Opinion: Opinion | How India's 'other' Ram Setu, the Pamban Bridge, might never have existed

According to legend, Ram Setu, officially better known as Adam's Bridge, was built by Lord Ram's army, consisting of commander Hanuman and the chief architect Nala. The enchanted structure is located between Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu, India and Thalaimannar on Mannar Island in Sri Lanka. The epic chapter in the Valmiki Ramayan on the construction of the bridge has inspired generations of artists, cultural thinkers and institution builders. Fascinatingly, the 19th century British colonial administration was also inspired by ancient lore when it pondered the possibility of building a bridge between India and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon).

History has come full circle

In Rear Swaraj (1909), Mahatma Gandhi referred to the far-sighted forefathers who had built the 'Shetbandhai' (Ram Setu / Adam's Bridge) near Rameswaram to create distant pilgrimage routes so as to instill patriotism by encouraging people to learn more about Indian geography since the antiquity. Five years later, in 1914, the same colonial administration that had banned Gandhiji's book touted a monument of their construction, near Ram Setu. In February 1914, the Pamban Bridge was inaugurated with great pomp and ceremony. During the inaugural speeches, the Governor of Madras, the Governor of Ceylon and the Managing Director of the South Indian Railway Company paid effusive tributes to Valmiki Ramayan and his hero, Lord Ram, who took pride in building the 'second' Ram Setu.

On October 2 – Gandhiji's birth anniversary – when Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates the newly reconstructed Pamban Bridge, history will come full circle. But as we look to the future of the Pamban Bridge, a deep dive into the past is also in order so that we don't forget that the bridge may not have even been built at all.

The reconstructed Pamban Bridge will be inaugurated on October 2
Photo credit: Southern Railways

Why the British were so enthusiastic

In the early nineteenth century, the two territories of British India and Ceylon would be connected by a navigable sea channel across the Palk Strait, or the area of ​​shallow waters, also known as Sethusamudram. By the 1860s, if not earlier, it became amply clear to the British government that this sea passage would be difficult to build for economic and environmental reasons that made dredging and maintaining a canal around Adam's Bridge virtually impossible. Towards the end of the 1880s, the makers began to reconsider their plan and thought of constructing an overland railway bridge between Mandapam and Rameswaram, which could hopefully be extended to Ceylon.

There were two main reasons for the colonial administration's eagerness to build the railway bridge between mainland India and Rameswaram Island. The first was that on January 1, 1880, a new railway line was inaugurated between Madras and Tuticorin – on the route of today's Pearl City Express – with a 24-hour steamboat service to Colombo. Naturally, the government wanted to capitalize on the momentum of this technical exploit. The second reason was related to the movement of workers from the Madras Presidency to Ceylon. Many of them were recruited to work on the Ceylonese tea plantations owned by Lipton's, Mazawattee and other leading tea companies. This was a crucial reason because by the late 1880s, joint exports of Indo-Ceylonese tea varieties to Britain overtook Chinese tea exports, despite increased Sino-British diplomatic unease.

Between 1893 and 1905, the South Indian Railway Company conducted surveys of both Adam's Bridge and Rameswaram Island. These confirmed the unfeasibility of dredging Adam's Bridge, while having a rail link was increasingly seen as profitable. This link would run between mainland India and Rameswaram, and further between Dhanushkodi and Colombo, via Thalaimannar, via a ferry service in between. By then, in 1902, work had already begun on what would become the 2,065-meter-long cantilever bridge over the Pamban Pass. Railwaymen who had previously worked on the Himalayan Railways were recruited for its construction, while prefabricated parts were imported from Britain, and 143 erected pillars and a rolling Scherzer bascule, designed based on the technology patented by the American engineer William Scherzer, would later be absorbed into the railroad. center to allow the passage of ships.

A technical marvel

In 1907, the chairman of the South Indian Railway, Sir Henry Kimber, was requested by a delegation of British Ceylonese tea industrialists, who encouraged him to devise a better communication strategy between the two areas for seamless movement of Indian workers. The meeting paved the way for further discussions between Foreign Secretary Lord Morley, Colonial Secretary Lord Elgin and officials of the Ceylon Government Railway Company. As work to connect Mandapam to Rameswaram and Dhanushkodi was already underway, the company agreed to undertake construction of a nearly 110-kilometre branch line from Madawachiya to Thalaimannar.

