The second Kashmir tragedy

Kalpana Sharma starts her column (The Other Half) in The Hindu this week with the following words:

Even as you sit down to read this, a child in Kashmir will die. He or she survived the killer quake of October 8, 2005. But exposure to the cold will snatch away life from someone who has barely lived it.

Later in the column, she refers to an article in Counter Currents, where the writer, Yoginder Sikand, writes:

A neighbour in Bangalore had virtually slammed the door on my face when I approached him for clothes that we were collecting for the victims of the Kashmir quake. 'They are all Muslims, so it is not our problem', he told me, shamelessly. I heard similar explanations from several other people I had approached, who all uniformly declined my appeal.

Here's more "logic":

One of my neighbours was so brutally frank as to tell me that the quake victims deserved their fate for allegedly supporting terrorism and advocating secession from India.

Oh brother. How is this tragedy is different from the earthquake in Bhuj, or the Tsunami? People lost homes, people lost lives, property and we responded then. We must respond now to prevent an avoidable tragedy.

If you haven't done so already, donate whatever you can for the relief effort. Here's a couple of places that accept donations: AID and Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.

You can also find a list of the NGOs working in the earthquake-affected areas here.