Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Oct 26: Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh today hit out at people indulging in anti-India activism and said that there will be no compromise on India’s policy of zero tolerance against terrorism.
Against the backdrop of surgical strike by Indian Army, he said that there should be no compromise on the dignity of security forces.
“I have no hesitation to say that consciously or unconsciously a message has gone around in India that there is a premium on anti-India activism. There is also a premium of anti-India intellectualism because as a nation we have failed to draw a bottom line of our nation’s ethos. If I am Indian and I call myself Indian why should there be any hesitation?” asked Dr Singh, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office.
He was addressing a symposium on “70th Accession Day of Jammu and Kashmir with India” jointly organised by India Foundation, JK Study Centre and Nehru Memorial Museum at Teen Murti Bhawan.
“Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and if at all there is any issue, it is how to retrieve the parts of Jammu & Kashmir which continues to be under illegal occupation of Pakistan even after 70 years of independence,” said Dr Singh, Lok Sabha member from Udhampur constituency in J&K.
He said as far as the Government of India is concerned, there is no compromise on terrorism. There is zero tolerance on terrorism and also no compromise on the sovereignty of India.
“Importantly, there is no compromise on the dignity of security forces. Let’s dedicate this Diwali to Indian armed forces who are securing our borders while we are sitting here,” the Minister said.
In an apparent dig at those claiming human rights of terrorists like Burhan Wani being killed in Jammu and Kashmir, Dr Singh said human rights of our soldiers are more important than that of terrorists.
“Before we think of human rights of terrorists, or perpetrator or sponsor of terrorists we have to first honour and justify our respect for those who protect us…Now the time has come to face the reality in Jammu and Kashmir and catch the bull by its horn,” he said.
He also criticised separatists for allegedly prompting the youth to become stone pelters.
“I fail to understand if stone pelting, and all these, is such a pious work and it gets you heaven then why don’t these separatists announce that at least one child from their family would become stone pelter and would go to ‘jannat’ (heaven)?
“I would have respected the separatist leaders of Kashmir much more than I do if I could convince myself that they are separatists by conviction,” said Dr Singh.
He said some separatists have been members of main political party and a few others have been legislators. “Almost all of them also take advantage of all the provisions of Indian Constitution,” the Minister said, adding “separatism has in itself become politics by other means”.
He said that history has been unkind to Maharaja Hari Singh, the last princely ruler of Jammu & Kashmir.
“Many facts of history have been misinterpreted as a result of which, not only Maharaja Hari Singh sometimes seems to appear in poor light, but certain facts related to Jammu & Kashmir have also got incorrectly recorded in the history”, he added.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, it is an irony that we tend to get entrapped by agenda of debate set by others and begin to apologetically defend certain queries which do not hold any relevance. Citing an example, he said, certain so called intellectuals, so called Kashmir experts and certain politicians with dubious leanings keep raising the bogey of Jammu & Kashmir having acceded to Indian union but the merger not having taken place. The matter of fact, however, he said is that there was no such written document as merger document and very small princely States like, for instance, Kapurthala, Patiala, Hyderabad, etc. were otherwise merged into their neighboring big States like Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, etc. for reasons of administrative viability. But J&K, with an area of over 2.25 lakh sq. kilometers, happened to be one of the largest princely States and a unit in itself, he said
Similarly, citing another example, Dr Jitendra Singh said,Maharaja Hari Singh was a patriotic Indian and it is wrong to state that he could have ever opted for an independent State which is also borne out by the fact that the India Act of Independence, which was commonly applicable to all the princely States, offered only two options, that of either going with India or with Pakistan.
He said, Hari Singh gave Jammu & Kashmir nearly 25 years of stable good governance marked by progressive vision, futuristic development, equivocal growth of all regions and justice without discrimination. The ray of hope, which Mahatma Gandhi saw in Kashmir when the entire subcontinent was up in flames of communal riot, is also because of the harmony and social contentment which prevailed in the decades of Hari Singh’s rule preceding 1947, he added.
Accusing successive generations of rulers after Hari Singh for putting Jammu & Kashmir on a retrograde path, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the State has been deprived of seeking, in-toto, the benefits available to other States of India, otherwise Srinagar today would have come up ahead of Hyderabad and Jammu ahead of Jalandhar.
To redeem the legacy of Hari Singh, Dr Jitendra Singh said,we must pledge to retrieve PoJK,Gilgit & Baltistan from Pakistan’s illegal occupation and restore the original territorial integrity of Jammu & Kashmir as it existed before 1947.
Maroof Raza, Consultant Editor ‘Times Now’ while speaking on the occasion, dwelt in detail on several defence related details of the tumultuous period between August to December 1947. He referred to several books and research documents to narrate several inside details of the Pakistan attack in 1947 and 1965 wars.
Padmashri Jawaharlal Kaul, a veteran scholar delivered the introductory address in which he spelt out the sequence of events leading to the accession of Jammu & Kashmir with India.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
