Sadanand Menon: Revisiting Myth and Reality

CRITICALLY INCLINED

(Adam's Bridge) built employing the toil of countless monkeys (and a squirrel) as suggested in the Ramayana or is it a natural rock formation connecting Tamil Nadu with Sri Lanka, as indicated by NASA's satellite images? Is it history or geography? Is it myth or reality?

The furore is ridiculous also because it rapidly admits us into the cuckooland we seem to be inhabiting as a nation these days, to enter which you need no visas. Political parties seem to be vying with each other to expose their specific levels of backwardness. To add spice, the DMK brings into the fray its own peculiar brand of irreverence on such matters, by asking to see Rama's engineering certificates, which qualify him to build a bridge. (Snide ones in Chennai can't resist asking for Stalin's certificates, which qualified him to build some lame-duck flyovers in the city).

It is fascinating such a hullabaloo should be happening in the centenary year of one of India's greatest historiographers, Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (31 July 1907-20 June 1966) who, in his classic volume Myth and Reality (Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1962) showed us precisely how to deal with such issues. It is a sign of our times that nothing seems to have appeared this year, in mainstream media, to remember Kosambi and re-introduce his methodology to a new generation searching for clues on what to do with its mythical past.

Kosambi's contribution was on historical method or historiography. He introduced into the discipline of the study of Indian history the specific method of 'redacting' or travelling back in time and re-ordering all available material, to trace the growth of an idea, a custom or even a myth. He showed how every story of convergence or divergence of ideas/sects/deities in ancient India was a reflection of changing material reality over vast spans of time.

Kosambi's historiographic rendering of Krishna remains a masterpiece. He delineates the incremental construction of the character of Krishna from a brief, apologetic reference to him in the Chandogya Upanishad as an "uncle slayer" to a full biography 1,500 years later in the Bhagavata Purana and a more omniscient appearance in the Bhagavat Gita after another 800 years. He also explains the construction and insertion of the Gita itself into the Mahabharata as a device to enable the rapidly consolidating feudal system with the ideological armour of bhakti or individual devotion to the master. Kosambi's is a methodology which builds an excellent bridge between myth and reality.

Now, those who talk of Rama being a historical fact are, obviously, letting their mind play tricks with them. The Kavya Ramayana is a fact of history. Rama merely happens to be a character in it. The poet-sage Valmiki writes in his preamble to the Ramayana of being inspired to produce this shokat shloka (song born of sorrow) after witnessing the agony of two lovebirds separated by a hunter's arrow. The Ramayana is a response to this pain of separations "" father from son, brother from brother, raja from praja, husband from wife.

Within this, the story of Rama's army advancing on Lanka through a setu is an intriguing fantasy. To construe it as real is to straightaway get into a whole lot of contemporary problems, not the least of which will be to apologise to Lanka for that act of 'historic' aggression.

However, the present issue is hardly about the setu itself. It is about the Setusamudram Ship Canal Project (SSCP). The SSCP envisages the creation of a navigable canal from the Gulf of Mannar to the Bay of Bengal to facilitate the movement of ships. The Indian government has claimed that once the SSCP is completed, ships moving from the west to the east coast of India do not need to navigate around Sri Lanka but can use the channel to save 36 hours of shipping time and 570 nautical miles.

At least two independent studies in the past few months have conclusively exposed the project to be a financial white elephant. Studies by Jacob John, an infrastructure economist, and H Balakrishnan, an Indian Navy retired engineer, conclude that it is not economical for ships and is financially unviable as a project. Both reveal how basic data in the Detailed Project Report, on financial viability and economic benefits arising from the SSCP, have been grossly exaggerated.

Divine or natural, historical or geographical, it is not the historicity or otherwise of the Rama setu that is in question, but the viability and necessity of the SSCP project. It is becoming clear that both in terms of economy and ecology, the Setusamudram project spells disaster.

So, at least in deference to the memory of Kosambi, we should by now be able to leave the myth behind and transit into reality.