Why Article 370 had to go | The Indian Express

Why Article 370 had to go | The Indian Express

Written by Abhinav Kumar |Updated: August 16, 2019 9:03:02 am

The writer is a serving IPS officer. Views are personal.

Why Article 370 had to go

The constitutional, democratic, historical and moral arguments being marshalled against the Centre’s move in Jammu and Kashmir are unfounded. I, for one, regard it as an extraordinary privilege and honour to be a part of this historical exercise.

While we cannot satisfy all the prophets of doom and gloom, we are sure that an overwhelming majority of the citizens of India appreciate the challenges ahead and we have their confidence and support. (Illustration by C R Sasikumar)

It is not always that a writer has to quickly deal with the practical consequences of what he wrote about recently. My last article (‘A New Deal for Kashmir,’ July 5), published in these pages, looked at the difficult choices India faced in Kashmir and suggested that we should have a wider debate about repealing Article 370 as one of the options. Predictably, it caused a furore amongst a section of our intelligentsia for whom Article 370 was more an article of faith than anything else.