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Nepal earthquake is not divine justice. Leave God out of it

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Danish Husain
Danish HusainMay 02, 2015 | 09:03

Nepal earthquake is not divine justice. Leave God out of it

This business of the divine punishing a few to reprimand most is deeply ingrained in us. I remember when the Latur earthquake happened in 1993, I overheard many say in private gatherings that this was Allah punishing for Babri mosque demolition because people from that region generously contributed to Kar Sewa. I was amused when I first heard that. Firstly, even though I did not have any data on the demographic profile of the people collected on December 6, 1992 at the Babri mosque site, I can say for sure that if there were people from Latur, they would have formed only a minuscule percentage of the assembled crowd. Secondly, why Latur? If Allah’s wrath had to fall on anybody then it should have fallen on Advani or the VHP leaders. That would have been a more direct retribution. A clear cause and action link. Why Latur?

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Many years later I was reading Orhan Pamuk’s memoirs and one incident seeped deep into my consciousness. While walking back from school one day, a brash friend of Pamuk took a stone and threw it towards the sky and challenged if there be God then let his wrath strike me as lightning right now and punish me. Pamuk, dumbfounded, stood there for an imminent lightning to fall, which never fell. He was scared but secretly wished he had the guts of his friend. This incident links to another memory as a teenager when I visited a saint’s tomb in Agra. The Mujaavir told us the story that when the saint was about to be executed, the Mughal emperor Jehangir taunted him for being the righteous one. The saint looked up at the emperor and said do you want proof? The emperor, nonplussed, said yes. The saint threw a stone in the sky and it came back with “haq” engraved on it. The sky would forever remain the Goliath towards whom the Davids of this world will keep throwing stones - at times for validation and at times as an act of rebellion. Like a mad man who knows he won’t get justice but would still throw a stone at the king’s cavalcade.

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Now, I hear Sakshi Maharaj blames Rahul Gandhi’s dietary preferences for the calamity in Nepal. And Sadhvi Prachi is blaming beef eating in general. Wow! I must say that’s bestowing Rahul Gandhi with way too much power. His single act of choosing a meal can cause an earthquake. By that logic Sakshi Maharaj and Sadhvi Prachi must do something to please this god so Rahul gives up eating beef, and that restores balance on this earth.

And if this saintly logic has to be extended, then I would say Nepalese themselves are responsible for this calamity. The annual slaughtering of animals at Gadhimai festival has incurred this divine wrath. If one were to go by statistics, some quarter million animals, mainly buffaloes, get slaughtered at the festival. That’s a lot of bloodshed. And I must add here that the evangelists' idea of God punishing people to make them discover the right saviour in Jesus is equally misplaced and laughable. These skewed logic are two sides of the same mad coin.

And if divine justice works through natural calamity, there is way too much collateral damage. It’s like Americans restoring justice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Either America is emulating God or God is emulating America. Either way, the idea of justice fails. If justice not precise, not timely, not direct, not linking the act of violation to the act of retribution then it is not justice. Perhaps we should delink our idea of justice from wishful thinking.

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A few years ago I was acting in a play called Stay Yet A While, a kind of docudrama on stage based on the letters of Gandhi and Tagore. The play was based on Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s book The Mahatama and The Poet, and I was playing Bhattacharya’s role on the stage.

Among the few letters we selected for our presentation, there were ones between the two over the 1934 Bihar earthquake. Gandhi had given a public statement that the Bihar earthquake was God’s vengeance for people’s mistreatment of Harijans. Tagore responded to that with an article in the Harijan issue of February 16, 1934. I got great comfort when I read the following lines and restored my faith that reason is greater than wishful thinking.

Tagore ended his response with the words: “Our own sins and errors, however enormous, have not got enough force to drag down the structure of creation to ruins.”

Last updated: May 02, 2015 | 09:03
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