Army's tours open up incredible India to Kashmiris

Jammu, March 19 (IANS) For 45-year-old Rashid Badana, a nomadic Gujjar in Jammu and Kashmir, a sea was something "slightly bigger than the lakes in our state" - until the Indian Army took him to a whole new world.

"I never imagined the sea to be so vast. I thought it would be slightly bigger than the lakes in our state," said Rashid, still in awe of what he got to see as part of one such trip to southern India last year.

It was part of the army's educational-cum-motivational tours - started in 1998 to win over people of the terror-ravaged state - that have so far roped in over 30,000 students and elders.

The one Rashid went on was the longest tour organised by the army so far. The 17-day trip covered Kanyakumari, Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai.

Rashid was overwhelmed with the "love, affection and hospitality of people" wherever he went. "I have realised now that India is as great as it is vast," he said.

He even enjoyed the experience of riding a train. "It is so much fun travelling in a train where so many room-like compartments connected to each other move so fast," he said.

Over 30,000 students and elders have benefited from the educational-cum-motivational tours of the army under Operation Sadbhavana "to win the hearts and minds of people" in Kashmir, said Col. Sanjay Dikhit of the army's Northern Command.

"In these tours, students of an impressionable age group are taken to various parts of the country, so as to broaden the horizon of the citizens of tomorrow and offer them an opportunity to appreciate the vast natural, historical and cultural heritage of our nation as also to integrate them with the national mainstream," he said.

The first such tour of 40 schoolchildren from remote and militancy-infested Loran Mandi area of Poonch district in the Jammu region was conducted in September 1998.

Later elders, including opinion makers, maulvis and nomadic gujjars, also formed part of such tours.

"The focus of such endeavours is to expose youth to avenues of development and growth available in the country, wean them away from the path of insurgency and consequent self-destruction. People come back with invaluable memories and deconstructed beliefs," Dikhit said.

The army has organised 81 tours in the current financial year in which over 3,550 people participated, involving a cost of Rs.25.78 million.