Scrap India-Lanka canal project: RSS

Lucknow : Opposing the proposed Sethusamudram shipping canal project to link India and Sri Lanka, the RSS today said its frontal organisations would launch nationwide protests if the centre went ahead with it “disregarding Hindu sentiments”.

The ‘Ram Sethu’, the bridge connecting the two countries, would be defiled if the project course is not altered and it should be “declared a national monument”, it said in a resolution during the 3-day RSS national conclave here.

Its frontal organisations would launch a nationwide agitation if the “to destroy this great monument disregarding the sentiments of the Hindu community,” RSS media in charge Adheesh told reporters after the second day of the conclave.

The project proposes linking the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar and creating a shipping canal by digging a 83-km deepwater channel.

Adheesh said the Supreme Court should take suo motu cognizance of the issue on the lines of the Taj Mahal and Qutub Minar and “Save Ram Sethu from destruction”.

The resolution said the bridge was older than the Pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China and alleged the had centre turned a “deaf ear to warnings of seismologists, environmentalists and geo-morphologists over the impending danger to our coastline from natural calamities like tsunami due to destruction of this barrier”.

Another resolution cited Hindu-Muslim unity in the 1857 War of Independence and urged the minority community “to show a similar spirit” and hand over the disputed Ramjanambhoomi site in Ayodhya to the Hindus.

“The participation of Muslims in the 1857 war was based on positive ground rather than on a religion-based separatist mindset,” it said.

It claimed the Muslim leadership earlier had agreed on matters like ban on cow slaughter and handing over of the Ramjanambhoomi.

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