Demographics of Jammu and Kashmir

While Jammu is a Hindu majority area, the Kashmir Valley is predominantly Muslim and Ladakh has a Buddhist-majority population. It is this complex demography of the region which has been disrupted by the ongoing Kashmir dispute.

With the onset of terrorism, many families, particularly those belonging to the Hindu community (numbering nearly 20,000) were forced into leaving their traditional homes during the ’80s. This caused a major upheaval in the socio-economic fabric of the peaceful Kashmiri communities, which till then had been a model for inter-community harmony.

This resulted in near destruction of most of the area’s economic activities as progress stalled for nearly a decade. Many of the uprooted Hindu and Muslim families were strong community leaders, and this nearly destroyed the fabric of Kashmir.

But recent events in the area, such as cross-border Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) have restored some of the faith of people in the governments’ ability to heal the fractures.