Clearing a Misconception about Jammu and Kashmir

The map of Jammu and Kashmir

Their are three places in Jammu and Kashmir; one is Jammu which is hotter and it is our winter capital, other is Kashmir which is a valley which contains numerous amount of townships and villages out of which Srinagar is its center and thus it is the summer capital which has very cold climate all year around and thirdly it is Ladakh which is a very peaceful which is kind of secluded from the limelight of jammu and Kashmir. The Jammu and Kashmir are very different places from each other either it is geographically, religiously,culturally or politically.

The palace of Maharaja Hari Singh

 So lets first talk about the geographical conditions of Jammu and Srinagar. They are 300 kilometers apart by road and Jammu is plain whereas Srinagar is mountainous . The climate of Kashmir is very cold and chilly but in Jammu it is very hot in summers and cold in winters but not so as much Srinagar. Jammu and Srinagar have nothing in common in terms of their geography. Srinagar is surrounded with mountains and it is a picturesque destination and that is why hot spot of tourism in Jammu and Kashmir. In jammu it is plain and has lots of temples and its own dogra culture. Now onto religion ; as we all know Muslim are in majority in jammu and Kashmir but in Jammu which has a population of 5.04 lakhs the population here is 95% Hindus. Our culture is very different form Kashmir but yet nobody knows about it. Culturally Jammu and Kashmir has its own indigenous languages namely Dogri and Kashmiri. The biggest difference in Jammu and Kashmir is politically; Jammu is very peaceful with zero terrorist activities. The things is as I mentioned earlier Kashmir valley is huge and Srinagar is peaceful at times and majority of the violence is concentrated in even far flung areas from Srinagar. In recent times violence has reached to Srinagar but I repeat Jammu is like another city in India with zero violence political stability and their is no such thing as terrorism in jammu. It is so different from Kashmir and the border lies more than 100kms so there is not even threat from border in fact jammu city has witnessed only 4 to 5 terror attacks according to Wikipedia.

News and politics create misconception

The main matter is when you see the Wikipedia you see Uri as part of jammu but the thing is the distance between Jammu and Uri is 367kms to be exact. This is the misconception which is I am today is clearing that no Jammu and Kashmir valley ( Srinagar to be exact if comparing cities) is not the same place. This exasperating farrago of two distinct places is largely created by media and politics. If you watch news with very keen eye you see they hardly say Kashmir but instead they use Jammu and Kashmir and same is the case with politics. Due to the Kashmir based politics Jammu is always away from main stream population as a tourist destination or from the investors who want to invest in Jammu but not in Kashmir which leads misinformation among the masses of Indian people. This is the reason of writing this post that Jammu and all the towns of Kashmir valley are different by politically or religious. Jammu is extremely peaceful and life is here like any other city of India. Also we will never abandon Kashmir and we have opened our hearts and doors for Kashmiri pandits in 1992 and same is true for any kashmiri either they gives us stones or flower. We welcome any number of people in Jammu or as media call it a ‘City of Temples’.