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Going nowhere
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
Leaders of nations? Leaders of two of the world's most enlightened civilizations? One leader talks of clouds and skies and lightning. The other leader talks of resisting the thunder and lightning with military might.
Where were they both in 1946, when Albert Einstein watched a film recording the destruction and death caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs, and holding his head in his hand and weeping he said: "Had I known what I helped make could destroy, I would have chosen to have remained a shoemaker."
On May 24, researchers at Princeton University, where Einstein once worked, came out with statistics on the deaths and injuries that would ensue were India and Pakistan to unleash their nuclear weapons upon each other. The scenario visualized was that were India to bomb Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi- Islamabad, and Faisalabad, and in turn Pakistan were to bomb Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai, the estimated number of deaths in India would be 1.7 million with 900,000 wounded, and in Pakistan 1.2 million deaths and 600,000 injured.
These figures are grossly underestimated as they only represent immediate casualties from blasts, fire and radiation. An unknown number of deaths would occur over the future years from cancer. Those immediately killed would be blessed, for the injured and affected would linger on in pain and suffer horribly.
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