The North West London Emergency Planning Group is hosting a Multi Faith Awareness Training for Emergencies on 11th March. The event will focus on the roles of faith communities during and following a major incident or disaster.
“Given the diverse range of culture across the Boroughs of North West London we are looking to invite representatives from as many faiths as possible,” said Mike Bennet, Emergency Planning Officer for Hillingdon Council.
The Group is looking to organise training and liasion events for faith communities dealing with emergencies, disasters and major incidents. The project is a partnership between the London Borough of Hillingdon and the Archdeacons of Harrow and Northolt.
“We are seeking to define the role of faith communities at major incidents,” explained Bennet. “We hope to inform faith communities what they can and what they cannot do.”
I was confused.
“What can faith leaders do at the site of a major incident?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they be in the way of the police and emergency teams who may be offering medical support?”
I tried to imagine a vicar, a maulvi and a brahmin priest getting together to rescue a victim trapped under a crashing train. Wouldn’t they have needed prior training to save lives in an emergency?
“Oh no,” laughed Bennet. “They will only provide moral and spiritual support. For instance, priests and faith leaders from each community can visit disaster sites, pray with victims from their community and offer reassurance and support”
It did make sense, after all.
The Lawyer who rocked United Nations
Satha Ananthan, former editor of Europe’s first Tamil daily, the London Murasu has just finished writing his second book. A speed reading of the book, which was all I could afford, left me feeling sufficiently fascinated and mildly curious.
The book is a biography of Vaikuntha Vasan, a lawyer from Sri Lanka, who represented the struggle of the Tamils in that country in more ingenious ways than one. On 5th October 1978, Vasan managed to make an uninvited, undetected and unprecedented entry in to the United Nation’s Assembly session without so much as a security guard batting a lazy eyelid.
After smuggling himself in, he actually sat with 2000 other delegates from various countries. Just as the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister was summoned to speak, Vasan ran up to the podium, grabbed the microphone and spoke about what he termed as the genocide of Tamils by the Sinhala government. The microphone was cut off, and Vasan was led off by a security guard. To top it all, the Sri Lankan foreign minister sat through Vasan’s outpouring of fire and brimstone, blinking in disbelief.
Next day, the world woke up to TV and newspaper reports about a major security lapse at the United Nations – a lapse that internationalised the Tamil cause like nothing else had ever done before.
Satha Ananthan successfully captures the eventful life of Vasan from his childhood to his rise as a lawyer and publisher of a newspaper. The book delves on his visits to USSR and China, his tenure as a Judge in Zambia, and his final entry into the United Nations. I could not quite understand why the author had inserted a meticulous (and slightly boring) organisational structure of the United Nations exactly in the middle of the story. It broke the natural flow of the biography in a riotously annoying manner, especially since it could easily have been inserted as an appendix.
The most valuable part of the book came near the end – a concise history of the Tamil nation in Sri Lanka from prehistoric times to the modern struggle to establish a separate homeland. Some of the dates of historical events provided by Satha Ananthan may be the subject of debate amongst Indologists, while the description of some controversial events are tinged with a bias against the Sri Lankan government, but both can be excused in light of the invaluable information this section provides.
I do wish he had paid some attention to the language though – it is punchy and interesting in places, but monotonous and confusing in others. A few grammatical errors that could easily have been avoided add to the woes of the discriminating reader. Nevertheless, the book does capture an important moment in world history with unbridled expertise and natural flair.
This flair was apparent in the author’s inscription on the flap of the book he presented me: “Dear Ramesh - Hope your ever expanding ‘vishala buddhi” (gigantic intelligence) leads to ‘vishva roopa’ (the Universal Form of the Supreme Lord).”
It does feel good when people acknowledge how intelligent you are, doesn’t it? Modesty had always been my strong point, of course.
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