An earthquake can’t shake it

But greatly more unfortunate than its geographic location is its location on the political map of the region. Large swathes of the affected area comprise one of the most bitterly contested regions in the world, the site of bloody wars and unrelenting militancy. It is a terrain that best resembles a freezing tundra. Nothing grows on these icy wastes of supposed national interest but a constantly renewable harvest of outdated policy formulations, static posturing, and television soundbites which carry the ubiquitous stench of mutual hostility.

In the first flush of the surprise and horror engendered by the earthquake, there were some words exchanged between India and Pakistan which gave rise to the hope that the unfortunate calamity would perhaps have some mitigating consequences. That it would actually forge a shared bond of cooperation, a shared sense of purpose; that there would be an escape for at least a short spell from the prison house of the past. Those expectations were quickly belied, as each side reverted to type and official lips unleashed words like “sensitivities” and “realities”. There are sensitivities to consider, observes Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf; it is a question of reality, no room for romanticism, pronounces Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, even as both natter on in the same breath about the need to provide “urgent help” to the “hapless victims”. Every move that each side proposes is carefully weighed in the scales of precedent, scrupulously jotted down in the debit and credit columns of each nation’s balance sheet.

Indian helicopters are welcomed by Pakistan but without Indian army personnel piloting them; or Pakistan’s proposal for five relief centres along the LoC must necessarily be pared down to three by India. Meanwhile we continue to turn the screws, each on the other. Rhetoric over F-16s, A.Q. Khan, Gilgit, lace the air and is in imminent threat of degenerating into confrontationist positions. Our army bunkers may not be quake proof. Not so the adamantine matrix of Indo-Pak diplomacy. It is built to withstand the shifts and eddies of the passing decades, reinforced brick by verbal brick, on an 58-year-old blueprint based on mistrust and equivalence. At its centre, lies the unfortunate region of Kashmir.

There is another aspect to this exchange that Smruti S. Pattanaik, a scholar in international relations, highlighted in her study, Elite Perceptions in Foreign Policy — that is, the essentially elitist nature of the official Indo-Pak discourse. As Pattanaik observed: “Policy arises out of elite discourse. Perceptional biases have created a stereotype image of each other, within which the expectation of each other are formulated. This has rendered a certain rigidity to the articulated stands of both countries on various issues. Each concession weighted purely in terms of ‘gains’ and ‘losses’ within the prism of the two-nation theory. In a relationship characterised by emotionalism, gains tend to get interpreted as strength, and compromise is equated with weakness.” Pattanaik’s book deals with the period between 1989 and 1999, but nothing has changed in essentials despite the much bruited “peace talks”. Indeed, if the “peace talks” were a living thing, it would have been reflected in an animated joint response of both countries to the horrific natural calamity in their respective backyards. The sterile response to the earthquake can only be read as a reflection of the innate sterility of the on-going peace process.

International codes of conduct during times of human suffering on a mass scale are based on the imperative that the right to receive humanitarian assistance and to offer it is a fundamental humanitarian principle. Such offers cannot, should not, be framed or presented as partisan acts, or denied to people on the basis of race, class, religion or nationality. Further, the nature and extent of this assistance is based on one criterion alone — the actual requirements of the affected population. This also means that the need to reach the affected populations is paramount. The process cannot be allowed to be impeded by political or other extraneous — and often erroneous — considerations, like national pride and prestige. In fact, as some have argued, it behooves a nation to privilege humanity and concern, rather than false pride and prestige in situations when its people are facing a great distress that demands an urgent response.

Hurricane Katrina highlighted what had been suspected all along — that Black America has fallen off Washington’s radar, that the American establishment neither cared about nor understood its plight in its darkest hour. Will the October 8 earthquake hold a similar lesson for the subcontinent? Will it reveal that neither India nor Pakistan really cares about the Kashmiri, only about a territory called Kashmir?

The clock is ticking. India and Pakistan do not have much time left to choose whether they want to be recorded by history as nations that could rise above their situation and respond with efficacy and magnanimity to the earthquake, or as nations that allowed their narrow conceptions of self-esteem to blind them and strap them into a criminal lack of adequate and effective action.