Radha Kumar

On August 5, 2019, the government of India hollowed out Article 370 of the Indian Constitution with a presidential order, overturning a status quo that had lasted for nearly 70 years. The erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir had been granted a special status under which it had its own constitution and autonomy in its internal affairs.

At the same time as scrapping Article 370, the Indian Parliament passed a bill reorganizing Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. Unlike Indian states, union territories are federally governed. In essence, New Delhi had moved decisively to exert control over the region.

Five years later, there is considerable discontent in the Kashmir valley and Jammu, too. Security, a primary reason cited by the government for its decision to vitiate Article 370 and reorganize the region, has not improved significantly either. Civil society, independent media, and the local economy have all suffered under pressure, and although the worst has not come to pass – a resumption of widespread armed conflict as in the 1990s – the seeds of conflict may yet sprout.

In the following interview, The Diplomat’s Managing Editor Catherine Putz asks Radha Kumar, a former director-general of the Delhi Policy Group and a specialist on peace and security in South Asia, about the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status: the Indian government’s goals, the critics’ concerns, and where matters stand five years later.

Can you explain the origin and purpose of Article 370 of the Constitution of India?

Article 370 of the Indian Constitution gave Jammu and Kashmir special status in the Indian union under which it would have its own constitution, laws, and administrative services. Basically it flowed from the Instrument of Accession signed by then Maharaja Hari Singh, under which the state joined the Republic of India on the condition that the only portfolios with the union administration would be defense, foreign affairs, and communications.

Prior to independence, India's princely states were under British protection but not part of British India. Upon independence most of the princely states joined the Indian union, signing the same accession document that the Maharaja had signed. Soon after accession, however, the majority of princely states merged with the Indian union; in other words, they accepted the Indian Constitution. Jammu and Kashmir did not.

By the time Article 370 was inserted into the constitution, Pakistan had sent armed tribal bands into Jammu and Kashmir to wrest the state and India's Nehru administration took the issue to the United Nations. The article was, in this context, also a reassurance to the international community that the Indian union would protect the state’s right to self-rule. It was ratified by the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution in 1956.

In what ways did Article 370 shape Kashmir’s relationship with India?

In terms of the relationship to the union, Article 370’s effects were mostly intangible and/or symbolic. The Jammu and Kashmir Constitution was harmonized with the Indian Constitution, and over the years many of the state’s autonomies were vitiated. For example, the Jammu and Kashmir administrative services became part of the all-India administrative services and subsequent elections were overseen by the national election commission. But the key rights to land ownership, government employment, and state-subsidized education were restricted to permanent residents of the state as defined by its legislature (Article 35A). Symbolically too, Article 370 represented the union’s acknowledgement of the state’s unique demography – it was India’s only Muslim majority state – and the culture that had withstood successive empires.

But it also left a sliver of insecurity on both sides. The Nehru administration arrested Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah as early as 1953 on suspicion that he wanted to parlay Article 370 into semi-independence. The arrest gave credence to Kashmiri fears that the Nehru administration, and by extension India, did not intend to honor the article in letter or spirit. Subsequent union manipulation of elections and state administrations cemented Kashmiri fears, leading to an armed uprising supported by Pakistan in the late 1980s through the 1990s.

India's fight for control over the state led to its being increasingly treated as a security problem. A peace process began in 2002, between armed groups and dissidents and the Indian and Pakistani administrations. It led gradually to an end to the armed insurgency – though armed attacks continued sporadically – and first steps to peace-building in the early 2000s.

What were the Modi government’s stated goals in scrapping Article 370 in 2019?

Hindu nationalists had opposed Article 370 from its inception. Their slogan was “one nation, one constitution.” The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s 2014 and 2019 election manifestos promised to abrogate Article 370. In 2019, when the Modi administration won a thumping majority in Parliament, it moved to remove all the autonomy clauses of Article 370 while retaining its hollow shell. At the same time, parliament enacted the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act 2019, which divided and demoted the state to two union territories that would be centrally administered. The act voided the state constitution and Article 35A.

These measures, the prime minister and home minister said, would integrate the state with the union, end terrorism, and usher in a new era of prosperity for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Curiously, however, the Modi administration felt it necessary to arrest over 5,000 political leaders, party cadres, and rights advocates, deploy several thousand additional troops, and cut all communication to and within the state before announcing the measures and for weeks after.

Have the Modi government’s goals been achieved?

No. Alienation from the Indian union is high in the valley and in Jammu too there is considerable discontent at the impact the measures have had.

New domicile rules have led to the addition of hundreds of thousands of residents with property and education rights in Jammu; the voters list has swelled by over 2 million between 2014 and 2024, though no new census has been conducted. Cross-border trade with Pakistan-held parts of the former princely state has halted, causing considerable loss to traders; mining and tourism development have been outsourced to companies from outside the former state. Successive lockdowns in the valley have caused large losses to the tourism and fruit industries, among others.

