More sacred than Ram, and certainly pre-dating him, is the River Ganga, Mother Goddess, and we are not even talking about the many shrines and statues hidden North and upriver of Haridwar. Local lore has it that a series of invaders destroyed almost everything along the River Ganga upto Haridwar and Rishikesh, but left the upriver alone. One reason could be that they didn?t really want to harm commerce along the river. They knew how commerce and religion marched hand-in-hand, shoulder-to-shoulder, swords or otherwise.

All through history, religion has worked with commerce in an attempt to attain dominance. And in the Indian subcontinent, our invaders found a whole lot of woolly-headed do-gooders who would try to secure only as much as needed to guarantee their share of inertia, the sum of the parts be damned. Over time, we adopted their codes of law, the relevance of which are still with us as the shipping project along Tamil Nadu?s coast goes to the courts.

Whether religion takes precedence over commerce is not a question they would have asked in the old days, knowing fully well how they feed off each other. At least on land. The old religion of the seas is not very complex. There is no law at sea, God does not exist beyond the 40th parallel, and what?s in between is for you to use with intelligence. Be stupid, and you drown.

But to see the inland synergy between religion and commerce, we do not have to look beyond the neighbourhood shrines, where, in quick order, the House of Gods and Other Divine Beings evolve into shops, eateries, puncture repair shops and more. But my point is this?my friends from the BJP and VHP (and I have a few…) would need to eschew any sort of hydroelectric projects as well as rail and road bridges across the length of the Ganga before they convince me that knocking a few hundred metres off Adam?s bridge is not kosher.

The vote bank, we hear, would not permit it. Also, there is money in things being kept just the way they are, and not just being made by oarsmen of rickety little vessels. Take the Bihar of my youth. From Independence in 1947, when Bihar was India?s most industrialised state and there was one road-cum-rail bridge at Mokamah-Barauni, until just about a decade or so ago, a lobby of water-borne interests prevented the completion of a second bridge spanning the Ganga across Bihar. Religion was one of the reasons then, too. The rest was history.

In the 1970s and 1980s, coal to be moved from Bihar to South India would need to be first trucked to Calcutta or Haldia, from where it would be loaded on to ships for Tuticorin. The Calcutta port couldn?t handle mid-sized ships, and Haldia was in a mess, so the coal would then be trucked to Paradeep. From there, it would be loaded on to ships, and sent off to Tuticorin?a voyage around Ceylon. This meant international certification, added costs and time lost, so some of those ships would dock at Madras port instead. From where, you guessed right, the whole lot was loaded onto trucks again. Just look at this on a map. Jharkhand, Dhanbad, Bihar, Kolkata, Diamond Harbour, Haldia, West Bengal, Paradeep, Orissa, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and thence around Sri Lanka to Tuticorin. See the inefficiency? The transactional costs? The pilferage? Or the finished products on the way back? The revenues siphoned off enroute?

By the economics of sea-borne trade, it was and is simply cheaper to import coal from Australia.

You see, at sea, you do not need to acquire land, displace people, build embankments, place support services or pay bribes. You just find a safe route between two places, adhere to certain laws of navigation and safety at sea, and get going. Now take a look at the same map and imagine shallow draft coastal barges plying down the Ganga and along the coast. Does it fit in with an emergent India? Just see the way private ports are springing up along the West Coast, and work out why Tamil Nadu wants in. Rapidly.

Also picture the small narrow minds of those who cannot see the multiplier effects of efficient coastal trade within Indian waters. Or better still, the fears of the intermediaries that will be bypassed by the development.

I mean, what are we talking about? Lord Ram did a lot of other things. He also sent arrows flying through the air; I believe it, sure. So, should members of the VHP and Bajrang Dal stop using mobile phones to send electronic signals through the same sacred air?

Opening up the Tamil Nadu coastal route will make it cheaper and easier to send everything by sea from as far away as Rajasthan, Punjab and Gujarat, on one side, to the whole of the East and maybe even Northeast on the other, and that will impact a whole lot of inbetweens, toll-takers and octroi types along the way. Pilferage is slightly difficult at sea, since there is nothing around but salt water?as in the days of Lord Ram too.

?Veeresh Malik has vast experience of both shipping and Indian pilgrimage routes. On the latter, he has also contributed to a travel guide.

Email: veereshmalik@gmail.com