The Indian Law courts are careful\nwhere the Ramayana gods are concerned. Indian Supreme Court summons the two Hindu\ngods, Ram and Hanuman to appear in court in order to settle a land dispute in\neastern state of Jharkhand. The temple priest said the land belonged to him,\ngiven to his ancestors by the king, the locals said it belonged to the two\ndeities. Dispute had been going on for\n20 years. It was settled in favor of the\nlocals but the priest is contesting this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The emotional strength of the\nRamayana became known, once again, when the Indian\ngovernment decided to cut through the Adams Bridge which exists between\nTamilnadu and Sri Lanka to create an 83-km-long deepwater channel that will link\nMannar with Palk Strait. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This Sethusamundran project\u201d called for extensive\ndredging and removal of the limestone shoals that constitute the Ram Sethu. Ram\nSethu, also known as Adam’s Bridge, is a continuous stretch of limestone shoals\nthat runs from Pamban Island near Rameshwaram in South India to Mannar Island\noff the northern coast of Sri Lanka. Geological\nevidence suggests that in the Ice Age, the stretch used to be a land connection\nbetween India and Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea was \nsoundly opposed by environmental groups and religious groups. In 2007 The\nBharatiya Janata Party (BJP) filed a petition in court. The petition said Hindus\nobjected to the Sethusamudran project on\nthe grounds that it will damage the Ram Sethu Bridge which is mentioned in the\nRamayana. This bridge is sacred and should not be destroyed. It was built by\nRama and his army of monkeys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The media announced,\nThe Sethusamudran canal has brought the Ramayana to the attention of the\nSupreme Court of India.\u201dCourt took note of the objection and called for a\nresponse from the Government. The Government of India stated that there is no\nscientific evidence to indicate that the events described in the Ramayana ever\ntook place or that its characters were real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Archaeological Survey of India had stated\nthat there is to date no evidence to conclusively prove that Rama actually\nexisted. Further, the Setu was not\nmentioned in some versions of the Ramayana. If at all, the Ram\nSetu of the Ramayana was more likely located in a small stretch of water in\nCentral India and not in the Palk Strait. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Government of India also stated that the bridge was not a man made one.\n.NASA satellite pictures indicated that\nthe bridge was formed through the sedimentation of clay and lime stone. NASA said the bridge was about 1.75 million years old. The Space Applications Centre,\nAhamedabad, looked through satellite and said that the \u2018bridge\u2019 is not manmade.\nThey thought the formation was associated with a previous shore line. There are\nsimilar reefs in other parts of India, such as Lakshadweep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Geological Survey\nof India did a three year study of the area between Rameshwaram in India and\nMannar in Sri Lanka. The Survey said that the bridge was not a man made (or\nmonkey made) construction. The sequence of clay, limestone and sandstone which\nemerged could not have been manmade. Geologists\nsuggest that the formation was due to circular wind driven ocean currents.\nSediment may have converged in the sea to create this formation. This line of\nislets may also be due to tidal movements which pushed the sand into place and\nretreated. This sand over time formed\nsandstones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Survey also\npointed out that studies of sea level showed that the area between Rameshwaram\nand Sri Lanka was exposed, not submerged under the sea, in the period between\n18,000 years and 7000 years ago. About 6000 years ago, the sea level was a mere\n17 meters below its present level and the sea bed was partially exposed. There\nwas also the technical issue of building a bridge across a wide stretch of\nwater, in ancient times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adams Bridge\nis also rejected on literary grounds . Rama built a bridge which was 100 yojanas long and ran due north and south ending in a hill.\nAccording to Iyer\u2019s calculations, 100 yojanas would either mean eleven and a\nhalf miles or 450 miles. The existing bridge is neither. The Adam\u2019s Bridge or\nRama Setu is over 30 miles long and runs west-north-west to east-south-east.\nThere is no hill in Mannar Island and none in the northern half of Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Hindus declared,\n\u2018The controversy whether the formation is nature-made or man-made is not\nrelevant. The important thing is that millions of Hindus believe that it is the\nbridge built by Rama.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the face of\nstrong BJP opposition, the government backed off. In 2008, Instead of providing\n\u2018yet another affidavit\u2019 against Valmiki\u2019s Ramayana, the\nIndian Government withdrew the affidavit, and stated that they would try to find an\nalternative route. They also suspended two Archaeological Survey of India officials, holding them responsible for the\nfiasco. Some years later, Janata Party\nchief Subramaniam Swamy filed a petition in Supreme Court in 2012 asking Court to order the government to declare Ram\nSethu a national monument, as a matter of faith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/em> In 2017 USA\u2019sDiscovery Communications-owned \u2018Science Channel\u2019 aired a video providing scientific evidence that Ram\nSetu was a man-made bridge, using satellite imagery from NASA and other\nevidence. The rocks connecting India and Sri Lanka are sitting on a sandbar,\nalso known as a shoal and the investigators believe that the sandbar is\nnatural, but the stones sitting on top of that sandbar, are not. Stones that\nhave been brought from afar and set on top of sand bar island chain\u201d said a\ngeologist. (Continued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Indian Law courts are careful where the Ramayana gods are concerned. Indian Supreme Court summons the two Hindu gods, Ram and Hanuman to appear in court in order to settle a land dispute in eastern state of Jharkhand. The temple priest said the land belonged to him, given to his ancestors by the king, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}