Article 370 of the Indian Constitution: Conceptualizing Autonomy Retraction

Autonomy is a concept often used within International law and conflict studies as a tool to resolve tensions between state and a distinct group wanting to break free from the state. However, autonomy has no real definition within international law. Similarly, autonomy retraction lacks a clear definition and conceptualization, mostly due to it being a rare occurrence. There are five known cases of autonomy retraction. The most recent is India’s revoking of article 370 of the Indian constitution previously granting the region of Jammu and Kashmir a special status of autonomy. This thesis used this case to try and conceptualize autonomy retraction by looking at the historical context of autonomy retraction comparing how the region of Assam, Kosovo, Sudan and Tibet lost their autonomy. Historical context tells us that retraction usually comes from legislative changes and increased nationalistic policy making by central governments. Additionally, the case of Jammu and Kashmir has been examined using an altered version of an existing framework developed by the author Maria Ackrén where she looked at how regional/territorial autonomy is established. The altered version used in the thesis looks at if her framework can be used to see how and why autonomy was retracted in Jammu and Kashmir. Evidently, ideology and growing asymmetric power structures and authoritarian tendencies imposed by the Bharatiya Janata Party in India seem to be at the core to the revocation of article 370. The ultimate goal in this thesis was to conceptualize autonomy retraction and while certain components such as ideology and ethnicity plays a large part as evident in the case of India revoking article 370, further research would be beneficial to identify additional components needed to generalize the concept of autonomy retraction.