Seven years have passed since August 5, 2019, when the Government of India abrogated Article 370 and ended the special constitutional status enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir.
For decades, proponents of Hindutva, going back to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, had argued that Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was an obstacle to its complete integration with India. The Bharatiya Janata Party eventually fulfilled that long-standing ideological objective.
The country was told that a historic problem had finally been resolved. The government argued that the constitutional change would end militancy, bring development, integrate Kashmir more closely with the rest of India and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.
Seven years later, those claims deserve serious scrutiny.
The August 2019 decision did much more than remove Article 370. The former state of Jammu and Kashmir was divided. Ladakh was separated and converted into a Union Territory, while the remaining Jammu and Kashmir was itself reduced from a state to a Union Territory under much greater control of New Delhi.
This was an extraordinary constitutional development. A full-fledged state of the Indian Union had been downgraded into a Union Territory.
Numerous laws and constitutional protections specific to Jammu and Kashmir were subsequently removed or altered, while central laws were extended to the territory.
All this happened in a region where extraordinary security legislation had already been in force for decades.
The most important test of the August 2019 decision should be the promises made at the time.
Has Kashmir become politically normal? Has alienation diminished? Has militancy disappeared? Have Kashmiris acquired greater confidence in democratic institutions?
Has the political relationship between New Delhi and the people of Jammu and Kashmir become healthier?
The answer, unfortunately, is difficult to describe as affirmative.
Political activity continues to operate under severe constraints. Large numbers of Kashmiris have experienced arrest and imprisonment over the years. Journalists and civil society activists have faced enormous pressure. Freedom of expression has narrowed substantially.
Even books have become objects of suspicion.
Homes, bookshops and libraries have been searched, and publications considered objectionable by the authorities have been seized. Whatever the security justification offered for such actions, a democracy should be deeply uncomfortable when possession of literature becomes grounds for punitive action.
Books must be challenged by books and ideas by ideas. A state confident of itself should not fear the written word.
The media, too, has been subjected to restrictions that make independent reporting increasingly difficult. When journalists cannot work freely, the rest of India receives an incomplete picture of what is happening in Kashmir.
Silencing bad news does not make the underlying problem disappear.
Constitutional Question
There is also the unresolved constitutional and political controversy surrounding the manner in which Article 370 was removed.
At the time of the August 2019 changes, Jammu and Kashmir did not have an elected government or functioning Legislative Assembly. The state was under central rule. The constitutional machinery used to fundamentally alter its relationship with the Union was therefore implemented when its people lacked an elected government capable of speaking on their behalf.
Whatever the subsequent judicial determination of the constitutional validity of these measures, the political question remains.
Can a durable relationship between a state and its people be built without their meaningful participation in decisions that fundamentally alter that relationship?
Article 370 was not an accidental provision of the Constitution. It emerged from the peculiar historical circumstances surrounding Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India.
Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947. The Instrument transferred authority to India over Defence, External Affairs and Communications. The political and constitutional relationship that developed thereafter retained a considerable degree of internal autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir.
Lord Mountbatten, while accepting the accession, also referred to the need for the wishes of the people to be ascertained once law and order had been restored.
India subsequently took the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations in January 1948, and the dispute acquired an international dimension that has remained with us ever since.
Article 370 was part of the constitutional architecture created against this complicated historical background.
Over subsequent decades, however, much of the autonomy envisaged under the provision was gradually eroded.
Erosion Began Long Before 2019
The weakening of Kashmir’s autonomy did not begin with Narendra Modi. That fact needs to be acknowledged.
Sheikh Abdullah, who played a central role in Jammu and Kashmir’s politics at the time of accession, became Prime Minister of the state in March 1948. By 1953, however, his relationship with New Delhi had deteriorated dramatically.
He was dismissed in August that year and arrested soon afterwards. He spent many subsequent years either in prison, detention or political exile.
His removal marked the beginning of an era in which New Delhi increasingly intervened in Kashmir’s political affairs.
Electoral processes repeatedly lost credibility. Governments considered convenient to the Centre were installed, while the space available for autonomous political decision-making steadily contracted.
The 1975 Indira-Sheikh Accord brought Sheikh Abdullah back to power, this time as Chief Minister rather than Prime Minister. But the deeper issue of Kashmir’s political relationship with New Delhi remained unresolved.
Then came the watershed of 1987.
The widespread perception that the 1987 Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections had been manipulated proved disastrous. Many young Kashmiris lost faith in electoral politics. Some subsequently crossed the line from political dissent into armed militancy.
The consequences were catastrophic.
