Addressing a rally in Jammu and Kashmir's Udhampur, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged the youth of Kashmir to choose tourism, not terrorism, to help the state scale new heights of progress.
PM
Modi asserted that "40 years of bloodshed" had not benefitted anyone,
sending out a message to the misguided youth of Kashmir in the wake of
the growing unrest in the Valley and spurt in clashes between civilians
and the security forces.
He again invoked former Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee's slogan of Kashmiriyat, Jamhooriyat, Insaniyat
(Kashmirism, democracy and humanity) and said it will be the "prime
motto" in moving ahead "with harmony, with brotherhood, with strong will
and determination for the brighter future of the youth" and "no
obstacle can stop us". Modi, who was on a brief visit to Udhampur to
inaugurate the country's longest road tunnel between Kashmir and Jammu,
used the occasion to tell the stone-pelters of the valley that stones
could be used for better purposes -- building infrastructure.
After
inaugurating the 9-km-long Chenani-Nashri tunnel, Modi asked the
Kashmiri youth that if they ignored the "invaluable tradition of Sufi
culture", they would "lose the present and plunge your future into
darkness".
MODI ATTACKS PAKISTAN IN UDHAMPUR SPEECH
Modi
also launched a veiled attack at the rulers of Pakistan who are eyeing
Kashmir, saying "they can't even take care of themselves". He said his
government was committed to ensuring fast-paced development of Jammu and
Kashmir, which would also tell the people living under "occupation" in
the other parts of the state (PoK) how they were being destroyed. At the
event attended by Governor N N Vohra, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and
some union and state ministers, Modi promised to stand
shoulder-to-shoulder in the development of Jammu and Kashmir and sought
the cooperation of the people in this regard. "I want to tell the
misguided youth of the Kashmir valley to realise the power of a stone.
On the one hand, there are some misguided youth who pelt stones, while
on the other, there are youth from the same Kashmir who carve stones to
build infrastructure," he said.
The message was clearly for the youth who indulged in stone-pelting in the Kashmir valley, a trend that is growing.
"I
want to tell the Kashmiri youth that there are two paths in front of
you which can determine your future -- one is tourism, the other is
terrorism," he said.
"Over the last 40 years, there has been a
lot of bloodshed. My own Valley has been blood-soaked, my Kashmir's
beloved youth, my Hindustan's beloved youth. Nobody has benefited from
this bloodshed," the Prime Minister emphasized.
He said if the
people of Kashmir had devoted the same 40 years to the development of
tourism here, the valley would have been blessed with world-class
tourism.
