Remember Your Brethren - Kashmir's Unimaginable devastation
Eid-ul-Azha this year has followed immediately in the wake of an unprecedented devastation wrought by the worst floods in the state in living memory.
Hundreds of lives have been lost, thousands have been rendered homeless and thousands still have lost their businesses.
According to a government estimate, the state has suffered a loss of around one trillion rupees.
And Eid is upon us while we are still mopping up the widespread destruction and the massive humanitarian fallout of the natural calamity.
There is a massive ongoing community effort to provide relief to the population hit by the deluge. Relief camps have come up all along Srinagar where hundreds of volunteers are working round the clock to help the flood-affected.
These are extraordinary times for Kashmir and we need to pool an extraordinary effort to respond to it. State Government from the day one has struggled to put its act together.
Caught unawares by the scale and sweep of the flood which even swept away the administrative machinery including the critical health infrastructure, the government has found it difficult to get its bearings back.
But it is now crucial that the governments, both state and central, move to the foreground to undertake the rehabilitation effort.
While the community effort backed by the Kashmiri diaspora and the well-meaning people in India and abroad could put together a successful relief operation, the rehabilitation of the victims is something that only government can do.
So, the government needs to step forward. But this hardly absolves the community of further responsibility towards the flood-hit, some of whom have lost everything – houses and businesses.
While we celebrate Eid, a festivity which is incumbent on all Muslims, we need to be mindful of the immediate tragedy that has befallen a large section of our society, over and above the trauma and grief that we have been experiencing for the past two and a half decades.
This calls for us to be more austere in our celebration. After all the effort we put in the relief and rescue, we need to show that we care on Eid too.
Those of us who can afford to spend should instead donate the amount they would otherwise spend on consumables for their brethren in distress.
Same goes for the people offering animal sacrifices. They would earn more Sawab and God's goodwill should they also contribute some amount to the relief effort.
Let this Eid further strengthen and sustain the spirit of community effort that made us stand up to the calamity of as gigantic a proportion as the recent flood Aameen.
Source: greaterkashmir.com
