening and widening the Sethu canal, will
provide a more direct route for some of the tsunami energy to travel and impact
southern Kerala," he told rediff.com).
Moreover, experts cautioned that dredging
Ram Setu would adversely affect the large reserves of thorium on Kerala's
shores (India has one of the largest thorium reserves in the world), apart
from harming the marine sanctuary and the biosphere in the water region of
Ram Setu.
What is bewildering is the fact that the entire
government machinery, financed principally by Hindus, is being used to collect
material that would help justify the destruction of icons held in the highest
esteem by Hindus themselves. Shouldn't the State be interested in doing just
the opposite? Instead of invoking the memory of Ram in times like these, when
terrorism has become a major problem before the nation, we tend to deride
the source of our strength and valour.
Now the rethink message on Ram Setu has arrived,
but not to respect Hindu sentiments, but fearing a vote-reduction and a possible
use of the issue by a political adversary. If the bridge was named after Gandhi
or Nehru, the secular government would have taken a different course of action.
Ram's path of winning a war
Being politically incorrect, we have become
so communally compartmentalised that even on national matters we look pathetically
ghettoised. No one on this planet has ever fought terrorism so valiantly and
successfully as we have done. The ancestor of all Indians eliminated terror
in the most practical way with human grace unparalleled in world history.
And the people remember those victories with great fondness. Though Indians
born after the Constitution, a leftover of the colonialist forces, became
the State's religion forgot to institutionalise their victory days like December
16 (India's victory over Pakistan in the Bangladesh war in 1971) or July 26
(victory in Kargil), as a civilisational society we have been celebrating
Vijayadashmi, a day of victory over terrorism without fail since millenniums.
Ram didn't go to war at the first instance
in spite of the gravest provocation. He tried to talk, urge and engage the
enemy in a reasonable discussion for getting justice without bloodshed.
What were Ram's strategy and points of strength?
He stood for Dharma, ie, righteousness. Ravana
was a doer of immoral acts. Hence the first great point of strength for Ram
was his righteousness.
Ram had the support of common people like
Vanaras and he earned their unflinching commitment.
Ravana refused to listen to the sagacious
advice by his own brother Vibhishana and wife Mandodari. And obviously, he
didn't care to listen to the commoners.
In Valmiki's Ramayana, Vibhishana tells Ravana:
'Dear brother! That act which cannot be accomplished by three well-known strategies
(viz, conciliation, gift, and sowing dissension) is only then to be accomplished
by exhibiting prowess, as stated by wise men.
'How do you wish to attack that famous Rama,
who is always attentive, who has a will to conquer, who is established in
strength, who has subdued his anger and who is difficult to be conquered?
'If the beloved wife of Rama is not given
away of your own accord, the city of Lanka will indeed perish. All our valiant
demons too will perish.'
So, Ram was attentive, had established his
strength and won over his anger so his decisions would be taken after a cool
thought. Once the foe was established, an unrepentant Ram won't pardon him
till he was completely overpowered and annihilated.
We have been facing a terror war for more
than two decades. Every time there is a barbaric attack, our prime minister
and national security advisor issue a public statement accusing the Inter
Services Intelligence, Pakistan's intelligence agency. Only recently, in the
aftermath of the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, the same statement
by the NSA M K Narayanan accusing the ISI was splashed all over. So, the wrongdoer
is being warned, advised and engaged in table talk embroidered with track-two
diplomacy since the last two decades.
We are neither attentive, nor have a will
to overpower the wicked and win a war.
The result is seen in the form of Jaipur,
Bangalore and Ahmedabad blasts. Sometimes we blame the ISI, then the Harkat
ul Jihad i Islami, or Bangladesh-based terrorist organisations, taking ample
care that neither the Pakistan nor Bangladesh government is accused directly,
so that 'normalisation of relations' is not adversely affected.
We tend to think the governments of both countries
are sincere and saintly but those mischievous jihadi elements are beyond their
control, hence we must continue strengthening our relations with Islamabad
and Dhaka while condemning the jihadis working under their nose to bleed us.
We don't have the guts to ask tell Islamabad and Dhaka point-blank that whatever
they are doing to the Taliban on the northern front to please their masters
in Washington DC, will they do the same against the anti-India operations
of the Taliban too.
Where is the will to annihilate the wicked
forces, a serious and doable threat to their existence, to ensure the safety
and happiness of the loyal citizens of the State? The seat of power, a symbol
of Ram, remains a chronicler of hate attacks -- today here, tomorrow there,
to be added in the annual report of the home ministry.
Ram was serious about punishing the unrepentant
and the enemy took it seriously too. When we issue a condemnation and warning
to the enemy, do they take us seriously? They laugh at us.
The State's willpower is well exhibited in
enforcing communal reservations, extending ceasefire with the NSCN, defreezing
Quatrocchi's bank accounts, talking to the Hurriyat, taking back Amarnath
land and saving a nuclear deal at 'any' cost.
Only Ram's path can empower us to take on
terror, not by deriding Ram.
- Tarun Vijay is director of the Dr Syama
Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation.
