Devastating: The day the earth shook
Few will remember the Gandhi-tagore differences over the Bihar earthquake.
Earthquakes are sudden, violent, shaking of the ground as a result of movements within the earth’s crust. The recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria has been devastating. The death toll could touch 30,000. Double the number injured. In Syria, politics has intervened to hamper rescue work. Snow, rain and freezing weather at minus 6 degrees centigrade at night.
India is not free from earthquakes nor Pakistan. Before Independence, earthquakes in Quetta and Bihar were highly destructive. Only primitive instruments existed then.
Few will remember the Gandhi-tagore differences over the Bihar earthquake. Tagore wrote to Gandhiji on 29 January 1934.
“Dear Mahatmaji,
The press reports that you in a recent speech referring to the recent earthquake in Bihar spoke as follows, ‘I want you to be superstitious enough to believe with me that the earthquake is a divine chastisement for the great sin we have committed against those who we describe as Harijans’. I find it difficult to believe it. But if this be your real view on the matter, I do not think it should go unchallenged. Herewith you will find a rejoinder from me. If you are correctly reported in the press, would you kindly send it to the press? I have not sent it myself for publication, for I would be the last person to criticise yours acts.
I am looking forward to meeting you here.
With deep love,
Yours as ever,
Rabindranath Tagore
On February 16, 1934 Tagore issued a protest against Gandhiji’s remarks of “divine chastisement” of Bihar which appeared in “Harijan” of 16 February 1934.
“It has caused me painful surprise to find Mahatma Gandhi accusing those who blindly follow their own social custom of untouchability of having brought down God’s vengeance upon certain parts of Bihar, evidently specially selected for his desolating displeasure. It is all the more unfortunate view of things is too readily accepted by a large section of our countrymen. I keenly feel the iniquity of it when I am compelled to utter a truism in asserting that physical catastrophes have their inevitable and exclusive origin in certain combination of physical facts. Unless we believe in the inexorableness of the universal law in the working of which God himself never interferes, we find it impossible to justify his ways on occasions like the one which has surely stricken us in on overwhelming manner and scale…”
The poet was no match for the Mahatma. Gandhiji’s response was devastating. It did not in any way adversely affect the affection and respect each held for the other.
They were born in same decade: 1861, Tagore; 1869, Gandhiji. The two died in the same decade: 1941, Tagore; 1948, Gandhiji.
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The first time I met General Pervez Musharraf was when he came to Delhi as President of Pakistan. He was staying at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and I called on him. When Sonia introduced me to him, his reply surprised me: “I know Mr Natwar Singh. I attended a lecture he gave at the Pakistan Defence College in Islamabad.”
His family belonged to Delhi. They left for Karachi in August 1947. Pervez Musharraf was four years old. After finishing his education, he joined the army, rising rapidly and rose to become army chief.
I re-read his autobiography after his death in Dubai, early last week. He was a better head of state than an author. The chapter on Kargil is more fiction than fact.
The photograph here was taken at his residence in Rawalpindi. Apart from the President and me, the others are Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and Shivshankar Menon, our High Commissioner in Pakistan.
He was every inch an army man. Even his critics would concede that Pervez Musharraf had a presence.