Binoo Joshi
A CRPF jawan Iqbal Singh feeding a specially abled child, who was hungry and who could not eat himself even when offered the food , is much beyond the spirit that the social media has captured and later circulated on the mainstream media. It represents an ethos, human-relation oriented training of the force.
About Havildar Iqbal Singh of CRPF, it is being said that he is one of the survivors of the devastating Pulwama terror attack of February 14 that was carried out by a suicide bomber Adil Ahmad Dar , trained and indoctrinated by an ideology of destruction. Iqbal had helped many of his injured colleagues.
Second thing that is in circulation is that Iqbal fed the boy , whom he didn’t know, but only understood the gestures that he was hungry. So he opened his tiffin and offered the food. Realising that the boy could not eat on his own because of the physical disabilities, the CRPF man fed him with his hands.
The human relations cannot be analysed in any specific terms, nor can the spirit of them be captured by the smart phone visuals, though these do help in spreading a message . And the message is that Iqbal who could have been the target of the terrorist who targeted the CRPF convoy on February 14 did not nurture any hate toward any one , despite the fact that he ,like many others, must have known that the terrorist who killed more than 40 of his colleagues was driven by the hate-ideology . Hatred for hatred is not what the CRPF is taught – they are trained for doing their duty in the most compassionate manner , the essence of which is that even the stone throwers are “ our own people.”
DG CRPF ‘s Disc and Commendation certificate to Iqbal is recognition of his humane gesture, but more than that it is a statement of showing to the world that CRPF believes in compassion in all senses of the word when it comes to duty toward its people. The real message is that all Kashmiris are “ our own people”. The guns in their hands are to protect the nation , but these hands are essentially meant to help them , and that’s the primary task that the CRPF jawans are performing everywhere in the country, including Kashmir.
