Blame Game on Article 370: Patel, Nehru, and Ayyangar

On 5 August 2019, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a bold decision and made drastic changes to Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, thus changing the legal status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. This further sparked a debate over the real architect of the Article. There has been a lot of debate and discussion around Article 370. Article 370 provided a special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The debate around Article 370 is highly political, biased, and targeted. It is either blaming Jawaharlal Nehru for the Article or proving that Vallabhbhai Patel was the real architect of the Article.Footnote1 This Essay goes beyond this narrow debate and looks into the available documents for a more authentic picture of the Article and Vallabhbhai Patel’s approach to it. The story of Article 370 follows the following trajectory.