Sandhya Jain in Daily Pioneer:

Hindu dharma humiliated

Tulsidas's seminal rendition of the Ram story makes no mention of the Lakshman rekha in the episode dealing with Sita's abduction. The line surfaces only later, in distant Lanka, when Ravan's wife, Mandodri, advises him to give up his obstinacy and refrain from fighting the illustrious Raghus. She points out that Lakshman had drawn a protective line around Sita in the forest, which Ravan couldn't even cross! Sita could be abducted only after she was tricked into breaching it; the Lakshman rekha has since become the ethical standard of Hindu self-restraint, discipline, and sense of limit.

This moral dimension was shaken when a Union Government-approved affidavit claimed before the Supreme Court that there is no 'historic' or 'scientific' evidence of the existence of the maryada purushottam. This contemptuous attitude towards Hindu civilisation's greatest moral exemplar has caused shock all over the Hindu universe, from Jammu & Kashmir to Kanyakumari, to Trinidad & Tobago, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, Myanmar, Kampuchea, Indonesia, Bali, Malaysia, Nepal, Java, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand; regions whose national culture has been shaped by the benign presence of Lord Ram.

Originally a dispute over a sand and coral formation uniting the Indian mainland with its island neighbour, Ram Setu has catapulted into a bridge of India's Hindu identity and nationhood, straddling centuries of collective sloth and amnesia. The Tamil Kings of Jaffna (13th to 16th centuries AD) once called themselves "Sethu Kavalar", protectors of Rameshwaram and the surrounding seas; south India principally reveres Lord Ram as Kodanda-Rama, deity with the bow.

The military career of this armed god, born to defeat the forces of darkness and tyranny and uphold dharma, was a saga of successive triumphs. He was invincible before the Rakshas and Asurs who were inimical to Vedic dharma. Even prior to the first century BC, Lord Krishna identified Lord Ram as the highest example of a warrior (Bhagavad Gita, X 31).

Significantly, of the multifarious roles of this divinity - ideal son, ideal brother, ideal husband, ideal human being - post-independence India has most valued the ideal king! This is precisely what is sought to be demeaned by the Archaeological Survey of India's audacious affidavit, duly vetted by the Union Law Ministry, declaring Lord Ram a non-historic figure. For Lord Ram was a king deeply concerned with his subjects' judgement of his way of living, and anxious to measure up to their expectations of him.

The backlash over the Ram Setu affidavit may yet teach modern India's foreign-born and native-secular rulers that in the Hindu civilisational ethos, rajdharma (duty of the king) means embracing and upholding the dharma of the people. There are no exemptions; Ashok's decision to make Buddhism the state religion and propagate it through state-appointed missionaries is perceived as an undesirable aberration. The quest for Ram rajya is the search for an ideal realm where people are happy, prosperous, well-behaved and contented; poverty and social ills are rare. India is thus the only country in the world where a ruler may not impose his dharma upon the people (convert them); he must honour the dharma of the people.

Even if Lord Ram was a figment of the collective Hindu imagination, he cast an enduring spell over subsequent epochs. The Harivamsa, a second-third century AD work on Lord Krishna, lauds Lord Ram's rule as the most righteous age on earth. The Vayu Puran, dated not later than fifth century AD, says Lord Ram had a long reign and in his kingdom the chants of the Rig, Yajur, and Sam Ved were heard ceaselessly and people gave and ate to their hearts content. Kalidas, himself a Shaiva, honed his poetic skills glorifying the Iksvakus and Lord Ram. The Gurjar-Pratihars who worsted the Arabs in the ninth century AD, trace their genealogy to Lakshman, brother of Lord Ram, as revealed by the Gwalior Prasasti of Mihir Bhoj, seventh king of the dynasty. Tukaram extolled Shivaji's reign as Ram rajya in which ruler and subjects were all equal and there was all-round welfare.

Interestingly, the first tsunami of 2004 came soon after the arrest of the Kanchi Shankaracharya on specious grounds of conspiracy to murder. The second warning, when the ocean literally growled and tremors measured eight on the Richter scale, came within hours of the Centre declaring there was no historic evidence of Lord Ram and the Setu was a mere sandbank.

Retreat was equally swift. With mid-term election looming threateningly on the horizon, the official dogma reinvented itself: Certainly there is Lord Ram. Till recently a mythological hero, the god metamorphosed into "an integral part of Hindu faith" whose existence can never be doubted. In the three months reprieve sought to 'study' the feasibility of the canal, there may finally be a Ram Setu as well. Popular belief (astha) is nothing; but popular vote surely counts!

The tsunami warning is not a secular matter of environmental degradation. For Hindus, also at stake is our panch-tatva (debt) to the panch-tatva that make the universe: Earth, water, fire, air, ether, and all creatures within. Contrary to the Western world-view, man alone is not the measure of all things, and we have no right to desecrate nature. The Gulf of Mannar is an indivisible water body which impacts the coasts of India and Sri Lanka. Any dredging here can trigger the fault-lines and the heat-flow zone, causing incalculable damage to the coast and aquatic resources. Yet, tsunami effects and tsunami protection measures were not included in the Sethusamundram Shipping Channel Project report, though this affects coastline security. Hopefully, this lacuna will be addressed in the three month review period.

At stake is a rich and endangered marine life and the sensitive ecosystem in the Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar, including Dugong sea turtles, dolphins and sea horses that thrive in the coral reefs. Under UNESCO's Man and Biosphere Programme, the Gulf of Mannar environs were notified as a Marine Biosphere Reserve by the Government of India. The 10,500 sq km area, with 21 islands with continuous stretches of coral reef, is home to over 3,600 rare species of flora and fauna. Five coastal districts depend upon this marine resource.

The ASI affidavit was a shameful attempt to humiliate Hindu dharma by belittling a defining feature of Hindu tradition. Unsurprisingly, this flagrant violation of the Lakshman rekha roused the languorous Hindu elephant to protest. Let it now trumpet the regime's fall.