New Delhi - Two officials of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) were suspended Saturday, a day after the government withdrew a controversial report it had submitted to a court questioning the existence of the Hindu god Rama. The officials had been suspended for failing to carry out changes she had suggested in the affidavit submitted to court last week, India's Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni said. She has ordered a probe into the case.
The affidavit was submitted on Wednesday in connection with a case on a proposed shipping canal project in the seas between India and Sri Lanka.
The Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project, inaugurated in 2005, proposes to create an 83-kilometre deepwater shipping channel linking Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar which lie between southern India and northern Sri Lanka.
The channel would pass through the shallow sea called the Setu Samudram and through the underwater island chain of Rama's Bridge, also known as Adam's Bridge, and is expected to cut shipping time by about 36 hours boosting economic development in the region.
Currently, ships moving form India's east coast to the west coast have to travel around the island of Sri Lanka.
India's Hindu right-wing groups claim the project would damage Rama's Bridge, which, according to Hindu mythology was built by a monkey brigade to enable Lord Rama to reach Lanka (now Sri Lanka) to rescue his wife Sita from the clutches of demon king Ravana.
Scientists, however, say the "bridge" is a natural string of underwater coral reefs.
The Supreme Court has at least three petitions before it objecting to the project.
In its affidavit, the ASI said there was no historical proof of Rama's existence. India's ancient mythological texts "... cannot be said to be historical record to incontrovertibly prove the existence of the characters or the occurrence of events depicted therein," it said.
The report, highlighted by the media, led to a storm of protests in a country where religion is closely interlinked with culture.
Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani, who is leader of the opposition in parliament, said the affidavit showed contempt for millions of Hindus in India and abroad.
"To ask a judge to now be arbiter of whether Ram was real or imaginary is bizarre," Barkha Dutt, one of India's better-known television journalists, wrote in her column in the Hindustan Times newspaper.
She said for most Indians, the story of Rama was the stuff that faith is built on and the government could have highlighted the importance of the ambitious maritime project, saying the "natural sandbank" was not of historical significance without bringing in the issue of the existence of Rama.
The government withdrew the controversial affidavit on Friday and told the court that it would be reviewing the Sethsamudram Project to see if the Ram Setu could be left undisturbed.
Environmentalists have also objected to the project saying it may change currents and damage the ecosystem in the region.
