It is reliably understood that in the ongoing Ram Sethu Case, the Hon. Supreme Court of India asked the Senior Counsel Sri.Venugopal `Did anybody request the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to undertake an extensive survey of the area in and around Ram Sethu in Rameswaram, even prior to 1999?' The answer to this question is straight and simple.
The Rt. Honourable Lord Pentland (1860-1925 ) Governor of Madras (1912-1919)
Lord Pentland, a British Governor of Madras Presidency from 1912 to 1919, had a great fascination for Rameshwaram in general and Ram Sethu in particular. Before coming to Madras in 1912, he had a distinguished career as Secretary of Scotland and as Aide-de-Camp and Official Secretary to Lord Aberdeen in Ireland in 1886 and in Canada. He sat as Liberal member for Dumbartonshire and Forfarshire in the House of Commons and acted as Parliamentary Secretary to Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman for many years. He did outstanding War work between 1914 and 1918 in the Presidency of Madras, ably assisted by his public-spirited wife Lady Pentland. Both of them together raised a large sum of money for building a magnificent Hospital Ship equipped and maintained by the people of Madras, during the I World War. This Hospital Ship created military history by plying regularly between Africa and India, and subsequently between Mesapotomia and India and rendering a splendid and much needed medical service in those hectic and turbulent days.
Lord and Lady Pentland were deeply interested in Hindu Religion, Hindu culture, Hindu mythology and Hindu philosophy.Lord Pentland visited Rameshwaram in 1914 when Sir Alexander Tottenham (1873-1946) was the District Collector of Ramanathapuram. Lord Pentland was so overwhelmed by what he saw in Rameshwaram that he wrote as follows to Lord Hardinge, the then Viceroy of India on 1st December 1914: `For me Rameshwaram, very much like India as a whole is the real world. We English men live in a mad house of abstractions. Vital life in Rameshwaram has not yet withdrawn into the capsule of the head. It is the whole body that lives. No wonder the English man feels dreamlike: the complete life of Rameshwaram is something of which he merely dreams.... I did not see an English man in India who really lived there. They are all living in England, that is, in a sort of bottle filled with English air.... History can be events or memory of events.... along the Bay of Bengal the Madras Presidency runs, with the well-governed city of Madras at its center and the sublime and glorious temples of Tanjore, Tiruchi, Madurai and Rameshwaram adorning its Southern boundaries. And then Adam's Bridge- a reef of sunken islands' beckons us across the Palk Straits to Ceylon, where civilization flourished more than 2000 years ago....Linga stones may be seen in many places on the highways in my Presidency. Hindus break upon them the coconuts which they are about to offer in sacrifice. Usually the phallic ritual is simple and becoming; it consists in anointing the stone with consecrated water or oil, and decorating it with leaves. At the Rameshwaram temple, the Linga stone is daily washed with Ganga water, which is afterwards sold to the pious, as holy water or mesmerized water has been sold in Europe. All these are a little part of my beloved Presidency - indeed my favourite India. Right from the dawn of history, India is extraordinarily continuous in time. In space, on the other hand, it is extraordinarily discontinuous.... from early times in India, it is ethnology, philology, and archaeology that much can be expected. I would earnestly request you to direct the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to undertake an extensive and intensive survey of Rameshwaram and its beautiful environs, particularly with reference to the historic and primordial Adam's Bridge'. After 93 years and 60 years after our independence, this very request of Lord Pentland made in 1914 for the conduct of an intensive and extensive archeological survey of Rameswaram and Ram Sethu by the ASI , was again reiterated by Dr Subramanian Swamy in his letter sent to Mrs Ambika Soni, Union Minister for Culture on March 3, 2007. This known anti-Hindu Christian Minister for Culture (a political tenant- at will totally at the mercy of Sonia Gandhi!) treated Dr.Swami's reasonable request made in the larger public interest with supreme-Sonia contempt and hatred.
Sir. Alexander Tottenham I.C.S. ( 1873-1946) B Dewan of Pudukkottai (1934-1946)
I got to know about Lord Pentland's letter of December 1914 addressed to Lord Hardinge from my friend Late Shri.K.Nagarajan of Pudukkottai. He was a great friend of Sir.Alexander Tottenham ICS who was Dewan of Pudukkotttai from 1934 to 1946. Tottenham passed away in Pudukkotai on December 13 1946. He lies buried in the Lutheran Mission Churchyard at Machuvadi in Pudukkottai. As Dewan of Pudukkottai, Tottenham became a legend as a great public servanta good man, noble,, just and generous. Tottenham had given the excerpts from the letter of Lord Pentland addressed to Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy of India (already referred to above) to Shri.K.Nagarajan and Shri.K.Nagarajan was good enough to give me in December 1984, a copy of Sir.Alexander Tottenham's letter dated 6th December 1941 addressed to Shri.K.Nagarajan. This is a historic letter which speaks for itself. I am giving below a facsimile of this letter of Sir.Alexander Tottenham dated 6th December 1941.
Though Lord Pentland had recommended a Survey of the area in and around Ram Sethu in December 1914 to Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy of India, yet no action was immediately taken by the Government of India because of the intervention of the I World War Even after the end of the I World War, nothing was done because the allocation of funds for archeological work was substantially reduced during the inter-war period between 1919 to 1939. The political turmoil created by the rising independence movement in India also contributed to this process. With the