If you viewed as I did last week the hysterics over Ram’s bridge from the perspective of a remote island in the Atlantic that has better airports and roads than India, it is not just disheartening but absurd.

A friend’s wedding brought me to this island. On the evening that the finest politicians in India were creating a frenzy over the existence of a mythical bridge I found myself in conversation with a group of Iranians and Indians who have lived in the United States for decades. An Indian techie in his forties said he was thinking of going home after twenty years in California because India now looked like a country that offered hope.

I agreed patriotically and said that most young Indians these days were coming home after college abroad and this was a sign of hope. The Iranians listened sadly and said they hoped India could become a development model that a country like theirs could follow. And, I, bursting momentarily with patriotic sentiment, said we had the advantage of not having religion mixed up with politics and governance.

So when I came home and read the Indian newspapers online and found that the most serious political issue of the moment was Ram’s mythical bridge, I wondered if I was not being recklessly optimistic about the future of our ancient, impoverished, semi-literate land. Is there really hope if, despite having the worst infrastructure in the world, we can argue over mythical bridges and mythical gods? Is there hope if the Union law minister needs to say, “The government admits its mistakes and wants to remove any doubt whatever that it does not believe in the existence of Ram. The existence of Ram cannot be doubted. As Himalaya is Himalaya, Ganga is Ganga, Ram is Ram. Ram is an integral part of our ethos and cannot be alienated from our hearts.”

... contd.