7.8-MAGNITUDE QUAKE THAT HIT TURKEY, SYRIA

Earthquakes are sudden, violent, shaking of the ground as a result of movements within the earth’s crust. The recent, 7.8 degrees earthquake in Turkey and Syria have been devastating. The death toll could touch 30,000 dead. Double the number injured. In Syria, politics has intervened to hamper rescue work. Snow, rain and freezing weather minus 6 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. On February 16, 1934, Tagore issued a protest against Gandhiji remarks of “divine chastisement” of Bihar which appeared in “Harjan” 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 response was devastating. I 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.