On Ram Sethu

The atmosphere in the country is already heated up and this is in addition to the global warming phenomenon. The reason this time is more religious. An affidavit had been filed by the government in the court that the entire concept of Ram Sethu and Ram is just a fiction and a mental imagination and there is no grain of truth in the existence of a character known as Ram. Of course the govt. did it to make way for the speedy completion of Sethusamudram Project. But this is India! You cannot just fiddle with the religious sentiments of people and move ahead however nonsensical that may appear or sound. History is witness to this. The Mughal empire's fate was sealed with the imposition of Jajia tax by Aurangzeb. The British tasted the Indain "heat" in 1857, when they used fat of cow and pig to make bullets. So are we hearing the warning bells for this Govt.? Time will say...lets wait and watch !

IIM campus with all the bright intellects is also not free from this debate on Ram. Well I got badly rebuked by a faculty when I challenged the truth about Ram sethu. This actually made me research more and discuss more with one of my seniors. Can you imagine two youngsters debating on Ramayan at 2AM in the night? Well this may sound crazy but true! After all that, the desire in me was too much to resist and here I pen down my viewpoints on the entire issue.

Just see my title once more - Its On Ram Sethu. I am not taking any sides and my attempt here is to put down objectively of what I feel. I belong to no camps and if you belong to one...please quit reading this blog.

My question is simple and direct to all those who are crying hoarse for the Sethu. If there had been a Ram Sethu, why did it sink? Was Rama's power limited to that of Treta age? Please do not hoodwink people by saying it is leela of the Lord! Many of us are actually ignorant about the concept called God. Ninety percent of the believers have their first taste of God when their parents or relatives point at a cold decorated and adorned statue and say 'Look that is God...and this is the way you should worship!" Half of us do not even know whether we have some relationship with God and if there is, how to define that. And how many of us have really seen the Ram sethu in reality? None of us literally! It is better the VHP people start thinking and answering these questions than create a Hindu Al Qaida. My second question is simplest. Well assuming that the Ram Sethu really does exist, so what difference does it make to an average Indian? Just what difference does it makes to Surya or for that matter anyone?The VHP people are well fed and have good political connections that look after their needs - biological and commercial. But the average Hindu who sleeps in the street, how does a mythological half-submerged stone bridge affect Him? With a spirit crushed by hunger and pain, he or she will never be able to appreciate life, leave alone religion and history of India. And to the people of India, why are we behaving as psychos? Why can't we be logical in our approach? We go around spreading violence in the name of Ram, burning buses and trucks, attacking households, well if this is what Rambhakti is, I reject Ram and his ideology. It is better to be an athiest than a hot headed irrational fanatic with a fixed mindset and a blind obsession.

My last question is why do we always think God as separate being? Read the original Ramayan and the Bhagwad Puran properly. God is NOT a fanciful being with additional hands and heads and with superhuman powers. God is always an ideal human being, the perfection which every man has the ability and the right to achieve. God always wanted to be human, why are we making Him superhuman nay supernatural and creating a barrier? God always wanted to be with us, why are we trying to put Him on a pedestal and create a wall? Why do we always have to attribute God's actions as something which has to be against natural laws? Realize that the defect lies in us. We are lazy people when it comes to becoming good and working on our wrong habits. We want to be treated and respected as God, yet we do not want too become one for it is too tough! And to hide this inferiority we have created the distinction between God and Man and made fanciful stories that differentiated well both the beings all the time fooling ourselves saying, "Well He is God, all this is possible for Him for He has powers..how can a mere being like me do this?". When will we stop thinking all this? We are Gods..each one of us, realize that!

Rama represented a being with flawless character. Rama vigrahobhan dharmaha- That is the entire summary of Ramayana. The purpose is to learn the basis of being good and not to argue whether He made stones float or not. All the incidents in Ramayana are symbolic and it just represent one single truth - a flawless character can achieve anything. It can tame monkeys, the creature having the most fickle of minds, it can make friends with enemies like Vibhishana and at the same time it can win hearts of the simplest of beings like the boatman. So the take away from the Ramayan is how to be good and become flawless in this flawed world of temptations. For that matter it is the take away of both the epics. The truth about their existence does not change the basic truth that "A good and flawless character is actual Power".

Lastly I want to give my viewpoints on the Ram sethu. It is true but am not sure whether the Adam's Bridge is Ram Sethu. I do not even think it is. It is one lakh years old according to C-60 testing. But it never existed the irrational way we percieve it to exist (floating stone theory I mean !). Read the Ramayana again. The monkeys carried hills to build the bridge. They dumped the mountains into the ocean. Of course hills will not sink completely! And Ram with his monkey brigade walked on top of the hills to reach Lanka. Over years, the oceanic erosion has reduced the hills and hence you can explain the relative shallowness of the region around Dhanushkoti. The occean is only 3 ft to 30 ft deep. Here I have one more question to the fanatics. How can you explain a mass of stone floating together on a turbulent ocean and all these people oing on top of that to reach Lanka? Even if the stones are sticking together, they will never ever be stable. And even if you say the bridge dismantled after the work for the "Lord" is over, somewhere people would have found a floating piece of stone! Moreover why did not Ram fly to Lanka if He is God? Why would God want his wife to suffer more? When did he become so cruel and unscientific? What answer can you give me?

Sprituality is the greatest of science, the science of self-discovery. Lets not make it a philosophical and fanatical mess. Lets take things for what they are made for and not create hooligans out of them creating havoc. Rama was the greatest of patriots - he returned to India even after winning Lanka - a golden country that time. Lets learn these subtle concepts. But here we go on a rampage making the lives of common folks insecure. We stop a project that will get plenty of revenues making India command the Indian Ocean sea route Which God will be happy?

Lets think...is such Rambhakti worth practicing? Does such a God has any positive relevance?