NEW DELHI: Kerala Tourism (KT) recently showed Uttar Pradesh Tourism how to do its job and promoted a tourist attraction from the northern state on its own Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The monument KT chose was the Taj Mahal and it acknowledged the site’s international appeal.
KT’s promotion of the Taj Mahal comes some weeks after an Uttar Pradesh Tourism publication omitted the mention of the Mughal mausoleum on a list of the state’s tourist attractions.

The southern state’s Taj Mahal promotion also came during a week that saw pitched debate on the monument’s Indianness amid talk that it was built after a Hindu temple on the site was razed.

That debate is by no means done with.
The latest to wade in is BJP Parliamentarian Subramanian Swamy who said that he has access to documents that suggest the property where the Taj Mahal was built was stolen by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan from the then kings of Jaipur.

It all started on Monday with a BJP legislator from Uttar Pradesh, Sangeet Som, saying that the Taj Mahal doesn’t represent Indian culture as it was built by a “traitor” Shah Jahan “who wanted to wipe out Hindus”.

A day later, the state’s BJP chief minister Adityanath said the Taj Mahal is decidedly Indian as it was “built by the blood and sweat of Indians”.

A day after Adityanath’s comment, a BJP parliamentarian Vinay Katiyar claimed that Shah Jahan had razed a Hindu temple to build the Taj Mahal.