On August 5, 2019, the Government of India announced unprecedented steps relating to Indian-administered Kashmir (IAK), including the “abrogation” of Article 370of the Indian Constitution (Article 370). While Indian commentators frequently say that the Indian government “granted” IAK autonomy pursuant to Article 370 (when India’s constitution came into effect on January 26, 1950), IAK did not enjoy actual autonomy.  The Government of India controlled the region, denied its people fundamental rights and freedoms,including representative self-governance, and had freely imposed laws and policies on IAK. So why did the Government of India abrogate Article 370?  

In short, the Government of India abrogated Article 370 to advance its Hindutva political agenda. Hindutva (sometimes called “Hindu nationalism”) is a militant,ultra-nationalist, Hindu supremacist ideology that seeks the ahistorical "restoration"of a "pure" Hindu holy land/homeland in a large swathe of Asia (including IAK). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the political wing of the Sangh Parivar, an umbrella of Hindutva organizations affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu fascist paramilitary organization founded in1925. The formative Hindutva political view on Kashmir was articulated by the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the predecessor to the BJP, in 1950-51. The BJS viewed Article 370 as a“clear violation of India’s sovereignty.” They called for the abrogation of Article 370 (and the elimination of Jammu and Kashmir’s separate flag and constitution) under the slogan: “one nation, one flag, one constitution.”

A key BJP platform promise in India’s 2019 general elections was to (finally) abrogate Article 370. A key campaign tactic was to demonize the “anti-national,” “terrorist” Muslims of IAK, a “problem” that the BJP would solve by abrogating Article 370 and “fully integrating” IAK with India.  The BJP won in a landslide. In August 2019, the BJP used its mandate to implement the decades-old Hindutva policy goal of abrogating Article 370 – a major Hindutva achievement and a major accomplishment for the BJP (which the BJP used to mobilize voters in India’s2024 general elections). More significantly, the abrogation of Article 370signaled a broader policy shift by the Government of India—toward an emboldened Hindutva policy program in IAK.

With and after the abrogation of Article 370, the Government of India has completely isolated IAK and imposed a militarized program of total domination and intensified surveillance,silencing, collective punishment, historical erasure and the political/economic/cultural disintegration and disempowerment targeting IAK’s Muslims as well as the acceleration of forced demographic in favor of non-local Hindus.  Through policies attendant to the abrogation of Article 370, the Government of India has imposed genocidal conditions in IAK and is “correcting” the (false and ahistorical) “mistake” of “Muslim invasion”in IAK through the silencing, subjugation and replacement of the region’s Muslims, consolidating a major victory for the Hindutva movement.