Violence engulfed Kashmir. Militancy, counter-insurgency, displacement, killings, disappearances and profound human suffering followed.
Since 1990, the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act has provided sweeping powers to security forces operating in disturbed areas. Allegations of serious human rights violations accumulated over the decades, while victims and their families frequently complained that justice remained elusive.
Kunan Poshpora became synonymous with allegations of mass sexual violence. Chittisinghpora remains etched in Kashmir’s traumatic history. Thousands of families have spent decades seeking information about relatives who disappeared.
The phenomenon of “half-widows”, women whose husbands disappeared but whose deaths were never confirmed, represents one of the most painful human consequences of this conflict.
Unmarked graves, missing persons and unresolved allegations of abuses cannot simply be erased from public memory.
What Changed After 2019?
The removal of Article 370 was supposed to break this cycle. Instead, the political problem has remained.
The constitutional bridge that once symbolised Jammu and Kashmir’s distinctive relationship with India was dismantled, but no convincing new political compact with the Kashmiri people replaced it.
There has certainly been investment, infrastructure development and an expansion of central government programmes. Elections have also taken place. These developments cannot simply be ignored.
But roads, tunnels, tourism figures and investment announcements cannot by themselves resolve a political conflict.
Development is necessary. It is not a substitute for dignity, political representation and democratic rights.
One of the most striking facts seven years after August 2019 is that Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood has still not been restored.
The Central Government gave assurances before the Supreme Court that statehood would be restored. Yet Jammu and Kashmir continues to remain a Union Territory.
This prolonged delay raises an obvious question: If the objective of the 2019 measures was to bring Jammu and Kashmir fully into the Indian democratic mainstream, why should its people continue to enjoy less political autonomy than citizens living in India’s full-fledged states?
Restoration of statehood should therefore not be treated as a concession. It is an essential democratic requirement.
Human Cost
Beyond constitutions, court judgments and political arguments are ordinary people.
Families have waited years for prisoners to return. Parents have searched for missing sons.
Women have lived for decades without knowing whether their disappeared husbands are alive or dead.
Journalists have learned to measure every sentence. Government employees have faced dismissal under security-related provisions. Homes have been attached or demolished in cases linked to allegations of militancy.
Such policies may produce outward silence. They cannot necessarily produce consent. There is an important distinction between the absence of visible protest and the presence of genuine peace.
A society can be quiet because its grievances have been addressed. It can also be quiet because the cost of expressing those grievances has become unbearable.
The Central government and people of India must ask themselves which kind of silence they want in Kashmir.
Integration Cannot be Imposed
National integration is not merely a question of territory.
Maps can be altered by parliamentary majorities. Administrative structures can be changed through legislation. Constitutional provisions can be amended or removed.
But the confidence of a people cannot be commanded into existence. True integration requires consent, dignity and trust.
If Kashmir is to be treated like every other part of India, Kashmiris must enjoy the democratic freedoms that India claims for every other citizen.
They should be able to speak, write, organise, disagree with the government and participate in politics without constantly fearing that dissent will be equated with disloyalty.
This is particularly important for India because its strongest argument has always been that its democracy distinguishes it from authoritarian alternatives.
That argument becomes weaker whenever democratic freedoms are curtailed in Kashmir.
Seven years after August 2019, therefore, New Delhi needs to reconsider whether administrative control can ever substitute for political reconciliation.
The answer should be obvious.
Political Road
The first immediate step should be the restoration of full statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.
But statehood alone cannot resolve the larger question.
There must also be an honest national discussion about the constitutional relationship that existed before August 2019 and about restoring meaningful safeguards for Jammu and Kashmir’s identity, land, culture and political rights.
In my view, Article 370 should be restored.
Others will disagree. That disagreement is legitimate in a democracy. But what should not be acceptable is refusing to permit the argument itself.
Kashmir requires dialogue, not enforced silence.
It requires political engagement rather than indefinite management through security instruments.
It requires accountability where excesses occur, irrespective of whether the accused wears a uniform or carries a gun.
And above all, it requires recognition that the people of Jammu and Kashmir are not merely inhabitants of strategically important territory. They are citizens and human beings whose confidence must be won.
Seven years ago, the country was told that removing Article 370 would finally settle Kashmir.
Seven years later, Kashmir itself tells us that constitutional changes imposed from above cannot by themselves settle a political problem rooted in history, identity, rights and trust.
This long and painful chapter must eventually end. But it will not end through greater coercion.
It can end only when India has the confidence to return to democratic politics, constitutional accommodation and dialogue, and when the people of Jammu and Kashmir once again believe that their voices matter.
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