A national tour for stone throwers!

srinagar — The army is zeroing in on young stone throwers in Kashmir — not to lock them up but to take them around India and give wings to their dreams.

A group of 20 boys from restive south Kashmir will be taken on an educational tour to showcase India and its development, a senior army officer said.

The idea struck Major General B S Raju, General officer Command of Victor Force, the army’s anti-insurgency grid responsible for much of south Kashmir, when he interacted with young boys caught throwing stones at security forces during counter-insurgency operations. “One can easily make out that they indulge in stone pelting because that is what they have seen while growing up. They are prisoners of the images that they see around them since their birth,” Maj-Gen Raju said, adding quite a few did not even know why they were throwing stones.

“It was surprising to find that many of them threw stones just out of fun,” he said.

The army officer, who is a father of a son and a daughter, decided to go by the rule book of a parent and started interacting with the stone throwers informally — to discover that they, too, had dreams. Recalling the late president AP J Abdul Kalam’s quote — “Dream, dream, dream! Conduct these dreams into thought, and then transform them into action” — the senior most officer of the army for south Kashmir soon started counselling the young students on careers.

The army, with the help of the local police, has been identifying the ones who will be taken to Delhi, where they will meet people in government, to Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, Jaipur and other places of historical importance.

The army believes the children, after returning from their multicity tour, will narrate their experiences to other young Kashmiris, encouraging them to join the next group.