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2 NLUD J. Legal Stud. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/nludjls2 and id is 1 raw text is: 









                         THE KASHMIR CASE:
              HOW NOT TO HANDLE A CONFLICT

                                                             Dr. Aman Hingorani*

                                 I. INTRODUCTION

    A discussion was held on 21 December 2019 at the prestigious Army War College
at Mhow on The Future Contours of Kashmir: A Whole of Government Approach.' The
opening paragraph of the Approach Paper for the discussion ran as under:

        In a momentous decision that should mark the beginning of a new chapter
        in Kashmir's history, on 5 Aug 2019, the President of India issued the
        notification to revoke Article 370 and 35A. In one stroke, the state of J&K
        has transmuted from being disputed territory to undisputed territory,
        sovereign to India.

    These lines capture all that has been wrong with New Delhi's approach to the Kashmir
issue since 1947 till date!

    The erstwhile princely state of Jammu & Kashmir ('J&K') became an integral part
of India when its sovereign ruler acceded to India on 26 October 1947, and remains an
integral part of India. This is not because I say so but because the very principle that created
modem day India and Pakistan says so, as will be evident shortly. It is equally true that it
was New Delhi which accepted such accession provisionally in 1947 and made it subject
to a reference to the people of J&K. In other words, it was New Delhi that gave a 'disputed
territory' tag to J&K before proceeding to then internationalize the Kashmir issue by taking
it to the United Nations Security Council ('UNSC') in 1948, commit on the floor of the
UNSC to hold a plebiscite in J&K under United Nations ('UN') auspices and consequently
confer standing upon every member of the UN (including Pakistan) to comment on the
happenings in J&K. But then, does, or can, such 'disputed territory' tag conferred by New
Delhi upon J&K in 1947 get 'transmuted' to 'undisputed territory sovereign to India' by

* Aman M Hingorani is a lawyer and mediator in the Supreme Court of India and the High Court
    of Delhi. Dr Hingorani has also acted as an arbitrator and as adjunct faculty to teach law students
    and run training courses for judicial officers, lawyers and law teachers. Dr Hingorani has been
    invited to address national and international audiences, including various stakeholders, on the
    Kashmir issue. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book titled 'Unravelling the Kashmir
    Knot' which has inspired this article.
1   'The Future Contours of Kashmir: A Whole of Government Approach' (Approach Paper, Army
    War College, Mhow 2019).

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