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Article 370 had nothing to do with whom Kashmiri girls married

By Nusrat Farooq. Dated: 1/20/2021 1:07:58 AM

This commentary is in response to a piece published in The Sunday Guardian on December 27,2020, written by Preeti Sompura. The writer seeks to present the misconception that the nowabrogated Article 370 of the Constitution of India banned Kashmiri girls from marryingnon-Kashmiris. To this end, the writer narrates a story that cannot be true.She claims that “[b]efore the removal of Article 370, any citizen of India was not allowed tomarry a Kashmiri girl; only Pakistani and Kashmiri boys were allowed to marry Kashmiri girls.”To illustrate this false claim, she tells a story of a Suman Devi, who is supposed to be “fromKashmir’’ and Ajit Patil, “a military man from Maharashtra.” Apparently, they married inNovember 2020 only after the abrogation of Article 370 allowed them to. But, that story and theclaims made about Article 370 cannot be true for multiple reasons.Firstly, Article 370 was about the terms of Jammu and Kashmir’s (J&K) integration with India.It provided for the state of Jammu and Kashmir to make its own laws in all matters exceptdefence, foreign affairs and communications. It allowed Kashmiris to have their own constitutionand flag and denied property rights in the state to any person who was not a state subject. Therewas no mention of marriage rights of anyone, let alone just Kashmiri women, in the Article 370.So, the claim that abrogation of Article 370 now allows “any citizen of India” to marry a girlfrom Kashmir is completely false.Secondly, the writer claims that “only Pakistani and Kashmiri boys were allowed to marryKashmiri girls” before the revocation of Article 370 and that Ajit was the “first officialson-in-law of Kashmir.” She does not provide any citation of laws or rules or judgements insupport of any of these claims. The truth is, Kashmiri women have had the same legal rights tomarriage as women from any other part of India. One well-known example of a Kashmiri womanmarrying a non-Kashmiri is Sara Abdullah. She married Sachin Pilot, a political leader fromRajasthan, in 2004. It was almost 15 years before the revocation of Article 370. It also provesthat Ajit is not the first “official” or unofficial son-in-law of Kashmir, whatever that means.There are also other factual errors in Sompura’s piece. For instance, district Kishtwar, whereSuman Devi is ostensibly from, falls under Jammu province and not the Kashmir province as ismentioned in her article. If Sompura meant the whole state/union territory, she should havementioned the full name, Jammu and Kashmir, and not just Kashmir. It refers to only the valley.Marriage in Kashmir, like elsewhere in India, has been a matter of personal preference notaffected by any constitutional provision, including Article 370. Therefore, Sompurna’s piece isfactually and legally false. A simple Google search would have made this truth clear to her andthe editors of The Sunday Guardian. Their apparent failure to follow even such basic checksbefore publication can lead to their readers forming opinions about the abrogation of Article 370on the basis of falsehoods. Falsehoods such as the Article 370 prevented Kashmiri women frommarrying anyone from India. Therefore, unless that was indeed their motive, they shouldimmediately retract the piece and publish a clarification and an apology for failing to verify factsbefore publishing claims about laws.
The author is a graduate policy student at the School of International and Public Affairs,Columbia University. Her interest is in Economic and Political Development.