Modi govt abrogates Article 370: Unexpected coup or well-planned strategy?

It would be naïve to assume that the move to abrogate Article 370 came overnight under the cloak of secrecy

A week before the Pulwama attack in February, a select group of officials of the ministry of home affairs was busy drafting a notification in complete secrecy. The notification, duly approved by the then home minister, Rajnath Singh, was all set to be put up. It would have effectively effaced Article 35(A), which defines the “permanent residents” of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) entailing their special privileges.

The move was seen in the government as a gamechanger in the wake of the results of the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost power. The notification was also consistent with the BJP’s promise of scrapping Article 370, which grants special status to J&K.

Ever since the BJP withdrew from the alliance with Mehbooba Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the government had been actively considering steps that would reaffirm the BJP’s commitment to end Article 370. So the drafting of the notification took a long time and its finalisation happened a few days after the Assembly election results. The government was conscious of the fact that it would require a lot of logistical deployment of forces once the notification became public. Hence it was a well-guarded secret.

This notification was not accompanied by any other measure — either to dilute Article 370 or to divide the state into two Union Territories (UTs). The implicit message of the notification was that the removal of Article 35 (A) would make Article 370 nothing more than a redundant relic in the Constitution. Over the years, Article 370 has been so debilitated by successive regimes in New Delhi that its existence seemed quite notional. The division of the state was not contemplated at that time.

The attack on a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on February 14 by a Jaish-e-Mohammad’s fidayeen (suicide bomber) significantly changed the government’s approach to addressing the J&K imbroglio. The notification was held back as the issue became serious. The death of 40 CRPF troopers and the subsequent political reaction in the beleaguered state triggered serious re-strategising on the issue. It, too, had its impact on the government, which had to quickly change tack — from an “incremental approach” to a more robust “muscular approach” — on the whole issue. Indian Air Force aircraft went inside Pakistan to bomb a terrorist camp in Balakot and launched a massive manhunt to wipe out Jaish-e-Mohammad modules in the Valley.
 

Those who see the decision of scrapping Article 35(A) through a presidential order and reading down Article 370 to an ineffectual statute as an “abrupt and knee-jerk reaction” to the J&K problem have been ignoring the pattern for long. On August 5, when Home Minister Amit Shah moved the Bills on J&K’s special status, it was a well-thought-out move deliberated for months on end within the government and the Sangh Parivar before reaching its logical culmination. The groundwork was laid for Shah much before August 5. 

It would, therefore, be naïve to assume that the move came overnight under the cloak of secrecy. Even historically, the BJP and its forebear, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, were never coy about expressing their disapproval of Article 370. Since its inception, the party has been consistent in maintaining that it would do away with the Article, which, to their assessment, alienates instead of integrating people of J&K with the mainstream.

In 1998 and 1999, when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, won the Lok Sabha polls, the coalition comprising diverse political opinions excluded the BJP’s agenda on the Ram temple, Article 370 and a uniform civil code and formulated a cohesive NDA agenda. Vajpayee pursued a conciliatory political course even when the Farooq Abdullah government pressed for restoring the pre-1953 status of autonomy for the state in 2002. Though chagrined at Abdullah’s move of passing a unanimous resolution in the Assembly, Vajpayee desisted from pursuing confrontation and talked about conceding more autonomy to the state for improvement of governance. 

Though the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014 with a majority, it gave up its ideological predilections in the larger part of its first term. That was the reason for the party agreeing to ally with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and his daughter Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP to run the J&K government. Poles apart ideologically, the coalition fell under the weight of its own contradictions. The BJP’s decision to pull the plug on the Mehbooba Mufti government was prompted by the fear of losing ideological ground.

This was the context in which the Narendra Modi government began preparation for removing Article 35 (A), which would have effectively put an end special privileges granted to J&K and its “permanent residents” as defined in the Article. The government expected a sharp political reaction and need to deploy security forces. But the Pulwama attack on February 14 changed its priorities. 

With the Lok Sabha elections around the corner, the notification was held to be revived after the polls with a comprehensive package. It changed the course of history for J&K — reducing it from a “privileged position” to two UTs.