India–Sri Lanka: Shared Ramayana Heritage

Policy Update
Asmeet Kaur

“The Ramayana is more than a tale about Ayodhya; it is a geographical and spiritual cartography of the timeless relationship between India and Sri Lanka, a common heritage where every mountain, cave, and waterfall tells the same story, with the sea serving as a bridge rather than a barrier.”

Background

The timeless epic of the Ramayana serves as a deep civilizational bridge between India and Sri Lanka, as a shared cultural narrative for their bilateral relationship. This civilizational bridge is not just an abstract historical reference either, because it is a living civilizational tradition that is growing in importance for tourism, cultural diplomacy, and cultural soft power. In the epic, Lord Rama, as a prince of Ayodhya, went to rescue his wife Sita from Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, Lanka being identified with contemporary Sri Lanka. The Ramayana, then, provides both nations with a cultural and civilizational foundation upon which to build their cooperation today, both as a possibility and a challenge.

Sri Lanka, often referred to as Ravana’s kingdom of Lanka, is home to over 50 sites associated with the Ramayana events. These sites are not just mythical in nature; they reflect a physical connection between Sri Lanka and India. Notable sites include:

Sita Eliya (Ashok Vatika): The place believed to be where Ravana held Sita captive, home to the Seetha Amman Temple.

Divurumpola: Site traditionally acknowledged as Sita’s Agni Pariksha (trial by fire) to demonstrate her chastity.

Ravana Caves and Ravana Falls: Sites linked to King Ravana add depth to the Sri Lankan perspective of the Ramayana. He is often characterized as a learned scholar and capable administrator rather than just a villain.

Ram Setu (Adam’s Bridge): The connected chain of shoals bridging Rameswaram India and Talaimannar Sri Lanka, which was reportedly built by Rama’s Vanara (monkey) army.

This common heritage gives us a “people-to-people” emotional and spiritual link that represents an everlasting support for India-Sri Lanka relations that transcends politics and economics. The epic’s universal themes of virtue, duty, love, and victory of good over evil communicate across religious and ethnic boundaries.

Functioning

The primary mechanism for formally utilizing this shared heritage is the Ramayana Trail tourism project, which turns the mythological journey into a formal pilgrimage and tourism itinerary, with the primary target being the sizable Indian pilgrim tourist market.

Main Elements

Site Identification and Promotion: Sri Lanka Tourism and Indian travel operators have actively identified, mapped, and promoted key sites associated with the Ramayana. These support services also involve developing infrastructure, providing knowledgeable guides, and doing a multi-day tour package.

Infrastructure Development: There have been proposals and apparently some initial actions around Indian investments, including hotels, roads and developments in other infrastructure relating to these sites.

Cultural Diplomacy: The Trail serves an important purpose of India’s ‘Neighbourhood First Policy’ and Sri Lanka’s desire to offer recognizable tourism opportunities for economic development. In addition to promoting the pilgrimage, the Trail includes cultural displays, seminars, and cultural art programs, including the Ramayanam Chitra Kavyam.

Connectivity: Promotion of better air and potentially land/sea connectivity (aviation potentially and ferry service back to proposals around Ram Setu bridge/connectivity projects) is often promoted as a means of facilitating the pilgrimage experience.

Performance

The Ramayana Trail initiative’s performance must be understood within the context of extreme global and domestic challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic and Sri Lanka’s serious economic collapse in 2022.

Resilience and Recovery (2022-2025): Despite difficulties, Ramayana heritage is clearly a resilient draw. India was established as Sri Lanka’s largest inbound tourism market, with the rich spiritual and cultural appeal of the Trail playing an important part in the resurgence of tourism to the country.

High-Profile Campaigns: An important sentinel of recent performance is the high-profile marketing campaigns delivered by Sri Lankan Airlines and Phoenix Ogilvy’s ‘Relive the Epic of the Ramayana Trail’. This marketing campaign won global awards for marketing (including in 2025, a Bronze APAC Effie award), pointing to the success culturally rich compelling messaging can deliver in impacting real business returns, and that could attract Indian tourists to the 20 tourism sites promoted.

Government Interest and Attention: In the last few years, there has been an increased focus from the government of Sri Lanka, given the substantial opportunity to attract millions of Indian visitors. Indian officials and religious leaders discussing support for developing and investing in the Sri Lankan Ramayana Trail have engaged with officials from the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, especially following the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.

Policy Support: To promote tourism and stimulate economic recovery, Sri Lanka introduced a temporary free visa regime for Indian visitors to promote travel for tourists or pilgrims alike.

Overall, recent years represent a pivot since the Ramayana Trail has moved from a specific niche activity to a pinnacle, proactively marketed, bilateral tourism project critical to Sri Lanka’s economic stabilization.

Impact

The Ramayana heritage has a multi-layered impact on the relationship between India and Sri Lanka.

Cultural and Spiritual Impact: The Trail establishes a deeper sense of shared cultural consciousness. By connecting the narrative of the epic physically to sites throughout Sri Lanka, it opens up a myth into a lived experience for millions of devotees. The shared heritage enables interfaith and inter-cultural awareness for visitors from many different backgrounds. At the same time, it points to diverging cultural perspectives, such as the portrayal of Ravana in Sri Lanka as an able administrator and as a heroic figure in certain contexts, which adds richness to the shared narrative, rather than diminishes it.

