New Delhi: On the morning of 10 May, Amanjeet Singh, an activist and a volunteer with the Gurdwara Chevi Patshahi Committee in north Kashmir’s Baramulla, left for Nambla village, located near the Line of Control (LoC) where cross-firing was on for the past several consecutive nights now.
Within an hour, the Sikh youth evacuated a family of six people and brought them back to Baramulla town where he put them up in his own house, unsure when the family would be able to return to their home.
Amanjeet’s effort was a part of a collective initiative started by the Gurdwara Chevi Patshahi Committee, a local committee formed by the Sikh community living across Baramulla, to provide safe spaces, medical help and food in the form of langar to people from border areas.
“Places like Uri, Rajouri, Poonch, Baramulla, Kupwara are all the places located on the India-Pakistan border and this makes them extremely fragile,” Amanjeet told ThePrint over the phone, as the cross-firing continued in intervals on the border. He added that while the cross-firing is not new, but this time, these places have been in real danger.”
The Gurdwara Chevi Patshahi Committee is one of the only few groups from the border areas working together to rescue the people stranded in villages. Their effort, according to Amanjeet, is to “provide extra support” to the authorities and to lead people to safety.
Fear among the local population spread when Pakistan began shelling on the night of 7 May in border areas of Jammu and Kashmir. The intense shelling was followed by swarms of drones coming from across the border. In J&K, many ‘ghost villages’ emptied of its population became a pattern along the areas battered by Pakistan shelling.
For the people left behind in many of these villages, the community efforts such as by the Gurdwara Chevi Patshahiare are like a saviour. “Sikh outfits have been working in Kashmir by opening doors for people and providing them with safety and langars. This is our philanthropist effort toward humanity,” Amanjeet told ThePrint. “This is what our religion [Sikhism] teaches us.”
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‘Save as many as possible’
The above-mentioned committee is an umbrella initiative consisting of District Prabhand Committee, a group of 11 Sikh members from the local gurdwara in Baramulla, Guru Harkrishan Jeevanjot Seva, another social welfare group providing medical aid to the injured, and Chandusa Sikh Naujawan Sabha, a group of youngsters working together from Baramulla’s Chandusa village. Moreover, the initiative is joined by at least 10 volunteers including Amanjeet who are working without fail to rescue civilians.
The rescue operation by the Gurdwara Chevi Patshahi Committee began 7 May itself and since then, the volunteers have rescued at least 150 families. The committee has formed a helpline and based on the calls they receive, they immediately deploy volunteers to reach out to families stuck in these places.
In Baramulla’s Chevi Patshahi Gurdwara, the committee has opened all the rooms and given spaces to these families to stay for as long as the escalations continue. Like Amanjeet, other volunteers have also opened their homes for the people.
“Since childhood, these things [violence] have become a new kind of normal for people like me. God just gives us energy to help people,” said Amanjeet. “All we want is to save as many lives as possible.”
‘Poonch is self-reliant’
Around 220 km away from Baramulla is Poonch, another border area that has faced extreme shelling in the past three days. While many people remained stuck in their homes and community bunkers, an under-the-radar grassroots effort has swung into action.
The Sarimastaan Tribal Gurjar Welfare Foundation, led by its 46-year-old founder Asad Noomani, has been at the forefront of this humanitarian response, coordinating the evacuation of hundreds of families from border villages even as gunfire echoed through the hills.
“The moment firing started 7 May at around 2:30 a.m. on, we knew we had to move,” Noomani told ThePrint over the phone, recounting the chaotic start of their first rescue mission during this latest flare-up. “By Allah’s grace, we’ve managed to rescue around 500 to 600 families.”
Operating without any government grants or social media presence, the Sarimastaan Foundation has created a hyper-local and efficient network of over 200 volunteers, mostly from the Gujjar-Bakarwal community.
The volunteers—drivers, farmers, watchmen, teachers—have divided their work across the region’s villages and panchayats, staying in touch through a WhatsApp group that quickly verifies calls for help and dispatches assistance accordingly. “We’ve opened up 25 houses across Chaktroo, Mandi, and Surankote to accommodate displaced families,” he added. “More than 1,000 people are currently staying under our care.”
With two ambulances at their disposal, the Foundation rented 10 auto-rickshaws and pooled personal vehicles of its members to facilitate continuous, round-the-clock evacuations. “This operation doesn’t stop. Our volunteers are out rescuing people day and night. We don’t sleep. We don’t wait,” Noomani said.
The villages they’ve evacuated the people from include Kasba, Dara Dullian, Guntrian, Arai, Baila, all within a few kilometers of the LoC, areas that have repeatedly been caught in cross-border shelling over the decades.
Many villagers, fearing the loss of their land and livestock, initially resisted evacuation, Noomani told ThePrint. “We tell them: if there is life, you will return to your home. That’s how we convince them.”
What sets Sarimastaan apart is its community-backed model as the members do not appeal for any donation, while more and more youngsters join it to shun the “stereotypes that the Gujjar-Bakarwal community was passive or disconnected.” “We’ve shown we can lead. We’ve shown what solidarity looks like,” he said.
While most of the rescued are Muslim families from the Gujjar and Bakarwal communities, the Foundation has also helped with travel for Sikh and Hindu labourers, six individuals to Jalandhar, and two Hindu workers to their homes in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, all free of cost. Their base of operations include a cluster of safe homes in Surankote and nearby towns where families find food, water,and bedding.
Noomani acknowledged the help of the administration and army in stabilising the situation. “But the tradition in Poonch has always been self-reliance. We don’t wait for help, we provide it,” he asserted.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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