THE  SETHU  SAMUDRAM PROJECT

This   is a beautiful space image of the artificial island Palm Jumeirah built by the ruler of UAE off the Dubai coast at a cost of about US$ 52.3 billion:(http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA12057)

7 million tonnes of rock and 9.4 million cubic meters of sand were used to create this artificial island. Sand fill was poured into 10.5 meter-deep seabed using dredgers. Above the sea level 3 meters of reclamation was achieved by spraying calcareous sand by a method called 'rainbowing'. The Dutch company Van Oord employed about 40,000 south Asian workers in gruelling conditions against a tight time line to complete the work, though the deadline was extended several times. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Jumeirah )

The UAE has also commenced construction of two other artificial islands Palm Jebel Ali and Palm Deira.

Together these three artificial islands look spectacular from space as per this image from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory : (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA12057)

With only barren deserts and a small beach to start with the UAE has come to this level of opulence and daring and dreaming on the back of its petrodollars.

We in India are trying to tear down the Adam's bridge to make way for ships !

(http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA12057)

Suppose the ruler of Dubai owned the Adam's bridge, what would he have done?

He would have built an eight lane motorway cum bullet train connecting Rameswaram and Sri Lanka.

Trade and people to people exchanges between India and Sri Lanka would benefit both countries immensely.

The SAARC initiative, now more or less a durable structure for cooperation among the countries of South Asia, would have got a boost in the arm.

The Channel Tunnel (Euro tunnel) connecting Dover in England with Calais in France under the English Channel was constructed between June 1998 and May 1994. It is longest undersea tunnel in the world, apart from being an engineering masterpiece.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel )

France and England were continually at war for several centuries. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_England_and_France ) Yet they had managed to come together to build durable peace and are now inextricable partners in progress in the Euro zone.

Mahakavi Bharathiar of Tamil Nadu, a fiery freedom movement poet and a mystic revolutionary sang sometime during the twenties of the last century,

“Singala theevunukkor paalam amaippom

sethuvai meduruthi veedhi saiguvom !”

“we will build a bridge to the Sinhalese island

by reclaiming the Sethu (Adam's Bridge) and

raising it above sea level as a road !”

Alas, to save a little distance for shipping routes we want to tear into the God given Adam's bridge ! Are we bereft of any sense of heritage or vision for a united and prosperous SAARC, home to over a billion poor people of the earth?

Other groups of countries are building structures and institutions to come together for common prosperity.

We in India are tearing down the remnants of a structure on seabed so strong that dredgers used to cut into it have broken several times. Let the powers that be try again and again to cut into it. Only the cost will go up. The Ram Sethu will stand rock solid for millennia in the future because the mighty forces of the ocean have not been able to tear it down for millennia in the past.

The Ram Sethu or Adam's Bridge stands apart from all other structures known to man on earth. Let scientists study its age and formation. They will know.

We as a leading member of SAARC want to tear down a potential piece of infrastructure that would revolutionise trade and movement of people within SAARC. From Kabul, Kandahar, Lahore, Karachi, Kathmandu, Bhutan and Dhaka through the whole of India to Sri Lanka people and merchandise can move seamlessly by road through the reclaimed Adam's bridge and bring prosperity to the whole of South Asia.

If reclaiming the Adam's bridge and building a road on it is done, won't it stand out as a proud proclamation of human endeavour for several millennia to come like the Great Wall of China? We need to dare to dream.

Alternatively, the Ram Sethu can be used as the foundation to build an undersea tunnel like the Euro Tunnel connecting India and Sri Lanka.

A third possibility could be to carry out the most technically feasible sea lane cutting through the Ram Sethu for ships to pass through as envisioned in the Sethu Samudram Project and simultaneously construct an under sea tunnel at that portion of the Adam's Bridge below the sea bed and let the other portions of the tunnel use the Adam's bridge as the foundation as described above.

The controversy surrounding the artificial Palm islands off the Dubai coast is this : the sea water had started to stagnate around the islands because the open seas beyond have been cut off and tides cannot replenish the waters with oxygen without which the fauna and flora off the artificial beach lines would perish. This problem seems to have been solved by cutting the perimeter walls of the Palm islands and allowing tides to pass through right up to the artificial beaches.

This problem may not arise if the structures suggested above are so constructed on the Ram Sethu as not to cut off the tides from the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal.

Fortunately, India has abundant labour and very competent oceanographers, climatologists and legions of engineers who can study the feasibility of the above proposals from all angles and make a spectacular success of the whole project. Only Will and imagination are needed.

If Chandrayan II and so on is within India's ability to execute, surely reclaiming the Ram Sethu and calling it Ramayan II is certainly doable and it is for the good of the whole of South Asia. 

Incidentally, the seeds of long term rapprochement between the Tamils  who have suffered so much at the hands of their militaristic leaders in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan armed forces,  may lie in the reclamation of the Ram Sethu, God willing ! The brutality that the Sri Lankan army had exhibited in exterminating the Tamils as much as they can has now attracted the attention of the UNHRC. In the medium to long term these wounds can heal by bringing to book the perpetrators of war crimes in Sri Lanka and at the same time reclaiming the Ram Sethu and help Sri Lanka prosper, fully integrated with the rest of South Asia, without breaking up Sri Lanka.

