Once Dr.Abdul Sattar Edhi was explaining an instance where he said:
“So, many years later there were many who still complained and questioned (about helping people of other religions), ‘why must you pick up Christians and Hindus in your ambulance?’ And I was saying, ‘Because the ambulance is more Muslim than you’.”
If only we would all live by the same rules, the way of life in which nobody is differentiated as Christians and Hindus and there is equality amongst all.
On another occasion the humanitarian stated that “no religion is higher than humanity”. This profoundly states what Edhi’s mission and life was all about.
Dr.Abdul Sattar Edhi was born in a small village of Bantva near Joona Garh in the Gujarat state of then British-ruled India on February 28th 1928 but moved to Karachi shortly after the formation of Pakistan.
His mother’s death came as a shock to him when he was just a teenager, Edhi never finished school but later admitted the world of suffering became his mentor.
Edhi said “I do not have any formal education. Of what use is education when we do not become human beings? My school is the welfare of humanity.”
Dr. Abdul Sattar Edhi established the Edhi Foundation in 1951 after looking at the state of health, education and other necessities in the country.He made it his life’s mission to be of help to others.
Funded by only private donations, the Edhi Foundation has grown on to become one of the biggest NGOs in the country and has a respectable image globally, mainly because of its founder, and the registered parent and guardian of more than 20,000 children, Dr.Abdul Sattar Edhi.
Simplicity, modesty and equality were the rules the late philanthropist lived by.Despite all the riches and funds that his organisation handled and utilised, Edhi lived all his life adjacent to his organisations headquarters in a two-room apartment with his family.
He was awarded the 2007 Unesco Madanjeet Singh Prize, the 2008 Seoul Peace Award, the 2011 London Peace Award,Gandhi Peace Award, and the Hamdan Award for Volunteers in Humanitarian Medical Service.
Edhi was initially targeted and criticised by certain religious elements forhis life-long work.
Some even called him an ‘infidel’ accusing him of promoting out-of-wedlock births with the baby cradles he and his wife Bilquis set up at various Edhi camps.
Islamists even occupied one of Edhi’s offices and robbed the place of £400,000 which was quickly reimbursed after donations rolled in.
Even his death highlighted an example, he himself gave.
“Never take anyone’s death to heart… Remember Allah by the equality with which He implements it. Nobody is different, the richest to the poorest, from here to the end of the globe face it equally. What an example of equality.”
The Edhi Foundation has rescued more than 20,000 abandoned babies, rehabilitated about 50,000 orphans and mentored, roughly 40,000 nurses and has the honour of operating the world’s largest ambulance network of 1500 vehicles.
Sadly, Edhi left us on July 8 last year but we as a nation must carry the torch forward that he passed on to us in form of immortal humanitarian heaven that Edhi Foundation is
His legacy still lives on to this day and hopefully whoever has had the honour of taking on the late humanitarian’s duties, fulfills them as the late Edhi would have wished for.