Anti-India intellectualism promoting terrorism: Jitendra Singh

Union minister Jitendra Singh has blamed anti-India intellectualism for promotion of terrorism in Kashmir and said there is no place for such intellectualism as it has become a "favourite pastime" for failed scholars and failed academicians.

"Anti-India intellectualism promoting terrorism. There is no place for anti-India intellectualism," Singh said Monday.

In a candid address to the academic fraternity in Udhampur, Singh said anti-India intellectualism has "become a favourite pastime" for some of the failed scholars and academicians who feel tempted to use Kashmir as a convenient subject to seek "intellectual pretensions".

He said even developed democracies, like the US, allow no place to such intellectual jingoism which tends to wreck the nation.

Speaking at an interactive session at the Degree College here, Singh said, "The mediocres, who are unable to earn recognition as intellectuals or writers through mainstream, have found a convenient option of delivering an anti-India lecture to appear different from others or to write a book on Kashmir and seek overnight recognition.

These so-called intellectuals, he alleged, are actually guilty of spreading intellectual terrorism.

Coming down heavily on alleged Kashmir apologists, Singh called upon the "researchers" to go through the statements made by the members of this genre after the Pulwama attack, "because all these statements are vague, generalised and generic, without naming the Hurriyat or separatists or Pakistan or even calling a terrorist a terrorist".

Responding to the queries by students and offering his comments on a lecture delivered by youth activist and motivational expert Sajan Shah, he said the motivation is incomplete without conviction and conviction leads nowhere without courage, and both conviction and courage can together achieve the optimum results only through the growth of inner sensibilities.

Such motivation, he said, requires consistent self-introspection.

While emphasizing the virtues of sincerity of purpose and focus of mind, Singh observed that many of us tend to spend a lot of time and energy in trying to discover others but hardly ever get to discover ourselves.

Singh also inaugurated a series of new academic blocks in the college premises and a new smart classroom complex.