“The tyranny of the singular”: In Re: Article 370 and the problem of Indian constitutional history

This case note contends that in In Re: Article 370 of the Constitution, the Indian Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article 370 as the expression of, rather than a constraint on, Indian sovereignty departed from its seven-decade-long constitutional understanding. By asserting that Kashmir had merged into the Indian Union like the rest of the princely states, the Court flattened Kashmir’s distinct constitutional trajectory and, in doing so, was able to construct a monolithic nationalist narrative of India’s pre-constitutional past. Such a homogenization of the past becomes the precondition for advancing a totalizing account of a monistic Indian constitutional project. The Constitution, in its aversion to the pre-constitutional, therefore, displaces the bilateral logic of the Instrument of Accession between the Indian Union and Kashmir – which implied a degree of parity between the two – with the unilateral logic of the Indian Constitution, which subordinates the State to the authority of the Union.