Onlykashmir.in News Desk
Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir, Sujit Kumar, on Tuesday asked students in Srinagar to place their trust in parents, teachers and coaches, and to turn away from shortcuts and easy pleasures if they intend to build what he described as a great future.
Addressing students, parents and dignitaries at an event organised by Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson schools, the IGP cautioned young people against drugs, online betting, social media traps and financial fraud, framing them as the principal hazards facing the present generation in the Valley.
“Young people have all the capabilities, imagination and strength required to succeed,” he said, adding that they needed to resist temptations offering instant gratification. “As a police officer, my message to you all is never, never say never again. You have all the capabilities, imagination, all the strength, so fight, fight with your desires, fight with your illegitimate wishes, and be hard, be strong.”
He urged the students to follow the guidance of their teachers and to remain wary of anything that arrives too easily. “Any pleasure that is very, very easy to achieve, it will take you to the doors of hell,” he said.
Turning to the online environment, the IGP said social media had become a net in which the young are easily caught, describing predatory forces roaming those platforms and warning that escaping them requires a firm sense of direction. He linked betting, fraud and digital manipulation together as what he termed online diseases, placing them alongside narcotics as threats that policing alone cannot solve.
The IGP invoked the poet Nida Fazli while speaking about children and education, recalling lines about allowing small hands to reach for the moon and the stars rather than shaping children into replicas of their elders after a few books.
Reflecting on the institution’s history, he noted that the school was founded by its first principal, J.H. Nollis, with five students in 1890, and recalled the contribution of Canon C.S. Tyndale Biscoe, under whom enrolment grew from around 200 to 1,000.
Recalling a lesson from his own schooling, IGP Kumar said civilisation may be compared to a rose in a garden and culture to its fragrance, and that while the rose can be cut from its branch, the fragrance cannot be separated from the flower. The gathering, he said, reflected a fusion of the cultures of two great Himalayan valleys, Shimla and Kashmir.
Jammu and Kashmir, he said, carries a strong cultural identity, and that strength now rests in the hands of talented teachers. He expressed confidence that so long as this cultural foundation holds, children in the region will remain protected from emerging social pressures.
The IGP also referred to IPS officer Neha Jain, presently serving as an SP in Kashmir, saying the manner in which she had met the challenges of the region reflected the culture and civilisation she came from. He urged students leaving Kashmir’s schools for other parts of the country to carry the identity of their soil with them.
Closing his address, he assured the gathering of the force’s availability, saying the J&K Police and the Kashmir Zonal Police stand with the public whenever assistance is required.
