ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the catastrophic journeys, precarious livelihoods, and frequent cross-border arrests of the Gulf of Mannar’s fisher-folk, who have kept drawing and redrawing the defined and undefinable Indo-Lankan maritime boundaries, recasting their own lives into those of fleeting migratory subjects on a quotidian basis, carving an ambiguous interregnum between bordered cartographies and borderlessness. The littoral territory of Adam’s Bridge, Pamban Island and Mannar Island, refuses to be incarcerated by human intervention, confronting state cartographies with its indifference, and remains resistant in spite of human attempts to discipline and represent it in chosen ways. Seen in this light, the controversial Adam’s Bridge assumes a radical otherness, not entirely capturable in human imagination. Unlike othered communities, groups, or individuals, this othered chimerical reef does not await anthropocentric classifications for its self-determination. Taking the reader on a discursive journey into the Palk Bay fisheries crisis, this chapter highlights how, even though Tamil fishermen’s plights and protests are relayed to the highest authorities of the Indian state, their tales remain marginalized compared to the more hegemonic socio-political discourses surrounding Adam’s Bridge. Since the Sethu canal’s halting has been due to religion as the foremost mode of dissent (in coalition with other political factors), fishermen’s groups have been unequal partners in the movement against canalizing the Palk Strait. While the movement to bestow national heritage status on Adam’s Bridge persists, Tamil artisanal fishers are left with sparse resources; over 70 per cent of their resources are monopolized by mechanized and motorized boats operating in the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay. The monopolization of marine wealth by trawlers and rich fishing merchants has been a long-standing hazard to the livelihood of traditional fishermen, who continue to be engaged in a triangular battle with their corporatized competitors, a corporate-friendly local administration, and the Sri Lankan navy.
