I think everyone in India is making too much of a song and dance about our “surgical strike”. One can justify it as an emotional outburst as public mood was frayed and action was demanded from the government. It was also clear that the noises being made by India on the repudiation of the Indus Waters Treaty was only a bluster.

The single biggest grouse against India by the Kashmiris has been the dilution of Article 370 over the decades, i.e. the erosion of the State’s powers in relation to the Centre. The best way to ‘skin this cat’ is more autonomy for each and every state of India including Jammu and Kashmir – genuine autonomy in a truly federal India with no concentration of power in the Centre, as is unfortunately the case today.

There’s enough written about Jammu and Kashmir and its accession to India, and the events thereafter. I want to put down my understanding of why I believe that India has every right to call Kashmir its own.