The Changing Security Landscape in Jammu and Kashmir

August 2019 and After

The single most consequential event in the recent history of Jammu and Kashmir was the constitutional earthquake of August 2019. In one stroke the special status that had defined the state’s relationship with India for seven decades was ended, its very form as a state was dissolved, and the constitutional debate traced earlier in this chapter was brought to an abrupt and contested close. Whatever one’s view of it, the abrogation reset the terms of the entire Kashmir question, and everything that has happened since must be read against it.

The Abrogation of Article 370 and the Reorganisation

On 5 August 2019, using a Presidential Order issued with the concurrence of the Union government acting for the state (then under President’s Rule), the Centre effectively rendered Article 370 inoperative and simultaneously withdrew Article 35A. The next day Parliament passed a resolution recommending that Article 370 cease to operate. In the same session it enacted the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which did something never done before in independent India — it downgraded a full state into two Union Territories.

Feature	Before August 2019	After the Reorganisation
Status	A full state with special status	Split into two Union Territories
Units	Single state of Jammu & Kashmir	J&K (with a legislature) and Ladakh (without one)
Special provisions	Article 370 and Article 35A in force	Both inoperative / repealed; central laws apply as elsewhere
Separate order	Own constitution, flag and permanent-resident law	No separate constitution; domicile rules replace permanent-resident law

The government’s case rested on integration and development: that Article 370 had bred separatism, blocked the flow of central laws and investment, and kept Kashmir psychologically apart. Critics raised procedural and federal objections — that a state’s own concurrence had been given by a Centre-appointed Governor, and that a state had been demoted without the consent of its people. The legality of the whole exercise now moved to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s Verdict — In Re Article 370

Case Study — In Re Article 370, December 2023 A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in its judgment of 11 December 2023, unanimously upheld the abrogation of Article 370. Its central reasoning was that Article 370 was a temporary provision from the outset, that the special circumstances that justified it had ended with the integration of the state, and that the President retained the power to declare it inoperative even after the state’s Constituent Assembly had ceased to exist. Two directions gave the verdict its forward-looking edge: the Court ordered the Election Commission to hold Assembly elections by 30 September 2024, and it required that statehood be restored ‘as soon as possible’. The judgment thus closed the constitutional question on the abrogation itself while keeping alive the political questions of democratic restoration and statehood.

Delimitation, the 2024 Election and the Statehood Question

Before elections could be held, constituency boundaries were redrawn. A Delimitation Commission (2022) increased the number of Assembly seats from 83 to 90 — 43 for the Jammu division and 47 for the Kashmir division — and reserved seats for Scheduled Castes and, for the first time, Scheduled Tribes. Critics in the Valley read the exercise as tilting representation towards Jammu; the government defended it as overdue rationalisation.

The Assembly election of September–October 2024 — the first in a decade and the first since the abrogation — passed off peacefully with a healthy turnout. The National Conference–Congress alliance won a clear majority, and Omar Abdullah took office as Chief Minister of the Union Territory.

Yet a crucial anomaly remains: the elected government runs a Union Territory, not a state, with the Lieutenant-Governor retaining significant powers. The restoration of full statehood — promised by the Centre and urged by the Supreme Court — is therefore the central unfinished item of the post-2019 settlement, and the defining political demand of the region today.

Security Trends Since 2019 — What the Data Does and Does Not Show

What has the abrogation meant for security? The honest reading is mixed, and demands care with the data.

• On the positive side, organised stone-pelting and mass street unrest have all but vanished, large separatist shutdowns have ended, the terror-funding overground has been squeezed, and tourism has surged to record levels — genuine markers of normalisation.
• On the other side, the drivers of militancy have adapted rather than disappeared: violence has shifted to the hybrid, low-signature pattern, drawn on proxy fronts like TRF, and, most tellingly, migrated geographically into the Jammu region.

The interpretive trap is to read any single number as the whole truth. A fall in incidents is real, but so is the displacement of violence into new forms and new districts; the sponsors have not given up, they have changed tactics. The mature assessment is that the post-2019 period has delivered visible normalisation on the surface alongside a persistent, mutating threat underneath — which is precisely why the doctrinal and developmental efforts examined next matter so much.

Doctrinal Shifts and Recent Shocks

Parallel to the constitutional story runs a strategic one: a decade-long hardening of India’s response to cross-border terrorism. For years India had absorbed attacks and confined itself to diplomacy and defensive policing, betting that restraint signalled maturity.

Since 2016 that posture has been deliberately abandoned in favour of visible, punitive retaliation — a shift that has moved, in three clear steps, up an escalation ladder.

Trigger	India’s response	Doctrinal significance
Uri, 2016 — attack on an army camp killed 18–19 soldiers	Surgical strikes across the Line of Control on militant launch pads	First openly acknowledged ground strike across the LoC — end of pure restraint
Pulwama, 2019 — suicide bombing killed 40 CRPF personnel	Balakot air strike on a Jaish training camp inside Pakistan	First air strike across the international boundary since 1971 — a clear paradigm shift
Pahalgam, 2025 — massacre of 26 civilians, mostly tourists	Operation Sindoor — strikes on terror camps deep inside Pakistan; the Indus Waters Treaty held in abeyance	Widened targets and added economic-diplomatic coercion — the current frontier

Uri and the 2016 Surgical Strikes

The turn began with Uri. When a pre-dawn fidayeen attack on an army camp in September 2016 killed a large number of soldiers, India responded on the night that followed with ‘surgical strikes’ — special-forces teams crossing the Line of Control to hit militant launch pads in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, and, crucially, publicly acknowledging having done so.

