Holding Hands

Some young minds of Nawakadal area in downtown Srinagar wanted to do something to help the needy. They started a charitable organization Athrout and tried to go beyond the tokenism of local mohalla committees.

They had just entered their teenage, some of them were not even born, when armed insurgency broke out in Kashmir. Still they were aware that the number of widows and impoverished was increasing. They wished to contribute to the society. The five or six of them gathered in the Darasgah (where Quran is taught) of the local Masjid, to come up with some idea. They wanted to save lives. “One who saves a single life is as if he saved the whole humanity”: they were taught at the Darasgah.

Athrout was started in 2006. Initially, they used to contribute money themselves as all of them were in some employment. The chairman, an Imam in the Masjid recalls that in 2006 he was giving a Eid sermon exhorting the people to pay the Sadkai-Fitr (Eid donation). “The people showed interest and paid their pending Sadkai-Fitr,” Imam of the masjid Bashir Ahmad Nadwi said. The money was distributed among the poor.

The members’ contribution continued to grow as many others joined in.

“Other people were showing interest and we found that many people were in need in our society because years of conflict had pushed many families into poverty,” he said, adding, “Some families could not even afford a single meal, how can they pay for medicine”.

They started counselling the elders, and youngsters, about religious binding on Muslims to pay their Zakaat and the Prophet’s (SAW) practice and teachings about helping the needy.

Imam Bashir Ahmad, a scholar from Nadwat-ul-uloom Islamic University, Lucknow is a businessman and all of the elder members of Athrout are working in private and government sectors. But they spare time in the evenings and on Sundays for social work.

Abdul Majeed, accountant of Athrout, says, “When we started providing help to people, we received cases of kidney failures, cancer patients and other serious ailments and we realized how such ‘deadly’ diseases have become burden on those families who cannot afford costly medicines and then we started a clinic where we are providing free consultations and free medicines”.

They hold free clinics on Sundays where volunteer doctors- physicians, pediatrician and gynecologists, see patients without charging any fee. Some medical representatives are also associated with Athrout. more