India’s Prime Minister brought up the idea at the Sri Lankan parliament, when he visited the country in March 2015. This was not the first time such an idea was proposed however. Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister had already proposed a road bridge across the straits over a decade ago. However, the then Indian government, hobbled by a coalition that included political parties based in Tamil Nadu, had ignored the idea.
Many politicians in the southern state of Tamil Nadu are opposed to the Sinhalese-dominated government in Sri Lanka, thanks to the civil war in Sri Lanka, which only recently came to a close, pitting the Sinhalese majority against the Tamil minority. It is only after the change of guard in New Delhi, and the arrival of Narendra Modi, that renewed interest is being shown in the proposal. India’s Minister for Transport, Nitin Gadkari, has stated that the Asian Development Bank is willing to fund the bridge to the tune of USD 5 billion.
The bridge is being referred to as the “Hanuman Bridge,” a reference to the monkey-god and warrior of the Indian epic Ramayana. In the story, the hero Rama builds a bridge across the straits from India to Sri Lanka, to rescue his kidnapped wife. Rama’s devotee, Hanuman, is said to have leaped across the narrow straits and spied out the land before Rama’s foray. Hanuman’s storied deeds have made him a favorite in India, and he is immortalized in the poems Ramayana and Hanuman Chalisa.
India is moving fast in improving connectivity and ties with Sri Lanka, after over two decades of lackluster performance. For example, Modi inaugurated a railway line during his visit that India had built a few years ago, and India is also involved in rebuilding infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the civil war. The new haste is partly thanks to China’s pan-Asian “one belt, one road” initiative, for which China has initiated several large infrastructure projects in many nations in the continent. All of India’s neighbors are part of this initiative.
The new Hanuman Bridge will improve trade between the two countries, as well as exchange of commodities. It will also ease the lives of many Indian exporters. A reasonable fraction of India’s exports are shipped from the port of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, mainly due to capacity shortage and lack of infrastructure in Indian ports.
