Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

[Achilles]

Link

The Indian government has withdrawn a controversial report submitted in court earlier this week which questioned the existence of the Hindu god Ram.

 

The report was withdrawn after huge protests by opposition parties.

 

The report was presented to the Supreme Court on Wednesday in connection with a case against a proposed shipping canal project between India and Sri Lanka.

 

Hindu hardliners say the project will destroy what they say is a bridge built by Ram and his army of monkeys.

(emphasis added)

Gotta love fundies. I wonder how many followers of abrahamic religions will read this story and think that everyone in India has lost their minds, not recognizing that many of their brethren exhibit the exact same behavior when it comes to the existence of god and their mythologies. Good times.

[Sabretooth]

Oh yeah, I know all about this. See, Rama is the 7th incarnation of Vishnu and protagonist of a Hindu epic, the Ramayana. About half-way through the story, he comes across a race of semi-human monkeys, called the Vanaras (pron. Vah-nuh-ruh-s). The antagonist, Ravana lives in Lanka and getting their is bit of a pain. So, after praying to God's soul, Rama is bestowed with this: if the Vanaras write the word "Rama" on a rock, it will float on the sea.

With this, Rama created an artificial bridge to Lanka, where he advanced with the Vanara army and waged war against Ravana. The Ramayana is really fascinating, IMO.

 

Thing is, there's a stretch of islands between India and Sri Lanka called Adam's Bridge. In Hindi, it's called "Ram Setu" or Rama's Bridge . As you can guess, the religious dudes were pissed off when someone wants to blow it up. I think they're just being bums. I mean, there isn't even hard proof of Ram having built a bloody string of islands.