Freedom of expression and dissent have been curtailed, with gatherings of more than five people banned. Over 2,700 people have been under draconian laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act between 2020 and December 2023, including journalists, students, activists, lawyers and even Muharram processionists.

Terrorist attacks on civilians and security forces have increased over the past three years, appearing in areas that have been peaceful for decades, such as Jammu’s Pir Panjal region. The Kashmiri Pandit minority, Hindu migrant workers, and local government representatives have been specifically targeted.

On the other side, what were the biggest fears of the critics of the attempt at abrogation? To what extent have those fears materialized?

As a fierce critic, my biggest fears were that the Modi administration's measures would negate two decades of peace-making and might push Jammu and Kashmir back into the armed conflict of the 1990s and early 2000s.

The thrust of the peace process years of 2000-2012 was to restore such elements of democracy as security reforms, free and fair elections, more autonomy to the administration, and an independent media. By 2009, civilian deaths due to insurgency had fallen well below 30 annually and the state began to rank among the best performers on economic and human development indices. It now ranks in the bottom 50 percent and has not had an elected administration since 2018.

Incidents of security forces’ engaging in torture and staged killing have re-surfaced, though thankfully they are still rare. Far from any autonomy of governance, government employees have been dismissed for merely being related to armed militants or their supporters. There is no independent media. A few online sites that still published dissent, such as the Kashmir Walla, have been shut down.

My second fear has not yet come to pass. Jammu and Kashmir has not been pushed back into the armed conflict of the 1990s. The rise of terrorist attacks in Jammu over the past three years, which has intensified in the past two months, is still far from a state-wide armed conflict and the number of armed militants is still in the hundreds rather than tens of thousands. But it is still too early to conclude that the danger of widening conflict does not exist.

What is the social and political situation in the now-union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh like today?

Bad, but in different ways. Communal (Hindu-Muslim) tensions have been on the rise in Jammu and Kashmir for years and have been exacerbated by current nationalist or identity politics. The controversial 2022 delimitation of electoral constituencies added to the problem by creating new Hindu-majority constituencies in Jammu and diluting former Muslim-majority constituencies. It also weighted the Jammu voter over the Kashmiri voter by allocating 43 seats to Jammu with a population of 43.8 percent, and 47 seats to the valley with a population of 56.1 percent.

New rules have just been notified under the Reorganization Act that take away an elected administration's right to appoint the Jammu and Kashmir attorney-general or senior civil servants, or to sanction prosecutions, giving them instead to the centrally appointed lieutenant-governor. The director-general of police has accused the regional political parties, mostly valley-based, of tacit support for terrorists. It seems we are now going to see an increasing standoff between union appointees and local political leaders – and that too when legislative assembly elections are due to be held before end-September.

In Ladakh too there has been growing resentment against administration by a lieutenant-governor and the Modi administration's vacillation on the long-pending Ladakhi demand for inclusion in the sixth schedule of the Indian Constitution, which provides for self-rule and economic subsidies for tribal territories. Ladakh's two major communities – the Buddhists of Leh and the Muslims of Kargil – are united on this issue. Both also want the development and budgetary powers of the elected hill councils, which were usurped by the lieutenant-governor, returned.

How salient is the Kashmir issue – or rather, the many Kashmir issues, like the political context in India, Pakistan’s own interests in the region, terrorism and so on – in Indian politics more broadly?

The repercussions of the Modi administration’s actions are many. First, the unilateral way in which Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood was removed raises fears that a similar method might be used against an opposition-ruled state. The recent parliamentary election results, in which the BJP lost its majority and is dependent on allies, and the opposition increased its numbers substantially, do not negate these fears. The Modi administration continues to discriminate against opposition-ruled states both politically and fiscally.

In Jammu and Kashmir itself, there is a high risk of armed attacks continuing to rise, both if there are elections and if there are not (in the former case, democratization might see a short-term rise, on the pressure cooker theory; in the latter, anger at postponement could spiral into violence).

Much will depend on the approach of Pakistan’s Sharif administration. The current spate of attacks (14 and rising in June-July alone) have clearly been the result of infiltration by proscribed Pakistani armed groups across the border in Jammu; reportedly, their weapons include U.S.-made M4 carbine assault rifles that have probably come from Afghanistan via Pakistan. If true, this would be an issue to raise with the Biden and Sharif administrations.

The Sharif administration has asked the Modi administration for talks. If they materialize, it will most likely be through an NSA [National Security Advisor] Doval-led back channel in which terrorism and trade will both figure prominently. Meantime, the Modi administration had already begun some sort of quiet and limited engagement with Afghanistan’s Taliban administration. It will be interesting to see if the issue of weapons flow comes up there.