National Security Doctrine for Global Reach continues...

The second step to be taken by the Centre is the abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution of India. Legally, Article 370 can be abolished merely by a public notification issued by the President. It does not require Parliament’s sanction, contrary to what Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee had been telling his party workers.

Article 370 was really meant for the people of the Valley. The Jammuites and Ladakhis hate it since the Valley’s elite have used Article 370 against them. Because of Article 370 a woman of Ladakh and Jammu cannot marry anyone outside the State without giving up her property rights! How can we allow such anachronisms in a modern State? Private investments from the rest of India have not been permitted in Jammu and Ladakh, where however, the local people have never felt threatened by ‘invasion of Marwaris’ as Nehru had claimed. In any case, the composition of the valley has been changed by the terrorists by driving out or killing the Hindu population of the Valley. This is also a violation of Article 370 since it is tantamount to changing the composition of the state.

In order to decide what to do in Kashmir, it is necessary first to define the multidimensional Kashmir problem clearly.
(a) The first dimension is legal: The creation of India and Pakistan as independent countries in August 1947 is legally founded in the Indian Independence Act enacted in June of that year by the British Parliament. In this Act there is a provision that two-thirds of the portion of the undivided India which was then under direct British rule, be partitioned into India and Pakistan. In the remaining one third of undivided India (which was indirectly ruled), the said Act revived 562 kingdoms to full sovereignty! Hitherto, these kingdoms had been under the British Crown’s suzerainty and “paramountcy” from 1757, and they remained so till 1947. Section 7 of the Act caused this to lapse, and thereby restored the subjugated kingdoms to full sovereign authority.


to be continued....

( This account is maintained by Har Anand Publication)