The military effect was limited; the signalling effect was enormous. India had served notice that it would cross the LoC and own the action, breaking a long-standing taboo.

Pulwama and Balakot — the Paradigm Shift

Case Study — Balakot, 2019: the paradigm shift In February 2019 a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a CRPF convoy at Pulwama, killing forty personnel — the deadliest single attack of the insurgency, claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammed. India’s answer, days later, was unprecedented: fighter jets crossed into Pakistani territory and bombed a Jaish training facility at Balakot — the first use of air power across the international boundary since the 1971 war. Whatever the disputes over battle-damage, the strategic message was unmistakable. India had signalled that a mass-casualty terror attack would invite a military response inside Pakistan itself, deliberately raising the cost of sponsoring terror and importing into South Asia a logic of pre-emptive deterrence. This is rightly described as a paradigm shift — from a ‘soft state’ that investigated attacks after the fact to one willing to strike first.

Pahalgam 2025 and the Response — the Current Frontier

Case Study — Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor, 2025 In April 2025, Islamist terrorists attacked tourists at Pahalgam, killingtwenty-six civilians after reportedly identifying and selectively targeting Hindu victims, while also killing a Christian tourist and a local Muslim pony operator. The massacre struck at both communal harmony and the symbol of returning normalcy in Kashmir — tourism. Analysts argue that the deliberate religious targeting sought to inflame communal fault lines and provoke a forceful Indian response. India’s response marked a further escalation. It launched Operation Sindoor, striking terror infrastructure deep inside Pakistan, including well-known hubs, and — in a decisive new lever — placed the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 in abeyance, declaring it would remain suspended until Pakistan ended its support for terrorism. The response fused military force with economic and diplomatic coercion, and signalled a doctrine in which a major terror attack is treated as an act of war rather than a law-and-order event. It is the current doctrinal frontier, and its full consequences are still unfolding.

The three episodes together describe a clear trajectory of deterrence: from crossing the LoC on the ground (2016), to crossing the international boundary by air (2019), to combining deep strikes with the suspension of a landmark treaty (2025). The strategic bet is that raising the cost will, over time, compel restraint on the sponsor.

The counter-risk, which a balanced answer must acknowledge, is the danger of escalation between two nuclear-armed states — which is why each step has been calibrated and paired with signalling that the action is counter-terror, not war-seeking.

The Shift of Violence to the Jammu Region

The most important tactical trend of recent years is geographical. As the Kashmir Valley was saturated with security forces and intelligence, militancy relocated southward into the Jammu division — the districts of Rajouri, Poonch, Reasi and Udhampur, and the forested heights of the Pir Panjal. Attacks here have targeted army convoys and, chillingly, civilian pilgrims, as in the Reasi bus attack of 2024.

This shift is significant for several reasons: the Jammu terrain is densely forested and was long considered pacified, so the security grid there had thinned; the area sits astride infiltration routes from across the International Border; and striking a Hindu-majority region and pilgrims carries an obvious intent to communalise the conflict and undermine the narrative of normalcy.

The Jammu shift is the clearest evidence that the threat has adapted rather than ended, and it now commands a major share of the counter-terror effort.

Development and Winning Hearts and Minds

Force and constitutional change address the symptoms and the structure; they do not, by themselves, win a population. Alongside the hard measures, therefore, runs a deliberate strategy of development and ‘Winning Hearts and Minds’ (WHAM) — the recognition that lasting peace in Kashmir depends less on defeating militants than on giving ordinary Kashmiris, especially the young, a stake in the Indian story.

The Development Push — Packages, Back to Village and Industry

The developmental effort has three visible strands. A large Prime Minister’s Development Package (announced in 2015, worth around ₹80,068 crore) funded roads, power, health and education infrastructure across dozens of projects.

A ‘Back to Village’ programme sends senior officials to camp in villages, deliver services on the spot and hear grievances directly — an attempt to bridge the distance between the citizen and the state. And a New Central Sector Scheme for Industrial Development (2021), with an outlay of about ₹28,400 crore, offers incentives to attract private investment and generate jobs — the first serious attempt to build an industrial base in the region.

Youth, Education and Employment

Because militancy feeds on jobless, alienated youth, a cluster of schemes targets them directly.

Initiative	Focus
Himayat	Skill training and placement for unemployed youth
Udaan	Exposure and internships in the corporate/private sector
Mission Youth	Entrepreneurship, sports, counselling and de-radicalisation outreach
Education infrastructure	New institutions of national standing, including an IIT and an AIIMS, and expanded scholarships

The logic is preventive rather than reactive: every young person diverted into a skill, a job or a sport is one subtracted from the recruitment pool that the terror ecosystem depends on. This is WHAM operating at the level of the individual life.

