When a tragedy like floods strikes how do people react to it?
Recently in the beginning of December, heavy rains descended
on Chennai and the city went under the water. The deluge brought in its wake immense
suffering and tragedies and loss. Cars and two-wheelers were either submerged
or marooned. Water came up to the level of ceiling fans in the ground floor.
Huts and makeshift houses of the poor built along the river banks were washed
away, along with whatever belongings they had. Some elderly and some youngsters
even died in the rising waters as they could not get out of their houses. So
how do people react or cope up with such dire situations?
We learn from Chennai example that the milk of human kindness
poured in abundant measure. Provisions and goods were rushed to the affected
city from all over the country. Young volunteers at the risk of their lives
tried to reach the unreachable areas to bring succor to the affected and
isolated. Any and every one of worth was involved in relief operations. Hope in
humanity shone like a star, bright amidst the gloom.
What happens when oppression is not due to the fury of
nature, but from one’s own government? Where do people turn, when the fence
that is supposed to safe guard them, becomes the predator? How do they cope
with such situations? Where can they go? What can they do?
People in China faced such a dilemma, when Chairman Mao let
loose the “Great Leap Forward” on them, with the ignoble goal of catching up
with the West in 15 years. What was the hurry that the country should be
developed within 15 years? Why not 30 years? Hasn’t China developed now? But it
was a prestige issue.
Mao wanted to build a China, which would rule the world in
technology and military power, all to be achieved within 15 years. May be he
wanted to see such a China before his death. Was that the reason for urgency?
The result of such megalomaniac ambitions was 45 million Chinese people died
out of famine and other measures resulting from the Great Leap Forward, from 1958
to 1962, in just four years.
People became the pawns in the game. They were forced to work
in steel factories, on dams and conservatories and on paddy and wheat fields;
they were forced to work during the night also by the light of lanterns,
torches and pressure lamps; private property was abolished; people had to eat
in great communes and common kitchen; mud houses were demolished and used as
manure for the land; pots and pans and agricultural implements were fed into
country side furnaces to produce steel; people were forced to eat only
vegetables as a sacrifice and a sparse diet was dished out to them; children
were separated even while young, so that mothers could work. Family fell apart
and life as they knew for centuries disappeared.
Nation was asked to pay a great price for development. Mao
famously said, “Revolution is not a dinner party.”[1]
People got a taste of it soon. Anyone who was foolish enough to oppose these
moves or argue for his rights was punished by withholding the day’s food
rations. That became the punishing rod in the hand so the party cadre. Soon
flogging and beatings became regular in the communes; the higher ups when they
came to know of it, encouraged them to use force to being people to their
knees. Corruption became rampant. Targets to be achieved ruled the day.
The harvest was gathered and sent to Russia and other East European
countries in exchange of technology and machinery. People who produced the
grains were left to starve. All the same the party cadres, higher officials and
Mao himself rolled in luxury. Provisions went to the party rulers first, then
to the city folks and then for export. Villagers were left to fend themselves.
Famine stared at their face, a man-made disaster.
How did people cope up with such a situation? Dikotter, who
graphically describes the macabre situation in his book, says thus: “As famine
spread, the very survival of an ordinary person came increasingly to depend on
the ability to lie, charm, hide, steal, cheat, pilfer, forage, smuggle,
manipulate or otherwise outwit the state.” And that is what they did.
When nothing could save them from hunger, they fell to eating
the bark of the trees, cooking the leaves, even leather from old furniture, and
mud. Still they died like fleas all over the country side. A few even dug the
dead, cooked and ate their decaying flesh and organs.
Birth rate plummeted; women stopped menstruating due to heavy
work and scanty food; children developed swollen bellies, indicator of undernourishment. Children, the sick and the elderly were considered as idlers
and were abused. They were deprived of their dignity in life and in death.
At the height of such tragedy, there was no human milk of
kindness flowing for Chinese people. Mao advocated people to eat less and
famously said, “When there is not much to eat people starve to death. It is
better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their
fill.” Is this the response from a responsible leader in the face of a national
calamity? But we forget we are dealing with die-hard communists.
Not that the leaders suffered. Mao lived in opulence near the
Forbidden City; his bedroom was the size of a ballroom. He enjoyed his daily
swim in his private pool. He had the privilege of chefs and attendants all
around at his beck and call. Chicken, egg, meat and vegetables came to his
table from dedicated farms. Others down the line tried to copy his style of
living, but the poor peasants and the factory workers went without even the
basic requirements.
Was not Communism about proletariat and the workers? Then how
come they are the ones who were ploughed in Mao’s communist China? Who is to
ask him and face his wrath and end up dead or in the gulag? All checks on
violence, namely religion, laws, family and community, were all broken and
discarded. People became the means to achieve the ends laid down by their
political masters. They died for their own good, they were told.
Opposition to Mao’s leadership became loud and the Great Leap
Forward was discarded by 1962. A leader had to consolidate his power and
position to survive. That is what Mao did. He launched the “Cultural
Revolution” in 1966, which will exterminate all those who opposed him during
the Great Leap. When he died in 1976,
with him also died the hysteria to develop China at the cost of its poor and
rural people.
Hitler plunged the world into chaos for his ambition; Pol Pot
copied Mao and wanted to develop Cambodia within 5 years; Stalin ruled Russia
with iron fists. When such leaders come to power world witnesses untold
suffering for the masses, whom they swear to serve. The watchman becomes the
thief. The fence eats the crop.
Whether it is a man-made catastrophe like the famine that
happened in China or a deluge due to nature’s fury as in recent floods of
Chennai, people need a hope to cling to, a hope that will give meaning to their
lives. A human life is not a waste; it has a purpose, a meaning and a dignity
that extends even beyond the grave. In Chennai’s floods faith in humanity was
restored, but still were hiccups heard of local politicians trying to get
political mileage out of it.
It is only Christ who can really give unshaken hope to humanity,
by his own selfless sacrifice and suffering on the cross and his rising from the
dead, which give a meaning to our own sufferings and a hope beyond the grave. A
new life, not soiled by selfishness, ambitions, pride and arrogance of human
beings, but tempered by love and care and forgiveness, is the greatest hope for
humanity, extended by Christ. Let’s embrace that with both our hands.
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