SRINAGAR – At a time when India is making efforts to change the demographic status of the occupied Jammu and Kashmir, a government website has declared the disputed Muslim majority region a Hindu majority.
The InvestJK website, run by the Industries and Commerce Department, describes under its heading on Temples that, “be it Kashmir or Jammu, the population is predominantly Hindu.”
“This explains the presence of a number of temples in the state, surrounded by lakes, rivers, snow and alpines,” reads the website.
According to 2011 census, Muslims make 68.31% of the population and Hindus 28.44%, while the rest are other minorities like Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians and Jains.
The census also shows there were 808 Kashmiri Pandit and Dogra Hindu families in the Occupied valley. Out of these, 554 were Kashmiri Pandit families and even out of these, 64 families had left since 2011, leaving only 490 non-migrant Pandit families in J&K.
The Muslim-majority Kashmir is described by the website as a “fertile valley with a mild climate and well known for its handicrafts, in particular its shawls and carpets” to woo the investors.
The website does not describe the entire Jammu that has diverse geography which is mostly inhabited by Muslims.
Instead, the website focuses on the province’s capital, Jammu, describing it as ‘a city of Temples’.
“It is dotted with some historical temples like Raghunath Temple, Ranbireshwar Temple, Peer Kho Temple, [and] Panjbakhtar Temple, which are over a hundred years old,” it adds.
The region is presented under three headings: Places to Visit, Temples, and Hill Station, to the investors.
The Temples section only focuses on four Hindu shrines, two each in Kashmir and Jammu, while the Hill Station section has two famous hill tourist resorts which have not been presented.
https://twitter.com/standwkashmir/status/1390597380345577475
The incorrect information available on the website has drawn severe criticism.
