It was the year 1996. Hyderabad was the city. The then CM Chandrababu Naidu was on a Hyderabad beautification spree. One of the main items on his agenda was road widening. Too many encroachments and the roads had become too narrow for the growing volume of traffic. If he wanted investment to come into Hyderabad he had to make the infrastructure attractive and make it easier for people to move around within the city.
During his road widening spree, there was one thing that he religiously followed. He would go around demolishing everything in the way of his proposed wide road except places of religious worship. It could be a temple, mosque, church or a gurudwara, he would just leave alone that area of the road that’s covered by the structure and convert it into a roundabout. He did that to respect the beliefs and sentiments of the religions involved. He did not want to arouse riots in the city because of relocating a structure of religous belief. He never thought about demolishing any of them.
I only wonder why our central Government cannot have an ounce of sense while deciding to go ahead in demolishing the Rama Sethu (Adam’s Bridge)! It is connected too deeply to the sentiments of the Hindu religion. It is considered to be the bridge built by the vanarasena for Rama to cross over the sea to Lanka to bring back his kidnapped wife Sita.
Now questions like: Whether the bridge was really built by man or not? (Technically, the question should be ‘whether the bridge was really built by monkeys or not?’) OR Whether Rama existed or not? OR any other such inane question is irrelevant. Rama is a Hindu God and he needs to be respected for it. If there is something in this world that can be connected to people’s faith about Rama then it needs to be respected. You cannot go and demolish it straightaway. Apart from the sentiments, faith and belief of the Hindus, you also need to consider various other points.
In my opinion, the Government would be committing political harakiri by going ahead with the demolition. Even the US wants to preserve the Rama Sethu. [Link] And TN CM Karunanidhi (He leads a party called DMK that’s a part of the coalition government at the centre) isn’t quite helping matters by releasing statements like these. “Who’s Ram?”, he asks. Hey Ram!
My invisible pink unicorn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn) demands the bridge to be broken. In fact retaining the bridge has been ‘considered’ by my fellow followers as the cause for all the tsunami’s ever happened.
Bah!
You rights and those lefts, ah, you will never ever let my country do anything with sense.
How nice it would be to have a god to imbibe some sense here.
I personally am against the destruction due to the environmental impact. But if destroying a geographical feature can shake your faith, then I would say its time to have a religious introspection.
On Hosur road in Bangalore, near the Johnson market area. All the work has been done for a road widening project (and you know how desperately the road needs it.) But there is a mosque on the road which refused to give 10 feet of its compound space and bought a stay order from the High Court and now the entire project has been held up because the Karnataka government is helpless.
I dont see in what way cutting down some space in a compound of a small mosque, in some corner of the city, will affect a person’s religious beliefs in a way that breaking down the Ram Sethu can.
If you ask me it will be completely suicidal for the congress government if they go ahead with the project.
I agree with Nivi, She has point. See amidst the whole we’ll- appease-minority @ any cost spree, the governments seem to be doing grave injustice to the so-called majority! If one yard holds good for one set of community, then it must hold true for the other! If the vote bank is at stake, no one dares to speak. Even the BJP does the same for the majority, and the this goes on and on and on… God knows until when???
The youth of india is really sick of it Adi. Its hight time we even bother to think of such petty issues!!
For heaven’s sake, these bloddy ploiticians gotta understand that there is something called ‘National Interest’ above their party interests!
I agree with Nivi, She has a point here. See amidst the whole we’ll- appease-the-minority-at- any- cost spree, the government(s) in our country just seem to be doing grave injustice to the so-called majority! If one yard holds good for one community, then it must hold true for the other as well! If the vote bank is at stake, no one dares to speak. Even the BJP does the same for the majority, and the this goes on and on and on… God knows until when???
The youth in india is really sick of it Adi. It’s hight time we even bother to think of such petty issues and break our heads over it!!
For heaven’s sake, these bloody politicians gotta understand that there is something called ‘National Interest’ above their party interests!
[...] PS: The Mysorean is suggesting an amazing idea on how to have the cake and eat it too. This post lauds the efforts of Chandrababu naidu and how he had workaroud on a similar nature. [...]
For sure we are to loss the beautiful nature!