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Umh!, Whats this?

Cracked mirror 

In her often unexpected role reversal, nature the nurturer turns destroyer and how. So she 
did on the morning of India’s first Republic Day in the new millennium. The devastating 
seconds that shook Gujarat caused a human loss of at least 30,000 lives while the material 
damage is officially estimated at 20,000 crore (official estimate). But the ravaging of Gujarat 
goes beyond numbers. 
Seismologists tell us they still do not know enough about earthquakes to forewarn us of an     impending catastrophe in time. What can be said with certainty, however, is that when nature acts the great wrecker, she is also a great leveller — in her all-consuming fury she makes no distinction of class, community, or caste. But the cracked mirror that is Gujarat tells us quite a bit about ourselves.
Enough instances have been dug out from under the rubble to remind us that the worst of times can also bring out the best in us. The most poignant of the stories to come out of the hapless state is perhaps the account of Hindus sprucing up an unused masjid in Ahmedabad and inviting Muslims to return for namaaz to a mosque they had abandoned out of fear. One mosque snatched away in 1992, another one returned with feelings now. Hindus are grateful for how Muslims from their neighbourhood forgot all the communal bitterness that has been piling up for years and spent day and night rescuing Hindus trapped under collapsed buildings.
Sadly, the good news is increasingly interspersed with the bad. If in this great moment of grief, individuals and groups are spontaneously able to recognise the common human bond, mind-sets steeped in sectarian ideology find it difficult to cross self-constructed barriers. If Karnataka minister, T John’s describing the earthquake as divine wrath was insensitive and shocking, complaints against the RSS and the VHP about discrimination in relief are too many to be ignored. 
But the sangh parivar is not the only problem. A lot of common folk may have realised through their trauma that religion doesn’t matter. But, obviously, caste does. Rehabilitation and reconstruction, yes; but make sure the ‘untouchable’ is housed (kept) in his proper place. If even an earthquake of the magnitude that hit Gujarat could not crack open the caste mould, what will? 
Oddly enough, the cyclone and super-cyclone that devastated Orissa over 15-months-ago also peep out of the cracked mirror. The loss to property in the eastern state was no less; the casualty in human (and numerical) terms no less numbing. But neither the government, nor We the People, of India, were so prompt or so generous in our response then as we were this time. It is tempting from the flow of national and international aid, men and material into Gujarat now to conclude that human beings at last are becoming more sensitive to the predicaments of other human beings. A comforting thought but for the fact that we seem to have unconsciously evolved a new philosophy of caring and sharing: those better placed to help themselves are most deserving of our help. 
It was also on the eve of R-Day that Prime Minister AB Vajpayee announced an extension of the Ramzaan-time ceasefire in Kashmir that he had taken the initiative in announcing. What prospects for peace in Kashmir, for an end to Indo-Pak hostility? In a piece he has contributed to this issue, Tapan Bose, general secretary of the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy, sees a window of opportunity but warns us to beware of the western perspective that sees partition as the best way of ‘conflict resolution.’ Can we forget the lessons of the bloody partition that we are still living through?
But for the sad truth that the region barely impinges on the consciousness of the rest of India, we would be alive to the fact that the situation in the northeast, is no less alarming than in J&K. A special report focuses on the ominous agenda that the Centre seems to be pursuing in Assam through a Lotus-friendly governor.
And as we go to press, there comes the news from Bhagalpur that a special court has served a life sentence on 16 of the 41 persons accused in the merciless killing of 65 Muslim men and women in Chanderi, during the 1988 Bhagalpur riots which claimed over 1,200 lives. It is perhaps for the first time in the history of post-Independence India that such a large group of people have been convicted and served the life sentence for communal killing. More on this in the next issue.