Relations between Kashmiri Muslims and the Pandit community may have witnessed tense moments in the past three decades, including recently, when several Hindus and Pandits were victims of targeted killings in Jammu and Kashmir, leading to widespread fear in the minority community. However, that did not deter Upendra Kaul, renowned cardiologist and a Kashmiri Pandit, from winning the hearts of Muslims in even the remotest corners of the Union Territory.
On Saturday, Dr. Kaul opened the state-of-art Prasad Joo Khan Heart Centre for poor and needy patients in Pulwama’s Hawal village. Alka Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, inaugurated the facility.
Named after Dr. Kaul’s grandfather, the centre will cater to the needs of the people of south Kashmir. “This project means coming back home. I am trying to give back to the society I belong to by providing good heart care. I am investing in hope,” Dr. Kaul told The Hindu.
Dr. Kaul, chairman and dean of academics and research at the Batra Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Delhi, will attend to patients at the centre’s outpatient department in Pulwama once in a week, and also meet them Srinagar.
Hails from Pulwama
He hailed from Pulwama’s Hawal area before his father shifted to Delhi. The flat sections atop the highlands of Hawal were once home to 44 Kashmiri Pandit families. However, only one Pandit family, Omkar Nath, was left behind after the rest migrated in the 1990s in the face of raging militancy.
On Saturday, locals accompanied Mr. Nath to the inauguration of the project. Many Pandits from the Hawal transit camp also attended the event. “It was not possible to realise the dream project without the help of locals,” Dr. Kaul said.
In fact, several Muslim villagers in Hawal launched a signature campaign and wrote to Deputy Commissioner Baseer-ul-Haq Chaudhary “for allocation of government land to the Gauri Kaul Foundation, which has set up the centre, to building a heart centre”. The villagers fear that widening of a highway may result in the dismantling of the centre.
“We the residents of villages — Hawal including Migrant Colony, Gaberpora, Kutchpora, other nearby and adjoining areas of the district demand that the son of soil Padma Shri Dr. Kaul cardiologist a larger heart institute will be an ideal service for the people,” the villagers’ letter read.
Telemedicine centre
Dr. Kaul, who has been spending weekends in Kashmir since 2008 to see patients, also set up a successful telemedicine centre in 2020 in the remote Machil area in north Kashmir’s Kupwara, which remains cut off for more than three months due to snowfall. “Any patient who visits the telemedicine centre undergoes basic tests and the reports are sent to me immediately online. I advise the staff about the line of treatment sitting in Delhi. Around 20-25 patients are treated for heart ailments in Machil every month,” Dr. Kaul said.
The specialist also has the distinction of operating on separatist leaders in the past, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Shabir Shah, Abdul Gani Lone, and Yasin Malik. “When Malik was brought to the AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) in the 1990s from jail to replace his heart valve, I signed the consent form ahead of the surgery. He showed full faith in me,” Dr. Kaul recalled.
On the recent targeted violence against the minority community, Dr. Kaul said, “Of course, my relatives and family are scared. I am not fearful of anything. I have engaged with a different Kashmir where patients, after recovering, invited me home in far-off places like Shopian. I was treated like a groom. People would line up to welcome me. That can only happen in Kashmir.”