Actually, the real motives of the proponents of the tearing down of the Ram Sethu or Adam's bridge, albeit a portion of it, are suspect. They garlanded the image of Lord Rama, worshiped by Hindus as God, with chappals and other footwear and took it in a procession in the streets of Chennai, then called Madras, after they came to power because Rama was considered by them as Aryan and an enemy of Tamils who these people claim are pure Dravidians. Rama built the Ram Sethu or Adam's Bridge, as many devout Hindus believe in tune with their sacred scriptures called Puranas and Itihasas. This false ideology of Rama, an Aryan, being an enemy of Dravidians helped these people unite the castes other than the Brahmins under the banner of overthrowing Aryan influence by Brahmin bashing and atheism. It is always very easy to inflame people's hatred and unite them through that hatred and thereby come to power and then hold on to that power by hook or crook. It calls for great statesmanship vision and courage to unite people and eschew power even if it is offered by such people united by one's efforts.

The war in Sri Lanka is over. The war of hatred incited by the Dravidian parties of Tamil Nadu is not. They would vie with one another in tearing down the Ram Sethu as a symbol of their racist and totally misconceived hatred born of dividing our people as Dravidians and Aryans. Whatever is considered Aryan is found in abundant measure in Sanga Tamil Literature like Thirumugatruppadai, Paripadal, Thirukkural and several other ancient pieces of literature, not to mention the marvellous Kamba Ramayanam, which no Tamilian would disown as not being part Tamil culture and heritage. Also theism, deemed an Aryan imposition by these Dravidian leaders, is seen extensively in Tamil literature from its most ancient origins. If one takes away all Tamil literature that fosters devotion to God starting from the Sanga classic of Thrumurugatruppadai by Nakkeerar  right up to the works of Ramalinga Adigalar and Thayumanavar, ninety nine percent of all Tamil literature would be wiped out.

The need of the hour is to unite and build structures for the coming together of people, for cooperation, for shared growth and prosperity among the SAARC countries on the one hand and AESEAN-INDIA on the other hand, with India playing a pivotal role of a cultural and civilizational anchor because there is so much shared history and culture and traditions among all the countries concerned that are traced to ancient India. Actually the ASEAN- INDIA Car Rally, an historic event that took place in commemoration of twenty years of the coming together of the ASEAN countries and India, organised by the External Affairs Ministry of India, traversed eight thousand meters across nine countries over twenty two days beginning on 26^th November 2012 at Yogyakarta in Indonesia with a flag off at Singapore, and ending on 17^th December at Sarujasai Stadium in Guwahati, Assam, India. One of the participants was Shri Subash Chandra of Delhi aged 73 years !

There is every possibility that this ASEAN-INDIA car rally can become SAARC-ASEAN car rally that can surpass even the famous Paris-Dakar car rally, attracting the finest athlete-drivers and navigators and the best vehicles! Starting from Colombo and traversing the reclaimed Ram Sethu as described earlier above, it can pass through the Tamil Nadu - Konkan coast and go all the way through Maharashtra and Gujarat and on to Karachi and Kabul and carve out a path through the Hindu Kush Trails on to the Himalayas and south east into India and further east to Yangon and on to the ASEAN countries.

The spirit behind this whole blog is very well spelt out both in the SAARC Charter (the SAARC Charter day is celebrated every year on the 8^th of Decmber) and the ASEAN-INDIA Eminent Persons Group Report. (See para 13 Chapter IV of the Report titled Vision for the future).

Making the Ram Sethu a concrete link between Sri Lanka and India as explained earlier above and leaving it as a lasting legacy of our heritage and vision for posterity is what the truly heroic spirit of the Tamils and of India as a whole calls for now, a spirit you find in such abundance in the exquisite literature of ancient Sanga Tamil literature.

This is the century of Asia. This is also the historic time of the Pivot Asia policy of the United Sates. Reclaiming the Ram Sethu will stand as a monument of our vision courage and striving that future generations of Asians will look at with a sense of pride and a sense of belonging.

A blog is not the result of a study or scholarly analysis. It is a new platform for the man in the street with access to the internet to express himself in cyberspace whose inherent dynamics will absorb and assimilate it in any number of ways. The blogger himself perhaps gains some clarity and some sense of purpose and self worth that may keep him engaged creatively. A blog can be useful if the intent is to promote harmony and to stimulate thought. If the blogger avoids vituperative and vulgar expressions and gross distortions of truth perhaps it may serve its intended purpose. Otherwise a blog can be just “graffiti with punctuations” as one official under treamendous pressure dismisses a blogger's questions in the movie 'Contagion'.

Though impractical, this blogger does hope there is some food for thought in this blog on a matter of some importance in that part of the world where he happens to live, namely, Tamil Nadu, India.

Perhaps this blog can be aptly concluded in the words of Kaniyan Poongdranar, a Sanga Tamil poet (more than 2000 years old):

“Yaadum oore; yaavarum kelir”

“All places are (livable as) our own; all people are (to be loved and accepted in harmony) as our own”.