 With the announcement by Home Minister Amit Shah of a new presidential order, which finishes off Article 370 of the Constitution and the bifurcation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, there is widespread confusion as to what exactly has happened. Due to a sustained campaign by the RSS in BJP over the decades, many have been led to believe that Article 370 and Article 35A are somehow obstacles in the integration of the people of Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of the country. However, the reality is to the contrary. It is the existence of these articles that has supported their integration. Let us understand how. It is a provision in the Constitution passed by the Constituent Assembly that exempts Jammu and Kashmir from the automatic application of the Constitution except Article 1 and Article 370 of the Constitution. It permits the state to draft its own constitution and provides that laws passed by the parliament can be extended to Jammu and Kashmir only after the concurrence of the state government is given. Several other states enjoy the special status under Article 371 from 371A to 371I. The article appears in Part 21 of the Constitution which has the heading, temporary, transitional and special provisions. BJP has been arguing that this means that Article 370 was just a temporary provision. Various petitions have been filed from time to time in courts. The Supreme Court rejected this plea in April 2018 and said that Article 370 is not temporary. As far back as in 1969, in Sampat Prakash v. State of Jammu and Kashmir, a five-judge bench had said Article 370 has never ceased to be operative, implying that it is in fact a permanent provision. Article 370 was meant to provide autonomy to the people of Jammu and Kashmir after the state decided to join India following the partition of India in 1947. In the instrument of accession signed on 26 October 1947 between the then ruler of Kashmir Hari Singh and the Indian government, it was explicitly stated in Clause 7 that nothing in this instrument shall be deemed to commit me in any way to the acceptance of any future constitution of India or to fatter my discretion to enter into arrangements with the government of India under any such future constitution. Hence it was necessary to have a constitutional provision to lay down how various laws would extend to the state. Thus Article 370 is about autonomy which means it is about federalism. In this sense it is part of the basic structure of the constitution. The main hostility towards this article has come from the RSS BJP camp over the years. They have believed that there is no need for any special arrangement for Jammu and Kashmir. This belief appears to be motivated by the fact that Jammu and Kashmir is the only state with a Muslim majority and RSS BJP has wanted to change that fact. This is also the cause for their opposition to Article 35A. The people of Jammu and Kashmir believe that the article ensures their autonomy. In fact, they have been protesting against its de facto dilution over the years as successive central governments have used it to extend various provisions to the state and even amend Jammu and Kashmir's constitution. Clause 3 of Article 370 allows its deletion by a presidential order but only with the concurrence of Jammu and Kashmir's constituent assembly. Since the constituent assembly was dissolved on January 26, 1957 and no longer exists, there is an opinion that it cannot be deleted anymore. An opposing view is that it can still be done with the concurrence of the state assembly. What has happened now is that the BJP government has adopted the second view with the state assembly's concurrence being replaced by concurrence of the governor since the state is currently under president's rule. Now let us move on to Article 35A. Article 35A draws its validity from Article 370. It was introduced through a presidential order in 1954. It is a unique provision because it does not appear in the main body of the constitution but occurs in the appendix one where the presidential order is incorporated. Article 35A empowers the Jammu and Kashmir legislature to define the state's permanent residents and their special rights and privileges. These include right to owning property, getting government jobs, receiving scholarships and other welfare benefits. It originally provided that a woman permanent resident would lose her privileges if she marries a non-permanent resident. But this was struck down by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. The rationale behind this provision was to protect the special status of the state and recognize the autonomy granted to it. Similar provisions exist for many other tribal majority areas and even other states. However, the RSSBJP has been opposing it because they see it as an obstacle to changing the demography of the state. It is possible that these decisions may face legal challenges. What is clear, however, is that they have been taken without any process of consultation with the representatives of the people of the state. These decisions along with the crackdown on civil liberties in the state may lead to a massive agitation. It is safe to say the current developments are a bloated democracy not just in Jammu and Kashmir but in the country as a whole.