Does it take a natural disaster to resolve an ethnic one?

While inhabiting a conveniently distant part of the subcontinent, I am sure many an Indian has exclaimed, “What will it take to get India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue? Shaking up the earth around it?” Until a couple days ago, that question would have been a very valid one and the answer a resounding no.

I was watching with a mixed feeling of sadness and bewilderment the events that unfolded in the aftermath of the quake in Pakistan (at least as much as American news will allow between the more earth-shattering issues of Rove and Delay and Harriet Miers).

Turns out, it takes more than just a shaking of the earth. It takes a shaking of the earth, the US being bogged down with terrorists and hurricanes, the UN relief effort coming up short, and then some.

Musharraf denied Indian offer of aid on account that the pilots had to be Pakistani. Did he actually think that amid the dead and dying, amid bodies lodged between tectonic plates, amid the rampant putrefying smell of decomposition, Indians were going to infiltrate the border and claim Pakistani controlled Kashmir? More importantly, did he actually find time to stop and think about it?

The first line of defense, as always, was seen by survivors at the scene of the disaster: as if to reinforce the needlessness of political and social boundaries, Indian soldiers were said to have gone across to help Pakis with their bunkers. Reminiscent of old war-time movies that portray soldiers compassionately helping a fellow human being across the line of fire, it was a refreshing change to learn that humanitarian instincts hadn’t completely died. That reassurance was short-lived, of course, cos this report was immediately disputed by Pakistan – their bunkers were robust, they claimed. Robust enough to take on a quake of magnitude 7.6. But that is not the point here. Arguing about self-sufficiency and providence in the face of one of the worst natural disasters in history seemed like a joke. Human beings are quite helpless against Nature’s whims and fancies, as the tsunami and Katrina well proved. The least we can do is put our efforts together.

It took a painstaking ten days for the two governments to come to that realization and agree to open up the line of control. What baffled me was the touting of this as a breakthrough effort by leaders of the two countries. Shouldn’t that have been the absolute first thing done in the aftermath of the disaster? Does a line drawn by politics and ethnicity figure way higher than saving lives that could have been saved?

Alongside the history of the partition and the struggle for independence, I think we should be taught something more fundamental – a list of the priorities of life in ascending order, namely, if someone is dying by your side and you can help, don’t dig out your history text book to see if your government is at war with his.

Yesterday’s South Park spoof on Katrina said it best – even while a catastrophe is unfolding, we are standing in the sidelines and trying to connect things so far removed from it, so as to make an interesting story. Over 40,000 people died in the quake – to me, that is story enough, one that defies boundaries and borders that make perfect sense on other days.

Someone came up with a punch line that there is no LoC at this shared moment of tragedy. Clearly, he meant 10,000 moments after it.

I am not urging the unthinkable and saying unite the two countries. Just wait and rebuild your barbed wires and close down your telecom lines when life is back to normal (normal being relative, of course, since life is never normal in Kashmir).

What is normal is that humanitarian instincts come before ethnic, political and religious ones...that’s how Nature intended (and maybe even God cos somewhere between fasting and going on a pilgrimage, I think he mentioned helping a human being in need).

[If this sounds like one of those essays on righteousness and moral values, it’s NOT. I don’t believe in a list of virtues indelibly carved on stone (with due respect to The Rock), but I do believe that sometimes a human being should think about the immediate present instead of being blurred by a rigid set of rules that someone pinned up in a moment of leisure. It’s my anguish at the recurrent fault of human nature that allows priorities to be so wastefully misconstrued and practicality to be pushed far in the back of the mind, behind religion and politics and needlessly drawn lines (I mean, other than tectonic ones, of course, which seem the most needless of them all)].