Since Adam's Bridge could not be captured via a canalizable passage across the shallow straits, the colonial administrations of India and Ceylon hoped to use a different strategy to tame the oceanic wonder that separated the two areas by thirty kilometers. It was believed that if a railway bridge could be built between Dhanushkodi and Thalaimannar over a solid embankment, the Adam's Bridge area would gradually accumulate a much greater deposit of sand, limestone and coral debris, which could lead to the formation of a terrain over land that connects the rivers. the two islands of course. With this hope, the South Indian Railway conducted another survey in 1913 to study the feasibility of a bridge between Dhanushkodi and Thalaimannar, which spanned a little over 32 kilometers – about 11.2 kilometers of that survey covered the shallow sands of the scattered reefs, and the rest, water.

When the world war struck

Finally, as a Massachusetts-based newspaper, The Newton imagereported on July 17, 1914: “To facilitate the work of sinking the bridge cylinders, an artificial island was constructed, made of coral blocks and bagged concrete, one on each side of the water part.” Although the coral reefs did not hinder the construction, the parts of the bridge over the sea were planned to be supported by a double row of reinforced concrete piers, connected by light concrete arches, chains and cross ties, with reinforced concrete slabs supporting were mounted behind the bridge. pillars, and the bottom plates submerged in the ocean floor.

The height of the proposed Indo-Ceylonese railway bridge was estimated at two meters above sea level, which would likely promote sand and coral deposits that could eventually amount to a new, artificial island connecting the islands of Rameswaram and Mannar. The expected cost of the bridge was Rs. 111 lakhs. However, the First World War hit the world and the plans for this bridge were abandoned in favor of the Pamban Bridge. Instead, two piers each were built at Dhanushkodi and Thalaimannar for a steamboat service connecting the railways of the two areas. One was built on the north side, during months of the southwest monsoon, and another was built on the south side, during months of the northeast monsoon. Initially this steamboat service was intended to carry the entire train, but later the plan was changed to make it a passenger service.

Dhanushkodi, the port city

In February 1914, the Pamban Bridge was finally inaugurated. The bridge was designed by the Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company of Chicago and built by Britain's Head, Wrightson & Co. Ltd. from Thornaby-on-Tees. During the inauguration, the Governor of Madras, the Governor of Ceylon and the Managing Director of the South Indian Railway Company paid lavish tributes to the Valmiki Ramayan and Lord Ram. Given the kind of speeches these colonial officers gave and the kind of media attention the event generated in India, Britain and America, the British imperial government seemed to take pride in having essentially written a new Indian epic along the lines of the Ramayan. .

On March 1, Dhanushkodi became a new port, allowing the import of a number of items from South India, which would then be exported to Ceylon and beyond. A new train service was launched from Madras to Dhanushkodi, which in turn was connected to Thalaimannar by a 35-kilometer ferry route. The combined train-and-ferry service was named Ceylon India Boat Mail Express, which quickly gained fame. The Boat Mail would become the forerunner of the colonial railway bridge over Adam's Bridge that the British regime continued to plan but was never able to implement.

Battered by storm

The Boat Mail operated for fifty years until December 22, 1964, when a deadly cyclone struck the Dhanushkodi coast, flooding the railway lines along with a train then crossing the Pamban Bridge. On that fateful night, the six-coach Pamban-Dhanushkodi Passenger (No. 653) left Pamban station at 11.55 pm with about 115 passengers, including school children and railway employees. Less than an hour later, the signal went wrong at Dhanushkodi. The driver took what would prove to be the most expensive gamble of his life. The hysterical sea sent out a gigantic wave six meters high that destroyed the train, leaving not a single passenger alive to tell the gruesome story of that Titanic overland. It is believed that the actual death toll was much higher than the official number of passengers traveling that night as several ticketless passengers were on the train that never reached Dhanushkodi – a thriving town that itself became a ghost town after the cyclone passed. As part of the locomotive protruded from the water's surface the next day, wooden fragments from the train's compartments washed up on the Lankan side of the Sethusamudram Sea.

However, recovery came quickly after the 126 pillars of the Pamban Bridge that were destroyed by the cyclone were recovered from the sea. This feat was carried out under the supervision of the chief engineer of the restoration project, E. Sreedharan, who completed the reconstruction of the bridge in three months, well ahead of his deadline of six.

Such are the legends about the bridge that would almost never be built in the first place.

[Arup K. Chatterjee is the author of The Great Indian Railways (2017, 2019), Indians in London (2021), and Adam’s Bridge (2024)]

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author