How abrogation of Article 370 has helped India diplomatically
The abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, has brought closure to the long-standing vulnerability of India.
Prior to August 5, 2019, India's vulnerability in Jammu and Kashmir, which was stoked by Article 370, was a 70-year-old weakness that both allies and adversaries of India diplomatically exploited.
The temporary provision in the Indian Constitution, Article 370, gave the impression that the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, which included Ladakh, now a separate Union territory, was not fully integrated with India. As a result, the issue had evolved into a diplomatic tool used by allies and adversaries to pressure India, which was under pressure, into making various concessions.
India first wanted to ask the UN for assistance to stop Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir in 1947–1948, but this quickly degenerated into a full-fledged India–Pakistan dispute that Pakistan and its supporters at the time used to isolate India internationally.
A previous foreign secretary described it as "equivalent to a burglary turned into a house owner-thief dispute." This problematic piece has several effects, including the radicalization of religion in J&K since the 1990s and the Islamic jihad waged in the guise of the liberation movement and organized by the Pakistani deep state. Fear was spread among security forces as a whole as a result of the media's portrayal of ardent Afghan war veterans operating in the Valley.
Before 2019, Pakistan used this essay to persuade the world's public that J&K was the unfulfilled portion of the two-nation idea that founded India and Pakistan with religion denomination as the very premise. This was done with the aid of the Left-Liberal media.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan was persuaded that India under Atal Bihari Vajpayee would deal on the Valley, which he called a core issue, during his visit to Agra in July 2001 after hearing about various solutions like the "Chenab" and "Jhelum" formulas from Western think tanks with vested interests .
Musharraf, like his predecessors, referred to Kashmir as Pakistan's "jugular vein" (Shahrag) in an effort to describe its use of armed Islamic jihadists to coerce India into giving up Kashmir.
The then-US policymakers needed to indulge Pakistan in Kashmir so that their calculations over Afghanistan did not go awry, which fed Islamabad's desires.Junior US diplomats used to lecture India on Kashmir and human rights during this time, with assistance from some Indian and international media.
However, the West, especially the US, UK, and Germany, remained mute about the cross-border terrorism committed by Pakistan in J&K up to that point. On December 13, 2001, an attack by Jaish-e-Mohammed and the 9/11 terrorist strikes both took place in the Indian Parliament.But following the heinous Lashkar-e-Toiba attack on an army camp at Kaluchak, Pakistan, in May 2002, the situation changed as India was about to breach the border to give Pakistan a military lesson.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have permanently closed the chapter on Kashmir by repealing Articles 370 and 35A and then producing a new map showing the geographic borders of both the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.The Shaksgam Valley, which Pakistan illegally ceded to China in 1963, the Northern Areas, Aksai Chin, and Kashmir are all included on the new map of the two UTs.
As the UT is irrevocably incorporated into India, even on legal paper, hardly one brings up Jammu and Kashmir when External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar makes bilateral and multilateral visits overseas nowadays. Although there are still terrorist strikes in J&K that are funded by Pakistan, the frequency has decreased because politicians in Islamabad and generals in Rawalpindi fear reprisals from Modi's India. In Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's most recent peace initiative, the word "Kashmir" is not even included.
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