Naya Kashmir Manifesto,Article 370 and The Unbecoming of Autonomy

Abstract

This article examines the ideological (un)becoming of Article 370 by undertaking a critical analysis of the Naya Kashmir Manifesto and its genesis in the tumultuous decade of the 1940s and juxtaposing this with the evolving realpolitik of both Kashmiri political culture and the Indian nation-state to demonstrate the gradual untenability of the autonomy discourse within the larger discourse of territorial sovereignty of post-colonial nationhood. While the ideological tenets of Naya Kashmir were meticulously drafted, remodelling the Stalin Constitution of 1936 to suit the sociopolitical realities of J&K, the manifesto remains conspicuously silent on the region’s future following the withdrawal of British imperial rule. Unpacking the processes through which the ideology of autonomy was not merely challenged but systematically undone, the article delineates the tensions between the idealism of regional autonomy and the realpolitik of territorial sovereignty of nation-state formation. It demonstrates that autonomy, once imagined as the cornerstone of Kashmir’s political selfhood, became increasingly untenable within the centralising logic of the Indian nation-state.