by PRANAY SHARMA
‘Hindu Sena’ activists protest against J&K leaders (Chief Minister Jammu & Kashmir Omar Abdullah in cap and Mehbooba Mufti, President of the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party), May 29, 2014 PHOTO/Jitender Gupta
370
It’s the Article in the Constitution that forms the sole bridge between Jammu and Kashmir and the Indian Union. Some facts:
- J&K is the only state that negotiated its membership with the Indian Union
- It was discussed for five months—from May to October 1949—between Jawaharlal Nehru and his aides and Sheikh Abdullah and his aides
- The draft agreed between the state and the Union was approved in October 1949 and adopted in the Constitution as Article 370
- The provision of Article 370 (1-C) stipulates that Article 1 of the Constitution—that lists the states of the Indian Union—applies to J&K through Article 370. Which means if Article 370 is removed, J&K becomes independent.
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Kashmir And Article 370
From 1947 on, milestones of the dispute
- 1947 October The J&K maharaja accedes to the Indian Union in the wake of raids by armed tribesmen from Pakistan, seeks Indian army’s help
- 1948 March The maharaja appoints an interim government in the state with Sheikh Abdullah as prime minister
- 1948-49 Abdullah and three colleagues join the Indian Constituent Assembly; negotiate J&K’s entry into the Indian Union and Article 370 becomes part of Indian Constitution
- 1950 January Indian Constituent Assembly adopts the Indian Constitution
- 1950 April Syama Prasad Mookerji resigns from Nehru’s cabinet, launches the Jana Sangh
- 1951 November Constituent Assembly of J&K meet for the first time
- 1952 July ‘Delhi Agreement’ signed between Abdullah and Nehru, confining Union’s authority to only three subjects, leaving the rest with the state govt and abolishing monarchy in J&K.
- 1953 May Syama Prasad Mookerji, arrested while leading agitation in J&K against Article 370, dies a month later while in police custody
- 1956 November J&K Constituent Assembly wounds up
- 1961 April Hari Singh, the last maharaja of J&K, dies in Bombay
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This was perhaps not how Narendra Modi expected the week’s events to pan out. His swearing-in ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan forecourt on May 26 afternoon had gotten him off to a flying start. Among a host of dignitaries, the presence of leaders of the SAARC countries, particularly Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, gave him the opportunity to send out a strong, assuring signal to the outside world. To wit, the ascendance of a Hindu-right leader to power in Delhi was not a threat to the nuclearised South Asian region. On the contrary, the presence of the regional leaders reaffirmed India’s desire to re-engage with its immediate neighbours. The next day’s meeting that Modi had with Sharif and other South Asian leaders at Hyderabad House only strengthened this view further.
However, the mood soon changed afterwards with a remark by a junior minister in the PMO, suggesting that a debate will soon start on Article 370 of the Constitution to determine the ‘special status’ of Jammu and Kashmir. In less than 48 hours of its swearing- in ceremony, the new government was faced with its first political controversy. “We are speaking to the stakeholders. Article 370 has done more harm than good,” Jitender Singh Rana, a first-time Lok Sabha MP from Jammu’s Udhampur, told a TV channel.
Outlook for more