Opinion | How India's 'Other' Ram Setu, Pamban Bridge, Might Never Have Existed

Legend has it that Ram Setu-better known officially as Adam's Bridge-is said to have been built by Lord Ram's army, comprising commander Hanuman and the chief architect Nala. The enchanted structure lies between Dhanushkodi in India's Tamil Nadu and Thalaimannar in Sri Lanka's Mannar Island. The epic chapter in the Valmiki Ramayan about 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 the ancient lore as it mulled over the possibility of bridging India and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon).

History Comes Full Circle

In Hind Swaraj (1909), Mahatma Gandhi referred to the farseeing ancestors who had built the 'Shetbandhai' (Ram Setu/Adam's Bridge) near Rameswaram to create faraway pilgrimage routes so as to instil patriotism by encouraging people to learn more about the Indic geography since ancient times. Five years later, in 1914, the same colonial administration that had banned Gandhiji's book heaped praises on a monument of their construction, very close to Ram Setu. In February 1914, the Pamban Bridge was inaugurated with great pomp. During the inaugural speeches, the Governor of Madras, the Governor of Ceylon, and the Managing Director of the South Indian Railway Company paid lavish tributes to Valmiki Ramayan and its hero, Lord Ram, priding themselves 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 its past is also in order, lest we forget that the bridge might not even have been built at all. 

Why The British Were So Eager

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

There were two principal 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 route was inaugurated between Madras and Tuticorin -on the route of the present-day Pearl City Express-with a 24-hour-long steamer connection to Colombo. Naturally, the administration wanted to take advantage of the momentum of this engineering exploit. The second reason was related to the traffic of workers from the Madras Presidency to Ceylon. Many of them were recruited to work in Ceylonese tea plantations owned by Lipton's, Mazawattee, and other leading tea companies. This was a vital reason because, by the end of the 1880s, the joint exports of Indo-Ceylonese tea varieties to Britain overtook Chinese tea exports in the face of increased Sino-British diplomatic unease.

Between 1893 and 1905, the South Indian Railway Company carried out surveys both of Adam's Bridge and Rameswaram Island. These corroborated the unfeasibility of dredging Adam's Bridge, while having a railway connection was increasingly deemed profitable. This connection would run between mainland India and Rameswaram, and further between Dhanushkodi and Colombo, via Thalaimannar, through a ferry service in between. By then, in 1902, work had already begun on what would later become the 2,065-metre cantilever bridge across the Pamban Pass. Railwaymen who had earlier worked on Himalayan railways were recruited for its construction, while prefabricated parts were imported from Britain, and 143 erected pillars and a Scherzer rolling bascule-designed on the technology patented by American engineer William Scherzer-were to be later incorporated in the centre to enable the passage of ships.

An Engineering Marvel

In 1907, the South Indian Railway's chairperson, Sir Henry Kimber, was petitioned by a delegation of British Ceylonese tea industrialists, who encouraged him to devise a better communication strategy between the two territories for seamless traffic of Indian workers. The meeting paved the way for further discussions between Secretary of State Lord Morley, Colonial Secretary Lord Elgin, and officials of the Ceylon Government Railway Company. As work for the connection of Mandapam with Rameswaram and Dhanushkodi was already underway by now, the company agreed to undertake the building of a nearly 70-mile branch line from Madawachiya to Thalaimannar.

Since Adam's Bridge could not be conquered through a canalisable passage across the shallow straits, the colonial administrations of India and Ceylon hoped to use a different strategy to tame the oceanic marvel that separated the two territories by 21 miles. It was believed that if a railway bridge could be constructed between Dhanushkodi and Thalaimannar over a solid embankment, gradually the Adam's Bridge region would accumulate far greater precipitation of sand, limestone, and coralline detritus, which could lead to the formation of an overland terrain connecting the two islands naturally. With this hope, the South Indian Railway conducted another survey, in 1913, to study the feasibility of a bridge between Dhanushkodi and Thalaimannar, spanning a little over 20 miles-about 7.2 miles of that survey covered the shallow sands of the scattered reefs, and the remaining, water. 

When World War Struck

Finally, as a Massachusetts-based newspaper, The Newton Graphic, reported on July 17, 1914 , "To facilitate the work of sinking the bridge cylinders, an artificial island, made of coral boulders and concrete in sacks, was created, one on each side of the stretch of water." While the coralline reefs posed no obstruction to the construction, the parts of the bridge over the sea were planned to be aided by a dual row of reinforced concrete pillars joined by light concrete arches, chains and transverse ties, with reinforced concrete slabs attached behind the pillars, and the bottom slabs submerged in the oceanic bed.

The height of the proposed Indo-Ceylonese railway bridge was estimated to be six feet above sea level, supposedly encouraging sand and coralline deposits that could eventually amount to a new, artificial island, connecting the islands of Rameswaram and Mannar. The projected cost of the bridge was Rs. 111 lakh. However, the First World War befell the world, and the plans for this bridge were given up in favour of the Pamban Bridge. Instead, two piers each were built at Dhanushkodi and Thalaimannar for a steamer service connecting the railways of the two territories. One of these was built on the north side, for months of the southwest monsoon, and another was built on the south side, for months of the northeast monsoon. Initially, this steamer service was intended to convey the entire train, but later, the plan was altered 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. of 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 that these colonial officers delivered and the sort of media coverage that the event garnered in India, Britain, and America, the British imperial administration seemed to pride itself on having virtually authored a new Indian epic on the lines of the Ramayan.

On March 1, Dhanushkodi became a new port, enabling imports of a number of items from South India, which were then to be exported to Ceylon and beyond. A new train service was launched from Madras to Dhanushkodi, which was in turn connected to Thalaimannar by a 22-mile ferry route. The combined train-and-ferry service was named the Ceylon India Boat Mail Express, which soon rose to eminence. The Boat Mail was to be the precursor to the colonial railway bridge across the Adam's Bridge that the British regime kept planning but could never execute.

Battered By Storm

The Boat Mail operated for five decades until December 22, 1964, when a deadly cyclone hit the coast of Dhanushkodi and engulfed the railway tracks, along with a train that was then crossing the Pamban Bridge. On that fatal night, the six-coach Pamban-Dhanushkodi Passenger (No. 653) left Pamban station at 11.55 pm with about 115 passengers, including schoolchildren and railway staff. Less than an hour later, the signal at Dhanushkodi went awry. The driver took what would prove to be the costliest gamble of his life. The hysterical sea sent forth a gigantic 20-foot wave that destroyed the train, leaving not a single passenger alive to tell the ghastly tale of that overland Titanic. It is believed that the actual death toll was much higher than the official number of passengers travelling that night since several ticketless passengers were on the train that never reached Dhanushkodi - a thriving city that itself became a ghost town after the cyclone passed over. While a portion of the engine could be seen jutting out from the water's surface the next day, wooden fragments from the train's compartments washed ashore on the Lankan side of the Sethusamudram sea.

However, restoration was quick to follow after the 126 pillars of the Pamban Bridge that were destroyed by the cyclone were salvaged from the sea. This feat was executed under the watch of the restoration project's chief engineer, E. Sreedharan, who completed the reconstruction of the bridge in three months, much before his deadline of six. 

Such are the legends of the bridge that was almost never going to 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