Allow classes to resume: PM urges Kashmir youth

NEW DELHI - Making a passionate appeal for peace in troubled Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday urged the Kashmiri youth not to indulge in violent protests and instead “go back to schools and colleges”.

“Let us make a new beginning. I appeal to the youth to go back to their schools and colleges and allow classes to resume. I ask their parents: what future is there for Kashmir if your children are not educated,” Manmohan Singh said, addressing an all-party meeting of state politicians here.

Reading from a written statement, Manmohan Singh chose to spoke in chaste Urdu, an indication he was addressing Kashmiris directly rather than speaking to leaders of Kashmir political parties who gathered at his residence for the special meeting Tuesday evening. However, the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by Mehbooba Mufti boycotted the meeting.

This was Manmohan Singh’s first statement on the troubled situation in the Kashmir Valley since clashes broke out June 11, killing over 50 people, mostly in firing by security forces. The latest unrest in the valley has put the the Kashmir issue back on the burner as curfew continues to be imposed to thwart daily separatist-sponsored protests.

Schools and colleges managed to open only for a day or two in the last two months, seriously threatening the academic year of students in the valley.

“The state,” Manmohan Singh said, “is only now emerging from the shadow of more than two decades of a deadly insurgency, which brought only death and devastation to the beautiful state. These were two lost decades in the history of Jammu and Kashmir’s development.”

He said he was “convinced” that the only way forward in Jammu and Kashmir “is along the path of dialogue and reconciliation”.

“Our government, more than any other government in the past, has invested heavily in the peace process in Kashmir. The brave rejection of militancy by the people opened the door for us to pursue an unprecedented and intensive internal and external dialogue on the issues that have bedevilled Jammu and Kashmir for six decades.

He said the government had taken a number of “bold and indeed historic decisions” with Pakistan over Kashmir.

“A bus service was started,” he said, referring to the bus service that was launched across the Line of Control (LoC) in 2005 for the divided families of Kashmir living across the border with Pakistan.

“We facilitated trade across the LoC. We facilitated arrangements for divided families to meet. We changed the policy on allowing people representing different shades of opinion to visit Pakistan because we wanted to involve all sections of the people in the peace process,” he said.