Diplomatic and Political Impact: The shared Ramayana heritage is a source of soft power and diplomatic leverage, building people to people connectivity, which leaders often argue is the basis for the bilateral relationship, and a stabilizing factor in the relationship during periods of political or economic difficulty. The commitment to develop the trail is frequently reiterated in joint statements and in bilateral conversations, and is an aspect of India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy and the relationship’s propulsion toward “irreversible excellence.”

Economic Impact: The most direct and immediate effect is on revenues derived from tourism. The Indian market is the largest source market for Sri Lanka, and the Trail represents a high-value, niche segment to this market. The successful promotion campaigns have resulted in a demonstrated revival of tourism in Sri Lanka, bringing in essential foreign exchange during an economy in crisis.

Emerging Issues

This shared heritage confronts some very real challenges:

Commodification vs authenticity: The Ramayana can be packaged as a tourism commodity, but risk flattening local ritual meanings to a consumable itinerary. The question of how to support livelihoods while retaining ritual authenticity is an ongoing tension.
Politicization of heritage: When archaeological claims are intertwined with identity politics, scholarship and heritage management can become proxies for larger geopolitical narratives, also complicating collaborative conservation.
Environmental vulnerability: Ramayana sites, coastal and inland, face erosion, sea-level changes, and ecological pressures from unregulated visitation. Without integrated conservation plans, physical heritage—temples, caves, coastal shoals—will be at risk.
Unequal benefits and community participation: Tourism revenue and cultural funding usually bypass either completely or take time to build local custodianship or capacity. In many places, equitable benefit-sharing and community custodianship are weak.

Way Forward

India and Sri Lanka can work towards a sustainable, inclusive, and growing cultural exchange that can be achieved through shared Ramayana heritage with a forward-looking approach.

1. P4 (Pilgrimage, People, Partnership, Preservation)

The next step should not merely be a pilgrimage to a destination, but move further, and identify:

Pilgrimage: A more spiritual, authentic journey without mass-market commodification.

People: Fund shared projects with academics, artists and students engaged in studying and celebrating the epic in both countries. In addition to this course of study, the exchange across borders may deepen the appreciation of both the distinctions and similarities in the epic.

Partnership: Create a Joint Bilateral Heritage Commission focused solely on the Ramayana and Buddhist circuits to provide ongoing funding and ensure that the Commission is not the manifestation of any government.

Preservation: Develop environmentally and culturally appropriate infrastructure and practice care for fragile places.

2. Digital and Educational Connections: Taking advantage of new technologies opens up opportunities for reaching more people and increasing educational volume. This could include developing high-quality virtual tours of the various Ramayana sites, establishing digital libraries of art and literature (including comparisons of Valmiki’s Ramayana and local versions), and embedding Ramayana stories into school education systems in terms of furthering the shared, multicultural narrative. Coordination of shared cultural festivals, like the Chitra Kavyam exhibition, could be increased to an annual cycle.

3. Coordinated and Integrated Planning for Connectivity: Any major project for connectivity in the region, and specifically the Ram Setu bridge, would need to be approached with the utmost care, planning, and prioritization. In order for meaningful dialogue to take place, true transparency in local communities, environmentalists, and geopolitical specialists on both sides needs to be encouraged. Smaller projects of high impact—such as the ferry service—may take place first, in order to build trust and emphasize a possibility for an immediate pilgrimage stream.

Conclusion

The Ramayana is a storied bridge – literally and metaphorically – connecting India and Sri Lanka. Today, that bridge supports pilgrims, tourists, performances and political claims. In the next decade, we should shift from adhering to this shared respect and transform it into shared stewardship: a collaborative, evidence-informed, and community-based process of care that will, protect sacred landscapes, sustain local livelihoods, and allow the respective voices of the epic to flourish, without turning them into slogans and souvenirs. If we can connect cultural diplomacy by rigorous science and equitable participation from local communities, the Ramayana heritage can remain a living, plural, and resilient connection across the Palk Strait.

References

Chatterjee, A. (2023). Do You Believe in Ram Setu? Adam’s Bridge, Epistemic Plurality and Colonial Legacy. Island Studies Journal. https://islandstudiesjournal.org/article/84214-do-you-believe-in-ram-setu-adam-s-bridge-epistemic-plurality-and-colonial-legacy

Dandabathula, G., Srivastav, S. K., Bera, A., Chauhan, P., & others. (2024). A high-resolution digital bathymetric elevation model of Adam’s Bridge region. Scientific Data / PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11211400/

Economynext. (2024, April 22). Ramayana trail will be game changer for Sri Lanka tourism, Indian envoy says. Economynext. https://economynext.com/ramayana-trail-will-be-game-changer-for-sri-lanka-tourism-indian-envoy-159670/

Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. (2024, March 1). Ramayana is a binding force for the entire South East Asia [Press release]. Press Information Bureau. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=2010820

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Sri Lanka. (2019, August 26). Sri Lanka Tourism projects Ramayana Heritage Sites in Sri Lanka to outbound tour operators in Northern India [News / press release]. https://mfa.gov.lk/en/sri-lanka-tourism-projects-ramayana-heritage-sites-in-sri-lanka-to-outbound-tour-operators-in-northern-india/

Sri Lanka Tourism / Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA). (n.d.). Content of Ramayana Yathra [Brochure]. SLTDA. https://www.sltda.gov.lk/storage/common_media/ramayanaya-yathra%20E%20Brochure4096755957.pdf

About the Author

Asmeet Kaur is a researcher at IMPRI and an undergraduate student at Indraprastha College for Women, Delhi University, with a keen interest in Foreign affairs, Public policy and administration.

Acknowledgment: The author sincerely thanks Ms. Aasthaba Jadeja and the IMPRI team for their valuable support.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.