Honouring the Legacy of Abdul Sattar Edhi
Abdual Sattar Edhi. Under Creative Commons license.
In a city by the sea, there once lived an old man with a flowing beard. He lived simply, and spent his entire life in service of the poor and destitute. People came from far and wide to entrust him with their charity, which he spent on the care of orphans, widows, the sick, and the elderly.
It sounds like the opening of a fable, the kind that children are told by their parents while putting them to sleep. Except that it is a true story set in Pakistan. The city was Karachi, and the man, Abdul Sattar Edhi.
Earlier this year, 8th July, 2017 marked a year since he passed away, undoubtedly to join the pantheon of history’s great humanitarians. In Pakistan, the day was marked with the familiar ritualistic fervour reserved for such anniversaries – pithy official statements, candlelight vigils, and distribution of free meals. The country remembered Edhi sahib, the man, but did it reflect over the central message of his lifelong struggle?
Edhi sahib was someone who reflected upon life from an early age. Born in Indian Gujrat, he moved to Karachi with meagre resources six days after Partition. The early demise of his mother affected him deeply, and as he grew up in what was deemed to be the promised land, he was struck by the reality of the poor, hapless masses of Karachi. Post-Partition, Karachi’s population had exploded and a fledgling government struggled to cope. In 1957 when there was an outbreak of flu, the young Edhi sprang into action. He would not stand by idle. Using his experience of running a dispensary in Jodia bazaar, he launched a series of roadside clinics, working with medical students from Dow University to deliver basic care. The flu was overcome. A grateful public donated 90,000 rupees to him in the process. Entrusted with what was then a large sum of public funds, Edhi invested it in an ambulance, and the rest is history.
60 years later, the Edhi Foundation is a household name in Pakistan. With a fleet of over 1800 ambulances, it holds the Guinness Book of World Record’s title for the “Largest Voluntary Ambulance Organisation of the World.” Its staff of over 2,000 employees deliver services in healthcare, education, orphan care, elderly care, homeless care, marriage and burial services, animal welfare, food distribution, and much more. This is done not only inside Pakistan, but even beyond its borders, through centers in New York, Dacca, Tokyo, Sydney, London, and Dubai. “Too low they build, who build beneath the stars,” said the English poet Edward Young. How tirelessly Edhi sahib built, and how high he reached.
Today, a nation so desperately in search of heroes, can feel proud that one of such universal appeal arose from its midst. However, if it truly wishes to honour his legacy, it must understand what drove him to do as he did. Pakistan must go beyond mere tribute and bring about the changes that he wished to see.
Time and again, Edhi sahib exhorted society to “embrace humanity (insaan bano, insaan banao).” Inspired by Islamic ethics, he transcended the boundaries of class, ethnicity, and religious affiliation and strove for humane treatment of all, irrespective of any of these classifications. “We are divided into sects, we haven’t embraced humanity,” he would regularly state. Giving shape to Jinnah’s guidance in the form of practical action, he chose pluralism and social justice as his ideals, and held fast to these in the face of odds that would have overcome lesser mortals. When once crudely asked why his ambulances served Christians and Hindus, he countered swiftly “because they are more Muslim than you are.” Frail and nearing the end of his life, when an ex-minister clumsily offered to take him abroad for medical treatment, he refused with a simple gesture of his hand. Pointing to the ground, he insisted that he would receive treatment only at a public hospital inside Pakistan. Regressive social elements opposed him, politicians tried to purchase him, but his rock-solid will withstood them all.
He was a mirror to society and state. Through his insistence on equal treatment for all, he wanted to show the former that its self-imposed divisions were the true impediments to its progress. In tackling social vice of every nature using resources generated solely from the people, he wanted to remind Pakistanis that they were devoid neither of virtue nor ability. In his ceaseless toil to deliver basic services to the downtrodden, he wanted to point out gaps in the government’s discharge of its responsibilities, and to show what could be achieved with sincerity of purpose.
At 70 years old, a nation still in need of a roadmap to execute its founding vision can trace the arc of Edhi sahib’s life, a man who dared Pakistan to embrace the highest of human values, and showed that were it to do so, it could yet find its way.