Muslim neighbours help perform last rites of Kashmiri Pandit man in Ganderbal

Ganderbal, Jun 29: Withholding the age-old communal harmony in Kashmir, Muslim residents in Lar area of central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district helped in performing the last rites of a Kashmiri Pandit man, who passed away on Sunday.

The deceased, BadrinathBhat, a respected personality of the area, was among few other families from his community living in the Muslim majority area, while most of the members of the community fled from the valley in the early 1990s.

In a display of communal harmony, the last rites of the deceased were performed with the help of local Muslims, who mourned his death as one of their own. He was cremated at his ancestral native village LarGanderbal .

The locals shouldered BadrinathJi’s coffin and arranged for the wood for his cremation saying, “It feels like we have lost one of our own”.  “ It was our right to reach out to our Panditneighbours in this hour of grief,” he said. ” “ He has been living here among us for many years. We have lived alongside each other and done everything together,” Senior local politician Sheikh Ishfaq said, adding that people from other adjacent areas also visited the residence to sympathise with the bereaved family members. Meanwhile, the family members and a couple of other Kashmiri Pandit families living in the area expressed gratitude to the local Muslims. “It is only because of our Muslim neighbours that we could fulfill the cremation without any hardship,” a relative of the deceased said. It is pertinent to mention that there have been several instances witnessed across length and breadth of Kashmir, wherein the two communities have helped each other.