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Most disastrous rail smash in Khanna
15th Jan 1999 Harsh Javeri @iname.com
The following incident occurred a few days ago .....many of us have already forgotten maybe because it did not affect our lives directly but it makes on realize of an important part of our lives which we have taken for granted, social service. A Gurudwara and a few hundred villagers they made all the difference between life and death for over two hundred of injured passengers in one of the most disastrous rail smash in recent times. It was chill night. And pitch dark. The fateful scene was in a village, Khanna, 50 miles away from the industrial town of Ludhiana in Punjab. This was where the ghastly rail accident reported in newspapers took place on November 26. It was 3.15 am. The Frontier Express had derailed just two minutes earlier and the derailed bogies had spilled on to the adjoining railway line. The speeding Sealdah mail from the opposite side rammed into the derailed train. The result of the explosion--instant death, mutilation of the bodies, severed limbs and bodies hanging from the mangled train, wailing children, women and men. All in a matter of seconds. Within minutes the loud speaker of the Khanna Gurudwara began announcing the gravity of the disaster, calling upon able-bodied men and women to come out to help the victims. The loudspeakers woke up the residents of five nearby villages. And hundreds of them poured in a matter of minutes, but, the Railway relief team reached well past 5.30 am The Gurudwara, villagers had, in stages, assumed charge of the relief operations even as the official relief measures joined later. But the first to arrive were the villagers. Since it was dark everywhere, what was needed was light. (The Railway searchlight came only at 6 am even though Ludhiana was only 50 kms away.) But the solution was ready on hand. The villagers lined up their tractors, started their engines and switched on their headlights to provide the needed light for the relief work. The next task was to extricate the survivors who were trapped between the broken bogies and overturned compartments. The strong hands of the sturdy sikhs were themselves adequate to break open the doors and iron grills of the bogies. This was supplemented by axes and saws brought later to facilitate the work of extricating the trapped dead and injured passengers. The next hurdle was the bitter cold which was freezing the dead and alive. The healthy Punjabi women repeatedly ferried bundles of paddy straw from the nearest fields which they set afire to warm up the atmosphere to save the suffering from biting cold. When the villagers found the bodies of many injured and dead women passengers exposed, they untied their turbans and placed the cloth on them. The local Gurudwara turned into a medical camp and the famous Langer of the Gurudwara-- which serves food for all those who go to the temple--began preparing and serving refreshments to the hundreds who were injured. And when the official relief arrived, the villagers began to provide refreshments to a huge turnout of 30000 people--the victims, their near and dear, relief workers and officials--who came everyday to the accident site. The villagers formed a 16 member Rail Durghatana Prabhandhak Committee (Rail disaster management committee) to oversee the operations, raise resources, and issue printed passes for the volunteers to go past the police lines for relief work. Contributions in cash and kind kept pouring in and kept the relief going for a week. The committee ended the relief mission with a surplus of a whole truckload of food grains. The volunteers who converged from Ludhiana swung in to medical relief at the accident spot and in the three Ludhiana hospitals. Their level of involvement with the victims lying in the hospitals was intense. Not a Rupee of the accident victims, dead or alive, was misappropriated or lost. Jaswant Singh, resident of the Bhatiyan village, handed over to the authorities a bag containing Rs 3 lakhs in cash and jewellery valued at Rs 2 lakhs to the SDM This is what a living community does. Community fosters sharing. There is no substitute for shared living.Community living in India ensures that people share their suffering and happiness-- the first one is shared without invitation and the second one mandates invitation to share. That is why, in the Indian tradition, people visit the bereaved without invitation and go to marriages or other functions only if invited. It is not social service, which is a western virtue. Social service is not sharing, while a functioning community shares. While social service demands indirect returns like recognition, fame and even religious conversion induced by gratefulness, community sharing which is part of the Indian tradition mandates sharing as dharma. This is what is declining in modern times and what needs reinstatement. And this is precisely what the Punjabi villagers have demonstrated. And yet except a small English daily in Delhi, no other major newspaper, no English newspaper published what the people from five villages of Punjab volunteers have done.
15th Jan 1999
Kedar N. Mahapatra @hotmail.com
Incidents like this should make us proud as Indians. But at the same time it makes us realize that we have a government, which simply don't care about the people.
16th Jan 1999
C. M. Paul @giascl01.vsnl.net.in
Dear Harsh, That was a beautiful piece on the alertness and resourcefulness of a Sikh community that swung into action to bring succor to rail accident victims. I wish more such community based reports find place in our dailies both local and national. We need more community based journalism that will inspire people to act (not react) for the common welfare. May your tribe increase! More POWER to you. Fr. C. M. Paul, SDB Calcutta
