Do You Believe in Ram Setu? Adam’s Bridge, Epistemic Plurality and Colonial Legacy

Abstract

The Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project, whose construction was halted by a 2013 judgment of the Supreme Court of India due to religious sensitivity, has become a domestic and international strategic flashpoint. The religious and epistemic conundrum around the Sethusamudram project and Adam’s Bridge is a colonial-era legacy. Without understanding how the British colonial state saw Adam’s Bridge, we may wrongly infer that today’s Indian nationalist assertions of its sacrality necessarily stem from an anticolonial praxis to restore a politics of enchantment within Indian modernity. The British colonial state adopted epistemes or modes of knowing Adam’s Bridge that were ostensibly compatible with pre-Western forms of enchantment. This is particularly important considering that nationalist voices, largely represented by the right-wing BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and the Sangh Parivar in general, and liberal voices representing the Congress (Indian National Congress), or regional political voices such the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and AIADMK (All Indian Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), have dated the origins of the proposed Sethusamudram project to the colonial era, erroneously prolonging the implication that the British government aided plans of demolishing Adam’s Bridge.