Kashmir after Article 370

India is a Union of States. This is a line that is familiar to most high-school civics students and is taken for granted. But, it has not always been a “happy” Union of States. Some states have more grievances than others on how they have been treated within the union, and none more so than the state of Jammu and Kashmir. With the abrogation of Article 370, it has even lost its statehood and its unity as a political entity, having been bifurcated into two union territories.

Article 370 had long been a bugbear of right-wing Hindutva nationalists resentful of India’s only Muslim-majority state getting favourable terms under the Constitution. The argument was that Article 370 somehow stood in the way of the integration of the state with the rest of the union. This was a tenuous argument at best, since Article 370 had been diluted over the years by the union government through a variety of legal and extralegal moves. Never mind that Article 370 also formed the model for special provisions under the Constitution for multiple states from Andhra Pradesh to Sikkim, helping assuage local concerns for greater autonomy and keeping the union more united.