Tourism as a Security Metric — and Its Fragility

Nothing has symbolised the claim of returning normalcy more than tourism. Visitor numbers have climbed to record levels in recent years, and the hosting of a G20 tourism meeting in Srinagar in 2023 was used to showcase the region internationally. Tourism has thus become an informal security metric — a crowded Dal Lake is offered as proof that peace has returned, and it brings real economic dividends in jobs and livelihoods.

But tourism is a fragile metric, and its fragility is precisely why the militants attacked it. The Pahalgam massacre of 2025 deliberately targeted tourists to shatter the normalcy narrative at a single stroke, showing how a metric of peace can be turned into a target. The lesson is that tourism is a welcome symptom of improvement but a treacherous measure of it — a good answer treats a tourism boom as encouraging evidence, not conclusive proof, of durable peace.

Winning Hearts and Minds as Conflict-Resolution Doctrine

At the doctrinal level, all of this belongs to a coherent philosophy of conflict resolution through winning hearts and minds — the idea that a counter-insurgency is ultimately won in the perceptions and loyalties of the population, not only on the battlefield.

Its longest-running expression is the Army’s Operation Sadbhavana, which runs schools, health camps, skill centres and community projects in militancy-affected areas, presenting the soldier as a builder as well as a protector.

Rights, Return and the Way Forward

A study of Kashmir that ends with schemes and strikes would be incomplete. The theatre also raises hard questions about civil liberties, carries the unhealed wound of the Pandit exodus, and finally demands a view on what a durable peace would require.

Internet Shutdowns, Detentions and the Liberty Question

The management of Kashmir has relied heavily on restrictions on liberty, and these sit uneasily in a democracy. In the wake of the 2019 abrogation the region experienced a prolonged communications blackout — among the longest internet shutdowns imposed in any democracy — with high-speed services restored only gradually.

Preventive detention under the Public Safety Act (PSA), which permits detention without trial, has been used extensively, and mainstream political leaders were themselves detained around 2019.

These measures raise the classic security-versus-liberty dilemma examined in the broader treatment of security laws and civil liberties. The state’s case is that temporary curbs prevented bloodshed during a volatile transition and choked the propaganda and mobilisation networks.

The civil-liberties case is that blanket, prolonged restrictions punish an entire population, harm the economy and education, and corrode the very trust that WHAM seeks to build — a concern the Supreme Court has echoed in holding that indefinite shutdowns are impermissible and that access to the internet is linked to fundamental freedoms. The resolution lies in proportionality: restrictions that are targeted, time-bound and reviewable, not open-ended.

The Return and Rehabilitation of the Kashmiri Pandits

The return of the Kashmiri Pandits remains the conflict’s most poignant unfinished task. Successive governments have announced rehabilitation packages — transit accommodation, reserved government jobs and financial assistance — to bring the community back to the Valley. Progress has been real but painfully limited, and it has proved acutely vulnerable to violence.

Case Study — The fragility of return: 2022 The dilemma of return was laid bare in 2022, when a wave of targeted killings struck Kashmiri Pandits and other minority employees — most prominently the murder of a Pandit government employee in his office in Budgam. Many of the victims were people who had come back under the very rehabilitation and jobs scheme meant to resettle the community. The killings triggered protests and a fresh flight of Pandit employees to Jammu. The episode carried a hard lesson: rehabilitation cannot precede genuine security. People will not return to a place where they can be singled out and killed, however generous the package — so safety, not subsidy, is the true precondition of return.

The Way Forward

Pulling the whole theatre together, a durable peace in Jammu and Kashmir requires progress on several fronts at once, since no single instrument will suffice.

• Complete the democratic restoration. Restore full statehood at the earliest, so that the elected government has real authority and Kashmiris feel ownership of their own governance.
• Sustain security, but proportionately. Keep the pressure on militancy — especially the hybrid threat and the Jammu shift — while making restrictions on liberty targeted and time-bound, and ensuring accountability for the use of force.
• Deepen development and jobs. Press on with industry, connectivity and youth employment so that the economic stake in peace keeps growing and the recruitment pool keeps shrinking.
• Win the information war and de-radicalise. Counter online propaganda with credible narratives and community engagement, treating radicalisation as the upstream problem.
• Bring the Pandits home — safely. Make security the precondition of return, so that rehabilitation is real and irreversible.
• Keep the external pressure calibrated. Combine firm deterrence and diplomacy towards Pakistan with care to avoid uncontrolled escalation between nuclear neighbours.

Current Status (as of July 2026) Political: J&K remains a Union Territory with an elected government under Omar Abdullah (since October 2024); the restoration of statehood is the central pending demand. Constitutional: the abrogation of Article 370 stands upheld by the Supreme Court (December 2023). Security: overall violence is historically low but has gone hybrid and low-signature, with a pronounced shift into the Jammu region; the Pahalgam attack (2025) and Operation Sindoor marked a further hardening of India’s doctrine, and the Indus Waters Treaty remains in abeyance. Society: tourism has rebounded to record levels but is fragile; Kashmiri Pandit return remains limited and security-dependent.