What Is Article 370?
The latest news coming out of India is that Article 370, which gives special status to the state of Jammu & Kashmir is getting scrapped. I hadn’t read about it till now because what has been happening in the state for all this time is beyond my commonsense. So according to Wikipedia, this is the concise description of Article 370 and its purpose:
The state of Jammu & Kashmir’s original accession, like all other princely states, was on three matters: defense, foreign affairs and communications. All the princely states were invited to send representatives to India’s Constituent Assembly, which was formulating a constitution for the whole of India. They were also encouraged to set up constituent assemblies for their own states. Most states were unable to set up assemblies in time, but a few states did, in particular, Saurashtra Union, Travancore-Cochin and Mysore.
Even though the States Department developed a model constitution for the states, in May 1949, the rulers and chief ministers of all the states met and agreed that separate constitutions for the states were not necessary. They accepted the Constitution of India as their own constitution. The states that did elect constituent assemblies suggested a few amendments which were accepted. The position of all the states (or unions of states) thus became equivalent to that of regular Indian provinces. In particular, this meant that the subjects available for legislation by the central and state governments was uniform across India.
In the case of Jammu and Kashmir, the representatives to the Constituent Assembly requested that only those provisions of the Indian Constitution that corresponded to the original Instrument of Accession should be applied to the State. Accordingly, the Article 370 was incorporated into the Indian Constitution, which stipulated that the other articles of the Constitution that gave powers to the Central Government would be applied to Jammu and Kashmir only with the concurrence of the State’s constituent assembly.
This was a “temporary provision”, its applicability was intended to last till the formulation and adoption of the State’s constitution. However, the State’s constituent assembly dissolved itself on 25 January 1957 without recommending either abrogation or amendment of Article 370. Thus the Article has become a permanent feature of the Indian constitution, as confirmed by various rulings of the Supreme Court of India and the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir, the latest of which was in April 2018.
So the story goes that it was the erstwhile King of Jammu and Kashmir who had requested for the state to have its own constitution and specific powers to be vested in the state government. Now, what exactly was the problem with Jammu and Kashmir that other states did not face when becoming part of the union of India?
Jammu and Kashmir have a predominantly Muslim population which was ruled by a Hindu King. All the problems started when India was divided into India and Pakistan during the time of Independence in 1947 with Pakistan supposedly meant to be a Muslim state. We all know how that went. Millions died in the violence that ensued. So it is obvious that people’s sentiments in Jammu and Kashmir would have been predominantly to align with Pakistan. But the King of Jammu and Kashmir chose to accede to the union of India albeit with some conditions which came to be created as Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.
Now here’s what confuses me. What followed immediately after the accession was the first war between India and Pakistan in 1948, and when the ceasefire came into effect, half of Jammu and Kashmir ended up in Pakistan’s possession. The question is, why did the erstwhile government of India allow it? To add insult to injury to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, the LOC was drawn right across their land. Here is where it gets more bizarre. The special provisions of Article 370 were meant to be applied to the whole of Jammu and Kashmir. But only half of it remained with India from 1948. Then why were the special provisions applied at all?
What has followed from that time is incomprehensible. India and Pakistan have been fighting a relentless proxy war at the expense of people in Jammu and Kashmir. On Pakistan’s side, the government has allowed numerous terrorist training camps to become active. On the Indian side, the government has downloaded its military might into the state to fight terrorist infiltration from Pakistan, and the people who get disgruntled with all the violence are being brainwashed into becoming terrorists and going for training at the camps in Pakistan. There cannot be a more perfect example of demand and supply.
The Scrapping Of Article 370
While I am glad some things are changing, I wonder how it will change the current situation. Restructuring of the state and Ladakh into two Union Territories is all fine, but on the ground, what is going to change? What impact is it going to have on the people’s lives? Even if we assume that the government is going to ring in a complete change in its policies towards the state and give a massive push for development, the terrorist camps in Pakistan will still be active. Undertaking development activities will only serve to spike the number of terrorist incidents. The government has been giving a number of benefits the exit of Article 370 will bring, but I am hugely circumspect. We believed in their host of changing narratives to justify demonetization, but we know now that it destroyed the country’s economy.
What saddens me about Jammu and Kashmir is, there is a parallel to it in history: Germany. After World War II, the U.S. and its allies took one part of it and Russia the other. Then the Cold War began. Just like how Jammu and Kashmir is being used by India and Pakistan to fight their proxy war, the two halves of Germany became the hub of military bases, intelligence agencies and spy networks. It went so deep that the East German police known as the Stasi had managed to cloud people’s minds to the level where they were all spying on one another even within their own families and reporting each other’s activities to the police. In Jammu and Kashmir, it is even worse. By allowing terrorist camps to function in Jammu and Kashmir under Pakistan’s control, the people are letting their fellow brethren in Jammu and Kashmir in India to suffer and die.
We know how it transpired in Germany. People suffered for 40 odd years, decided to take control of their lives and pulled down the Berlin wall. People of Jammu and Kashmir have been suffering in silence for 70 years. What I am hoping is for them to become united, take control of their lives, free themselves from the stranglehold of the political web of mire between India and Pakistan and tell both countries to take their squabbling somewhere else. I believe this is and has always been the only way to solve the issue.