Introduction
The image is satellite photographs of the “Palk Straight” - The ocean passage between South India and Sri lanka. The ocean floor here is shallow and is not navigable and so no ships navigate via this region. All ships which want to move from western world to the eastern world or vice versa via the Indian ocean currently take a longer route of going around the country of sri lanka. Even the ships of India which have to move between the western and Indian coastlines of India take this longer route of going around Srilanka.ocean passage between South India and Sri lanka. The ocean floor here is shallow and is not navigable and so no ships navigate via this region. All ships which want to move from western world to the eastern world or vice versa via the Indian ocean currently take a longer route of going around the country of sri lanka. Even the ships of India which have to move between the western and Indian coastlines of India take this longer route of going around Srilanka.
The Project
Now, the government of India has come up with a project (in fact it is a project which was suggested long back during the British age itself, but has reached the definitive stages of implementation only now), called the “Sethu Samudram” Project.
The intentions of the project are good. To remove a silt of about 48 million cubic meters in the palk straight at a cost of Rs 2,427 Crore (24,270 million), and create a channel 167 km long to make the sea in this region navigable. This will shorten the distance between the east and west coasts by about 780 km for the ships! They no longer will have to take the longer route around Srilanka. This will also be a source of greater financial income to India as all international shipment now can pass through the Indian seas in this region with the benefit of this shorter distance, saving about 30 hours of time!
This new canal construction is also said to increase the Naval security of India due to the obvious reasons of making the connections between western and eastern naval sectors of India shorter and easier and more importantly independent of dependency on Srilanka!
Ancient India
Now a bit about ancient India. The ancient Indian text Ramayana talks about a bridge being built in the seas of Palk Straight by the then king Rama of North India who wanted to take an army to the kingdom of Srilanka. This bridge is said to have been built from “Dhanushkodi”, a place in South Indian coastal region near the sea facing Srilanka, to Mannar in Srilanka.
Satellite Photographs
The satellite photographs at the top of this article are of the “Palk Straight”. Clearly visible to a naked human eye can be seen a line connecting the main land of India to Srilanka in these photographs. This is exactly at the same place where Ramayana talks about a bridge being constructed by Rama and his army to cross over into Srilanka. It is visible from Dhanushkodi of India to Mannar in Northwest Srilanka and is about 48 kilometers long.
Controversy
The Hindus call this bridge “Ram Sethu” and is a sacred structure for them since it is mentioned in their ancient texts. The proposed Sethu Samudram project is going to destroy this structure. It is a different question as to whether this is a man made or god made or natural structure. (Well, for a hindu everything natural is God made!). The issue here is that this project in its current proposed format is definitely going to destroy this structure. The controversy is that do we need to have economic progress at the cost of our cultural heritage? In this materialistic world some people might look at everything in terms of money. But the spiritual center of the world, the Indian masses don’t look at it that way.
Let me make it clear, it is totally a different question as to whether this bridge is man made or is it a natural formation, the answer for that question has to come from a thorough unbiased scientific investigation by a committee of national and international experts on the subject. The need to save this structure is that it has been mentioned in the ancient texts and hence definitely is of a cultural value and has historical significance.