Ram Setu and Delusions of Archaeological Grandeur: The Politics of Obscuring a Sacred Geology

This article discusses the Indian film Ram Setu (2022) against the backdrop of 21st century public discourses, geological debates, legal proceedings and the general surge of politics revolving around the eponymous tombolo – Ram Setu/Adam’s Bridge (understood by geologists as a stretch of 103 patchy reefs or shallow shoals connecting India’s Rameswaram Island with Sri Lanka’s Mannar Island). It is important to question the locus standi of not only the filmmakers but also the film’s widespread critics. The bulk of the criticism against the film converged around the notion that the filmmakers had attempted to pander to growing Hindutva-oriented sentiments in India. What is more concerning, however, is that both the filmmakers and the film’s critics have remained silent on the tombolo’s aquapelagicity. While the film’s emphasis on archaeology as a methodology of reconstructing the tombolo’s past signals delusions of grandeur, the continued absence of a voice to highlight its geological history is equally disingenuous. Seen through the critical lenses of Island Studies, the film Ram Setu is seen to obscure holistic perspectives of the sacred aquapelago of Rameswaram Island, Dhanushkodi, Thalaimannar and Mannar Island and its entanglements with questions of Tamil fisher’s livelihoods and environmental heritages of the Sethusamudram region.