By Rajib Sen

child down on the ground

In New Zealand’s South Auckland suburb of Takanini, a 22-year-old Sikh business student from India, Harnam Singh, has become quite a hero and has achieved recognition world wide – because of his heart-warming, impulsive humanitarian gesture. And it was propelled into action by the screech of car tyres outside his house that made him bound outside to see that a vehicle had smashed into a small boy who was lying on the pavement. That’s when Harman acted without further thought.

As he said later: “”I saw a child down on the ground and a lady was holding him. His head was bleeding, so I unveiled my turban and put it under his head.”

This act of his selflessly abandoning the strict rules of his Sikh religion by using his turban to lend succour to the injured five-year-old boy was captured by today’s social media networks and went viral immediately. Then he and other members of the public stayed with the boy until the arrival of emergency services. Soon after, the mother of the boy was also on the scene.

Harnam won wide praise from the general public, especially the Indian community, but he was very modest when he said that, “I wasn’t thinking about the turban. I was thinking about the accident and I just thought, ‘He needs something on his head because he’s bleeding.’ That’s my job – to help. And I think anyone else would have done the same as me.” He went on to explain that the rules of his faith placed no restrictions on certain actions carried out in an emergency.

An unrelated Indian who happened to be passing by, who was identified as Gagan Dhillon, told listeners that he saw the accident as he was going to work and clarified, “Being a Sikh myself, I know what type of respect the turban has. People just don’t take it off – people die over it.” Then, indicating Harnam, he added, “He didn’t care that his head was uncovered in public. He just wanted to help this little boy.”

Dillon took a snap of the scene, then posted it on the Facebook social network and captioned it: “So proud of this young Sikh man who helped at a crash this morning where a child was hit by a car.” Immediately, tens of thousands of netizens praised Harnam for what this Indian student had done for the New Zealand schoolboy.

One of the Facebook posts said: “Great symbol of – we are all human beings. We have our individual beliefs, but at the end of the day to care for one another is key.” Another said: “This is why I have high respect for the Sikhism faith. Awesome job mate!” Overwhelmed by the world-wide support, Harnam commented that he was only trying to be a “decent member of the community.”

In fact, Harnam’s instinctive act contributed to the five-year-old boy’s early recovery after treatment at the Starship Hospital where he had been rushed from the accident site. It must have been a traumatic experience for him to have been knocked unconscious while innocently walking to school with his older sister, then waking up on a hospital bed after surgery to save him from life-threatening injuries on his head.