Feature

The Dar ul-Yatama, established this year in April, in Doda town by the Al-Khair Foundation, is the only privately-run orphanage in the entire district.


No one seems to be in a position to offer even a rough estimate of the total number of orphans in Doda. The largest district in Jammu and Kashmir after Ladakh in terms of area, Doda has been racked by seemingly endless violence over the last 15 years. Several hundred people have lost their lives in the violence so far in the area, mostly at the hands of militants, although the number of deaths of civilians caused by the armed forces is not insubstantial. There must, therefore, be several thousand children in Doda who have, on account of the ongoing conflict in the region, been left orphaned or without fathers, forced to fend for themselves. In addition to these are of course, a significant number of children who have lost parents due to causes other than those related to the ongoing conflict in Jammu and Kashmir.


An ‘orphan’, as the term is generally used in Doda, is a child who has lost his or her father, the family’s principal bread-earner, although he or she may still have his or her mother. Although the state claims to provide for some such ‘orphans’, the magnitude of the problem is so immense that only a small proportion of these children gain any substantial or meaningful state support to carry on with their lives. In the whole of Doda district, which is larger than all the districts of the Kashmir Valley combined, there are just two government-run, poorly-managed orphanages. To make matters even worse, local community-based organisations have done precious little to address the plight of orphaned children. The fact that there is just one privately-run orphanage in the entire district, which caters to a modest number of 18 children, is ample evidence of this. Unlike in the Kashmir Valley, there are almost no well-organised, established and reliable NGOs in the whole of Doda district. The few local groups that are trying in their own modest ways, to help orphaned children are hindered by lack of exposure and awareness of possible government schemes for such children. Nor are they aware of other NGOs outside Jammu and Kashmir that might be able to help them in their work. None of these groups has any full-time staff or activists. They are all run by businessmen, government employees or retired people who can provide only a very limited amount of time for social work.


One such group is the Jammu and Kashmir Yateem Foundation. It is one of the oldest organisations working among orphans in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and runs several orphanages and schools in the Kashmir Valley. Its work in Doda began four years ago. Mushtaq Faridi, who works with the Foundation in Doda, tells me that its work in the district has so far consisted of sending six orphan boys to orphanages run by the Foundation in Srinagar, although this year not a single child has been sent. In addition, the Foundation provides a monthly sum of Rs 200 to half a dozen children from poor families and a stipend of Rs 700 to eight widows, including a Hindu woman. The Foundation has also pitched in with small amounts of money to help arrange for the marriage of eight girls who have lost their fathers, two of these being Hindus.


A group engaged in similar sort of work is the Jammu and Kashmir Yateem Trust, which like the Jammu and Kashmir Yateem Foundation has its headquarters in Srinagar. The head of its Doda branch, Faruq Hussain, a local businessman, summarises the Trust’s work in Doda as follows: ‘We have, so far, arranged for two children from Doda to be put up in an orphanage in Srinagar. We have provided free textbooks to one girl and marriage kits’ to 14 girls from very poor families, including some orphans’.


I am curious to learn about the ‘marriage kits’ and Hussain asks his assistant to show me a sample. The assistant proudly displays before me a plastic suitcase which, when opened, reveals an assortment of knick-knacks that a newly-wed woman is expected to take with her to her marital home: two pairs of shalwar kameez, a case containing sundry cosmetics, a handbag, a burqa (rarely worn by Muslim women in Doda), and a pair of sandals. Each ‘marriage kit’, Hussain tells me, is worth Rs 6000.


The Dar ul-Yatama (translated as ‘House for Orphans’), was established this year in April in Doda town by the newly-formed Al-Khair Foundation. The only privately-run orphanage in the entire Doda district, it is managed by a committee consisting of local activists and concerned individuals. Its chairman, Maulvi Aftab Ahmad Khokhar, is the Imam of the Astana mosque. Interestingly, the mosque is built on a piece of land donated some centuries ago by a Hindu Rajput family to the noted Sufi saint, Shah Fariduddin Baghdadi, who is buried in the neighbouring town of Kishtwar, and who married a woman belonging to the same family.


Maulvi Khokhar sees his work as inspired by a socially engaged vision of Islam, by what he calls ‘love for humanity, fear of God and concern for the hereafter’. ‘Many people here mistakenly think that zakat and other forms of charity should be distributed to poor individuals in cash or to madrasas’, he says when asked why there is no other orphanage in the whole of the sprawling Doda district. ‘But’, he adds, ‘Islam enjoins the helping of the poor in more institutionalised ways as well, like running orphanages or setting up schools for both modern as well as religious education for the poor.’


That point is something that Maulvi Khokhar says he often touches in his Friday sermons in the mosque and in lectures before community gatherings. ‘Often, people forget the social dimensions of religion, focusing on mere rituals instead. They might spend lakhs of rupees on building fancy mosques but might do little, if anything, for the poor’, he complains.


As I enter the neat and well-maintained hall of the Dar ul-Yatama I am introduced to the children, all neatly attired, cheerful and polite. They sit in a semi-circle around an ustad, reciting their Quranic lessons aloud. There are 18 children here, aged between eight and 16. They come from various parts of Doda, from villages high up in the mountains. All of them have lost their fathers—some of them having been killed by militants, others by the army, and yet others having died of old age or in accidents. All the children are from desperately poor families.


The Dar ul-Yatama serves as a home for these children, who would otherwise have been left to a bleak future in their remote mountain hamlets. They are all enrolled in a local private school. Their school fees are waived off and they are provided free boarding and lodging in the orphanage. In the evenings, after they return from school, they receive religious education classes from the ustad and his colleagues.


Like others of their age, the boys at the Dar ul-Yatama have their own dreams of the future, reflecting a ray of hope amidst the despair that is life, for such children in Doda. Some want to become doctors, engineers and lawyers, the three most prestigious occupations in Doda, while others want, as they put it, ‘to serve the cause of the faith’. One of the boys, a particularly bright child, tells me that he desires to be a journalist.


The Dar ul-Yatama is a Muslim-run institution, but its doors, Maulvi Khokhar says, are open to all communities. He points to a lad, quite indistinguishable from the rest of his peers, and tells me that his name is Vijay. Vijay is from a Brahmin family from the village of Ugadh and lost his father in a road accident. I ask the boy how he feels living as the only Hindu in the Dar ul-Yatama. He smiles and says shyly, ‘I feel very much at home and all the other boys are my friends. They never make me feel different’.


Maulvi Khokhar says that he hopes to get more Hindu boys to join the Dar ul-Yatama soon. There is no Hindu-run orphanage in the entire Doda district, he informs me, although Hindus account for almost half of Doda’s population. ‘Islam says that we should serve the needy irrespective of their religion and so we welcome Hindu children here if their guardians will allow them’, he goes on to explain.


Maulvi Khokhar plans to increase the intake of the Dar ul-Yatama to cater to the large number of orphans in the district, whom both the state as well as community organisations seem to have left to their own fate.


‘Innocent people continue to be killed in Jammu and Kashmir every day, leaving children orphaned and women widowed’, says a member of the managing committee of the Dar ul-Yatama as he accompanies me out of the premises. ‘The least we can do’, he adds somberly as he takes me by the arm, ‘is to bring some hope to these hapless children, whose fate has been sealed by forces outside their control’.


(The Dar ul-Yatama can be contacted at this address: Maulvi Aftab Ahmad Khokhar, Chairman, Dar ul-Yatama, Mohalla Faridiya, Near Masjid Nagari, Doda 1822202. Jammu and Kashmir)


(The writer can be reached at ysikand@gmail.com)