By Sanjay Kapoor

Three years ago, on August 5 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, much to the shock and chagrin of the Kashmiris and many others, abrogated articles 370 and 35-A of the Indian constitution and ended the special status of the State of Jammu & Kashmir and symbolically merged it with the rest of the country. To be fair to the ruling party, the annulment of the Articles had figured frequently in BJP’s poll manifestoes over the last many years. A past president and founder of the party’s precursor, Jana Sangh, Syama Prasad Mukherjee, had died in detention in Kashmir while demanding the state’s integration with the rest of the country way back in 1953.

Electoral Promise

After the BJP got re-elected in 2019, it was apparent that the Modi government would rush through electoral promises that would help embellish the credentials of the BJP as a party that gave primacy to the interests of the majority Hindu community. It started off with reading down the two constitutional articles that guaranteed J&K a special status. A year later, on the same date, i.e. August 5, the BJP government fulfilled another promise: it began the construction of the Ram Temple.

The government claims great success in Kashmir in view of the August 5 decision. It claims that the incidents of violence have come down by 88 per cent since the decision was taken and that there has been a jump in the number of tourists showing up in the valley. In other words, the state’s economy is booming, and life has returned to normal. But these lofty claims merit a query. If what the BJP claims is indeed true, why did the Kashmiri Pandits begin to flee the valley? What about reports of militancy becoming totally indigenous?

There is so much more that has happened after the State of Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its semi-autonomy and rudely bifurcated into two union territories to diminish the political strength of the Kashmir valley.

Read the full story here:- https://theprobe.in/jammu-and-kashmir-august-5-decision-underscores-the-fragility-of-our-institutions/