IT is tempting for residents of South Asia to see social strife through the clichéd prism of unending religio-ethnic rivalries. But there is an urgent need to look beyond the colonial stereotype of innate savagery.

The urgency applies to the daily bout of bloodshed in Karachi as much as to the tribal region sandwiched between India’s northeast and China’s southwestern flank, the venue of hostilities between some of the most impoverished and destabilised  communities in the world.

The one factor which emerges as common between the current strife in India’s Assam state and Myanmar’s Arakan region on the one hand and the perennial feuding within the societal skein of Karachi on the other is the issue of immigrants and legitimacy, the insidious sons-of the-soil-versus-others framework.

Now try to see both these regions, not entirely but discreetly, from the perspective of global warming. Are we not headed for more pressure on land and water among other depleting resources, leading to more social strife?

Consider the Butterfly Effect, which posits that the flapping of the butterfly’s wings makes tiny changes in the atmosphere, often enough to cause a tornado in a distant corner of the world. The dialectic applies to South Asia’s many difficulties that are otherwise seen as sociological events.

Pause with the thought that global warming will inevitably lead to more social disorder. As its main casualty it threatens to bring enormous political challenges and it will certainly impose adverse economic consequences, not only on the regions it visits but also on those it spares, the new hinterlands. And then see how the Bay of Bengal is particularly risking nature’s wrath, with a potential migration of 20 million or more from the ravages of the rising sea.

How many of these will mount pressure on scarce land in Assam, and how many more on Myanmar’s Arakan region, venue of a recent massacre of the country’s Muslims, the Rohingyas. (There is a story that the term Rohingyas derives from Arabic ‘raham’, or mercy. It seems survivors of a shipwreck off the Burmese coast had thus pleaded with the local Buddhist ruler for their lives to be spared.)

The fact is that the Himalayan glaciers have started to melt. The fatal cycle of drought and floods will intensify from the Indus to the Brahmaputra.

In terms of coastal areas at risk in the Bay of Bengal — experts estimate the average rate of retreat at nearly twice (34 metres) per year as compared to the 1971 levels of 19 metres. Inevitably the melting glaciers will spur temperatures and sea levels to rise, with a cascading effect on the crops and the monsoons.

According to a Pakistani report on the observations of a UK-based climate change expert, there could be major changes in the temperatures in the country though the province of Sindh will be relatively less affected. Where will the migrants be heading?

Worse, even Karachi may face the threat of rising sea levels by the year 2100, at about eight feet below sea level. Experts say that climate change could “influence monsoon dynamics and cause summer precipitation levels to drop”.

There could be delays in the start of the monsoon season, not different from the current experience in many stricken parts of India. Another report says the coastline of Karachi is likely to be flooded due to rising sea levels by 2030.

The city obviously also faces the threat from super cyclones which are expected to increase their intensity. Which of the three or four gun-toting ethnic chauvinists stalking the city day in and day out expects to withstand nature’s arriving onslaught?

Instead of locking horns with each other along linguistic and other sectarian fault lines would it not be more rewarding if they heeded the climatologists? Ironically neither the Urdu speakers, nor the Pathans nor the Sindhis contribute to global warming per capita as, for example, Australia, Canada and the United States do. Drop the guns. Make them accountable.

No one can expect to be spared. Why is the east coast of India being affected more? Experts explain that the Bay of Bengal is landlocked from three sides and there is a huge delta of the rivers Brahmaputra and the Ganges. These rivers will increasingly carry the water from the melting Himalayan snows.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has promptly disbursed $50m for the rehabilitation of the Rohingyas out of brotherly empathy. But its rulers seem to be unaware of the Butterfly Effect which links the kingdom’s prosperity rooted in carbon-emitting oil to the intensifying tragedy facing the world.

Myanmar is a small but significant part of the larger and growing community of victims, and the Rohingyas are an even tinier aspect of the arriving distress.

This is not to undermine the enormity of the crime unleashed on the hapless minority community. I am told that Aung San Suu Kyi, the beacon of hope for her country, has looked the other way as Buddhist mobs unleashed an orgy of terror on the Rohingyas. Ditto with the Muslims in Assam.

The strange and bitter truth in this is that the native Bodo tribal people of Assam rightly feel robbed by the growing encroachment on their lands. However, they too represent an equally hapless community as the Muslims, mostly old but also new migrants from Bangladesh.

If the coastal regions in the world are at greater risk from rising sea levels, inhabitants of deeper hinterlands are not likely to fare much better. Most communities that live on riverbanks stand to lose from global warming. Add to this bleak picture India’s notorious caste fault lines, and the situation resembles a powder keg itching to explode.

The historical district of Kushinagar, known for Buddha’s enlightenment, is today notorious for the hunger deaths in the Mushahar community. Mushahars — the name derives from their diet of field mice — and other marginalised Dalit communities in northern Uttar Pradesh live on the banks of several rivers.

They are the first victims when a river overflows, exposing them to nature’s fury. And they are now being driven out by middle caste Yadavs, currently ruling Uttar Pradesh. Perhaps its time we listened to the Met office more closely to understand the arriving social chaos.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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