ABSTRACT
Besides laying down the plan of the book, this chapter divides the Adam’s Bridge saga into four major themes, these being the versatility of meanings that the ‘bridge’ occupies in contemporary discourses, the complex geography of Valmiki’s Ramayan and its relationship to the present, the epistemic meanings of Adam’s Bridge seen as an islandic space, and the possibility of a decolonial understanding of the sacrality of the structure. The chapter complexifies notions of scientific complicity to, and historical resistance to, the sacrality of Adam’s Bridge, alongside problematizing both literal and allegorical interpretations of Ramayan’s ancient geography. It briefly explores the landscape of layered receptions of multiple versions of the Ramayan legacy and its politicization in the light of the fact that the epic is sacred across caste hierarchies in India—a fact that has often complicated the modern-day sociology of Ramayan in India. Examining Adam’s Bridge’s ‘islandness’ then is both a disciplinary gesture to island studies and the Indian Ocean region, at large, and a bid to claim its autonomy from the epistemologies and memories surrounding the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. The chapter ultimately outlines how the book unifies a consortium of themes, ranging across ecology, economics, environmentalism, soteriology, economic, and geostrategic history, and the law of the sea, in conceptualizing a nuanced chronicle for India’s enchanted ‘bridge.’ Eventually, this perspective of looking beyond the destiny of Adam’s Bridge as a multipolar performance, of competing discourses and contested memories within secular-religious paradigms, advocates the need for a robust attunement of popular perceptions of the tombolo with Indo-Sri Lankan strategic ties and India’s emergent position in the evolving global geopolitical, geological, and Anthropocenic regimes.
