Mere Ghar Aa Ke To Dekho Kickstarts in Kashmir

Kashmir Media Watch Report
In a positive development, a national Campaign for Bringing Communities Together,
The campaign (15 August, 2023 –January 30, 2024) has been designed to help counter and change preconceived ideas and unquestioned populist opinions about different communities—on the lines of, but not limited to class, caste, religion, sexual orientation, language, ethnicity, region, and disability has reached Kashmir.
The objective is simple—people visit the home of someone from another community, spend time with each other. This modest act, we believe, goes a long way in breaking existing socially constructed barriers. The warmth of a home, sharing meals together, and open conversations have the power to spark life-long friendships that provide a bulwark against persistent efforts to divide people. In absence of direct positive interaction with one another, we are more disposed to creating, believing and circulating false constructions of the ‘other’, thereby feeding into established narratives of prejudice and hate.
Mere Ghar AaKe To Dekho (Visit My Home, Be My Guest) was launched successfully on 15 August, 2023 across India covering 27 states and hundreds of districts, cities, towns, villages. The campaign initiated by Anhad was joined by close to a hundred organizations and a large number of individuals. It is estimated that 50,000 people participated in the campaign. On October 2 again a sizeable number of people participated in the campaign .
As part of the campaign Anhad has invited people from across India to visit Kupwara and live in people’s homes from 13-17 October, 2023
visitor
The effort is to understand Kashmir, Kashmiri people , their culture and bring communities together. People to people contact is the most important way of understanding societies . Usually tourists come to Kashmir and visit a few known places . They have no opportunity to know the lives of people and especially the rural population . The present campaign is opening doors to new ways of intermingling and promoting brother/ sisterhood , harmony and love .
The visitors are from Pune , Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore , Kochi, Mewat , Ahmedabad , Kutch and Varanasi including management , hospitality professionals, entrepreneurs, physicians , psychologists, lawyers, gender experts , teachers, artists and activists are being hosted in different villages . The beauty is that even Anhad team met most of them for the first time today. Campaign is reaching out to a lot of new people .
Anhad is thankful to Nighat Shafi of Help Foundation and Nadir Ali of Centre for Peace and Justice for readily agreeing to host the visitors in Shejar and CPJ office till they left for Kupwara .
Many people in Kupwara have opnened their homes for the visitors .
Anhad is hopeful that this trip will open new avenues and this will be a beginning of a new people’s initiative.