This is a South Asian tragedy of unprecedented magnitude, it needs a South Asian response

The trauma of the communities hit by the October 8 earthquake is immeasurable and unending. This tragedy that has hit Pakistan and India — nations united by geography and divided by history — reminds us of a common humanity and common sense of grief and loss. It should lead to a shared desire and purpose to mitigate the suffering being played out on a gigantic scale before our eyes. This is a South Asian tragedy. It requires a national response without doubt. But it also demands a South Asian response.

There is, of course, cruel irony in the fact that the region most affected by Saturday's killer quake is also the area that has been most marked by political tensions between India and Pakistan. Kashmir, even while being visited by a calamity of such rare magnitude, continues to remain a victim of its geo-political location. The question really is this: can we rise above the limitations imposed by the past to urgently address a situation that is embedded in real time? There have been instances — few and far between — when India and Pakistan have been able to throw lifelines over borderlines. Take that moment in 2001, when Pakistan despatched tents and blankets for those affected in the Bhuj earthquake. Just a year earlier, the armies of the two nations were locked in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. India has, from time to time, made available its medical expertise to Pakistani patients. These are examples that can and should be multiplied as tensions wind down — and never more than today when whole villages have disappeared under rubble, when countless survivors have nothing but the sky as shelter.

That President Musharraf should respond to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer of help with great circumspection is not surprising. He is much more comfortable with western assistance and is frank enough to explain that there are "sensitivities involved” in accepting aid from India for a region that is the source of conflict between the two nations. He doesn't say it, but he is worried that the world would read this as a sign of Pakistani weakness, of its inability to administer to a region that it believes should rightly be its own. These are understandable concerns — but for more normal times. Today, Pakistan is facing the biggest natural disaster in its history and India has a great deal to contribute, not just because of its proximity to the sites of devastation but it enormous experience in handling such calamities. Ways can always be worked out to address Pakistan's sensitivities and protect its interests. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, spoke a good deal of sense when he appealed to both countries to "come jointly to the rescue of thousands of people here”.