They suffered 1,300 dead, which comes to less than 0.1 per cent of the population. Estimating the population of the nation’s biggest city to be a minimum of 10 million, Karachi could be asked to handle over 8,000 dead, with twice that many injured, besides colossal destruction if an enemy pours its fire at the level done by Israel. I pray to God such a day never arrives, but are the medical services in our big cities — Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi-Islamabad — equipped with men and material and hospital space to handle a humanitarian disaster of such magnitude?
Mind you, Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade for the last 18 months. The ‘disengagement’ fraud perpetrated on the world by Ariel Sharon in August 2005 left Gaza’s land, air and sea exits in Zionist control. Besides, in his infinite wisdom Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak keeps the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only link with an Arab country, closed. Food and medical sup plies even in ‘normal’ times are below the minimum requirement; during the 22-day blitz all supplies ceased as Israeli artillery and air force rained phosphorus bombs and depleted uranium on homes, hospitals, schools, mosque, refugee camps, UN relief centres and on the tunnels which are Gaza’s life line.
Yet, hats off to the Palestinian men, women and children! There was no panic, there was no looting of the available stuff in such shops as were there, and volunteers joined medical services in helping the victims buried under tonnes of rubble, dying, shrieking and writhing in agony.
Pakistani cities are well stocked with food. You only have to go through our bazaars and shopping centres to see that they are overflowing with edibles and goods and imported stuff of all sorts. Are we sure that in times of emergency these goods will still be available and not buried and stashed away from those who would need them?
The Bengal famine during the Raj killed millions of people. Who was to blame? In Blood Brothers, his autobiography in novel form, M.J. Akbar writes a dialogue that takes place between the ‘natives’ and the British officers of a given company. The natives, Hindus and Muslims, blame the British, holding them responsible for the death from starvation of millions of their countrymen.
What the Britons said can be paraphrased like this: was the rice crop this year less than usu al? No. Was there a sudden increase in the number of mouths demanding rice? No. All that took place was an air raid by the Japanese on Calcutta, and suddenly rice disappears. Before the air raid, rice was selling for three rupees a maund; it went up to five rupees, then 10, then 20 then 100 rupees a maund. Who was responsible? Not the British, for it is the Indian traders and Marwaris and the seths who hid the rice stocks and made their compatriots die in millions.
There is no doubt the British had a point, for the South Asians have this inhuman streak in them. What was the relationship between Benazir’s assassination and the disappearance of wheat flour? Benazir is murdered, presumably by Baitullah Mehsud’s men in Rawalpindi, and wheat flour disappears from markets in Quetta and Karachi and Peshawar. And then for months, when flour is finally available, it is of poor quality with a lot of rotten stuff mixed in, and the price is raised.
As a citizen and journalist who has lived through Karachi’s orgy of mob violence, gun battles, religious frenzy and arson for decades, I have noticed that in such crises as bomb blasts or even a minor inconvenience like rain our people add to the crisis instead of trying to mitigate it. Barriers go up at gas stations, transport disappears, restaurants close early, car owners are desperate to reach home as if war has broken out, they create traffic jams and, as divine justice would have it, get trapped themselves.
Decades of ‘training’ have given our people a mob psychology. They do not have the mental make-up of a nation united in spirit and action. In times of crisis even the behaviour of the educated is irrational. This is a serious reflection on the kind of philosophy preached by most political parties. The politicians have seldom preached tolerance and restraint. They have not taught us discipline; instead they have inculcated in us the virtues of learning the art of wheel-jam strikes, stoning and arson. Cartoons are published in Denmark, and 200 vehicles go up in flames in Lahore, and the Punjab Assembly building is attacked in a manner that it suffers structural damage. Often, the political parties congratulate themselves and the nation for making a nationwide wheel-jam strike a success.
The religious parties could have occupied a moral high ground if they had set a noble example. Instead their sermons and the religious idiom in which they couch their political rhetoric have made the people think such strikes are sacred and that you if destroy and burn and kill you do no harm to yourselves or to humanity. Perhaps they should remember Benjamin Disraeli’s words spoken in the 19th century: “We must educate our masters, the people, or else we would be at the mercy of a mob masquerading as democracy.” ¦ By Muhammad A. Siddique ( Dawn Newspaper)
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