Army Chief General Bipin Rawat on Friday said that schools in Jammu and Kashmir are instilling wrong information into students’ mind by showing them a map of their state and not just one Indian map.
“In the schools in Jammu and Kashmir, what teachers are teaching should not be taught. In schools, there can be seen two maps – one of India another of Jammu and Kashmir. Why do we need a separate map for the state? What does it teach the children?” Rawat said addressing the media ahead of the Army Day on January 15.
On combating terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, General Rawat asserted, “We may have neutralised several terrorists but we have also caught 39 of them alive because we wanted to give them a second chance.”
He also called for changing India’s focus from the western frontier to the northern one in the wake of growing Chinese presence in India’s neighbourhood like Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, which have traditionally close ties with New Delhi.
“For too long, we have kept our focus on the western front. I think time has come for us to focus on the northern border. Therefore our infrastructure development on the northern border has to be speeded up,” he said.
General Rawat said countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan have to be kept on board as part of a broader strategy to deal with China.
