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When the earth shakes and man trembles Published on February 13, 2007
On October 8 the earth shook in northern Pakistan, leaving a large swathe of Kashmir and adjoining areas in ruins. This followed less than a year after a giant tsunami churned the seas and devastated far flung lands. The tsunami killed almost a quarter of a million people in half a dozen countries. The earthquake that struck Pakistan killed over 70,000 people in an area a fraction of the size of the lands hit by the tsunami. It also killed hundreds in Indian Kashmir. "Why does such human tragedy happen?" I asked my interlocutor after the earthquake. "Some say these are acts of God. Can this be true? There is, for example, a Pakistan-born fundamentalist woman living and teaching in Canada who has said publicly that deaths in the Pakistani earthquake were God's punishment for "immoral activities" of the people there. But there are many others around the world who share her belief. " "I do not know", was his all too familiar reply, "but people whose opinion it is that God sends mankind natural calamities as punishment for bad behaviour can quote from the holy books to support their view." He went on to quote the following verse from the Koran: "Mischief has appeared on land and sea because of (the meed) that the hands of men have earned, that (God) may give them a taste of some of their deeds: in order that they may turn back (from evil)." (XXX: 41) "But, wait a minute," I said, "there were thousands of children among the dead in the earthquake. Many of them were only school children, crushed by collapsing class rooms. Surely, they were too young to do evil and deserve punishment." "That is true", said my interlocutor, "but, the argument goes, God may have His own design, which human beings cannot comprehend. It may be better to leave things at that." Still puzzled, I asked: "But how is it that the earthquake killed mainly in Muslim Kashmir and spared India, the mainly Hindu state? How is it that God is so much more severe on Muslims than on Hindus. Also, why did the tsunami victims have to be overwhelmingly Muslim? Did you also notice that most of the latter were in the Indonesian province of Aceh where there has been a resurgence of fundamentalist Islam?" As usual, my interlocutor mumbled something in reply and was off, just as I was going to ask him why God inflicted the calamity upon fasting Muslims in the holy month of Ramadan. I returned to my musings. I could not help noting that the ultra-conservative evangelist Pat Robertson also sees a connection between God's wrath and natural disaster. While apocalyptic visions are by their nature opaque to rationality and human intelligence, the human dimensions of natural disasters are clear enough. There is nothing that man can do to prevent an earthquake, a tsunami, a landslide, or a cyclone. But his response to calamities that occasionally bring havoc to the only habitable planet he has ever known can be at least as remarkable as his puniness against nature. Among the images of immediate response to the tragedy in Pakistan, was the arrival of a British rescue team within hours of the quake. The gesture was noble as well as supremely useful. It saved lives. In a country that is haunted by the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism, it was heart warming to see members of another faith, or people with no faith at all, saving Muslim lives and to see the help gratefully acknowledged. It was hardly less remarkable to see dogs, man's best friend in the west but an unclean animal in much of the Muslim world, pressed into service to find victims of the disaster. The rescue operation, like many such in other circumstances, tore through barriers that separate man from man -- and from beast. Within hours of the disaster, too, India came with offers of help, while its own people were also victims of the earthquake, though there were mercifully far fewer of them than in Pakistan. Given the intractable hostility between the two countries, it is easy to be cynical about India's offer of help. But the offer was genuinely humanitarian and was accepted, even if with reservations. The aftermath of the disaster even offered glimpses of hope for easing of tension between the two countries. There are few phenomena in human relations more heart warming than old enemies coming together to bring succour to the afflicted. This did not of course prevent a lone suicide bomber, a woman clad in burqa, from blowing herself up, trying to blow up Indian military vehicles coming to the assistance of earthquake victims in Indian Kashmir. Neither is the zeal of Islamist extremists in bringing relief to the stricken people in Pakistani Kashmir devoid of political aims. Yet the action of the suicide bomber and the motivations of the militants only underline the human dimensions of the problem, as against the divine, that human beings themselves have to sort out. No amount of apocalyptic vision will help. The loss of life and property in Pakistan has been enormous. The government of the country has put the estimated cost of reconstruction at some 5 billon dollars. There is a feeling that this is not an overestimation. The immediate relief available from the rest of the world has not been insignificant, though it has fallen short of the response to the Asian tsunami, both as to its speed and its size. The international community should be as generous now as it was for the tsunami victims. There cannot be a better use of the world's resources. Pakistan's national priorities must change too. The purchase of some sophisticated arms from abroad has, we are told, been postponed. Why not abandon it altogether and use the resources released for reconstruction and economic development? A disaster like an earthquake hit the rich and the poor alike, but not equally. The well to do generally live in better built houses. Their survival rate in a calamity is thus much higher than among the poor living in ramshackle housing. Proper housing for the poor should go a considerable way in mitigating the effects of natural disasters. Construction of buildings -- houses and schools -- that can be expected to withstand shocks of earthquakes must be a priority in any medium and long-term plan for rebuilding human life in Pakistan. Many mosques stood the onslaught of the Asian tsunami and this was much touted as divine intervention. But the fact that the houses of worship are often, but not always, spared by natural disasters while other structures collapse can be easily explained in non-divine terms: the former are generally strongly built, while many of the latter, particularly those housing the poor, are all too flimsy. The very acts of humanity by neighbours coming to the rescue also suggest the need for strengthening regional cooperation. The ability to come to the aid of the stricken should increase enormously if there were permanent mechanisms of regional response. That ability should increase if there are intra-regional infrastructures like road, rail, and air links. One hopes that the schemes of regional cooperation like Saarc would give due weight to these considerations. There is in fact a great deal that man can do when the earth shakes, particularly by way of bringing the human community together. [Article is also published in Daily Star; sent to Mukto-Mona by the author for publication.]
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