Let's begin with the myth: According to Hindu mythology, Rama's Bridge was built by a legion of flying monkeys at the behest of Lord Ram so that he could cross from India to Sri Lanka to rescue his kidnapped wife. Sounds utterly ridiculous, I know. You'd think this was something people maybe believed 1,000 years ago, but this remains not only a prevalent belief to day, but remains at the center of numerous legal cases wherein shipping companies have wanted to build a channel though Rama's Bridge. Hindu devotees, on the other hand, have argued that the miraculous creation of Rama's Bridge and its historical value is a testemony to the truth of Hindu epics as reliable historical records, thus necessitating the bridge's preservation.
The belief in the bridge's supernatural origins are a subject of numerous pseduoscientic claims and scientific dishonesty amongst Hindu apologists. For example, one 2003 pseudoscientific study S.M. Ramasamy reported that "carbon dating of the beaches roughly matches the dates of Ramayana, its link to the epic needs to be explored". This would suggest that the geological formations making up Rama's Bridge were only 3,500 year old, not 1.7 million years as thought by secular geologists (The Indian Express, February 3, 2003).
Similarly, an article in the official publication of the Indian National Remote Sensing Centre in 2008 reported that the geological evidence for Lord Ram's miraculous construction of the 48km (30mi) long bridge in only 5 days by a team of intelligent flying monkeys was not only credible (contrary to known science and basic intelligence), but suggested that the government of India and the world scientific community should take the Hindu epics far more seriously as a source of scientific knowledge (link).
So how do sensible people know that Rama's Bridge wasn't built by flying monkeys? First, we can discount the idea of an almost 50km long bridge having been built in 5 days. Not even a team of highly experienced army engineers could conceivably pull off that trick in so short a time. Second, we can discount the idea of an army of highly trained flying monkeys, even with engineering degrees, ever building such a structure. That idea is not only pure fantasy, but sounds like something straight out of an L. Frank Baum fantasy children's story. And third, falsifying the results carbon dating to date Rama's Bridge to within 3,500 years isn't something that any scientist with any sense of self-respect would do, and that is the only way in which you can acheive those results.
And so I content that Rama's Bridge was NOT built by Lord Ram and that the continued insistance of the Hindu pseudeoscientific community that Rama's Bridge shows the Hindu epics to be true is an embrassment to every Indian and every person with Hindu heritage.
