The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Monday welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, as it said the revocation of the provision was one of the biggest demands of the organisation from the very beginning.
“The Sangh has been opposing Article 370 since beginning and put forth the same through several resolutions it has passed and active participation in all the movements associated with the issue. This decision will contribute further in strengthening of national unity. The people of Jammu and Kashmir have finally got freedom from the injustice they were subjected to for years due to Article 370,” said RSS publicity in-charge, Sunil Ambekar.
Thwarting ‘disintegration’
Since 1950 when Article 370 was inserted in the Constitution, the RSS has passed 27 resolutions on the Kashmir issue, mostly related to Article 370. In each resolution, the Sangh maintained that the Article engenders “disintegration” in the country.
In an interview to the RSS’ English mouthpiece, Organiser, the second chief of RSS, Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar had said that there is only one way to keep Kashmir — and that is by complete integration with India. He had maintained that Article 370 must go and the separate flag and Constitution for Jammu and Kashmir must be shunned.
The first movement against Article 370 started by the RSS after independence was the ‘Praja Parishad Movement’ in 1947. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the founder of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, had given a slogan to the RSS movement for abrogation of Article 370: ‘Ek desh me do vidhan, do nishan aur do pradhan nahi ho sakte’ (There cannot be two constitutions, two signs and two heads in one country).
Manmohan Vaidya, joint general secretary of RSS, had written in one of his articles in 2019 that the RSS, for the first time in 1953, had passed a resolution and supported the movement led by J&K Praja Parishad for “complete integration of J&K state with India”.
“Since then, RSS has passed resolutions innumerable times and occasionally conducted people’s awareness campaigns throughout the country about the anomaly of Article 370, a temporary provision,” Mr. Vaidya wrote in The Sunday Guardian.
He added that the last resolution passed by RSS was in 2010, where it stated that Article 370, which was included in our Constitution as a “temporary and transient provision”, instead of being abrogated, continues to be a tool in the hands of the separatist and secessionist elements.
Resolutions against the special status for Kashmir were passed in 1984, 1986, 1990, 1997, 2002, 2004 and many other occasions.
A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Monday unanimously upheld the power of the President to abrogate Article 370 in August 2019, leading to the reorganisation of the full-fledged State of Jammu and Kashmir to two Union Territories and denuding it of its special privileges.
The five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud confirmed that the President could “unilaterally issue a notification that Article 370 ceases to exist”.
