REVOCATION OF ARTICLE 370 AND 35A: INDIA’S STRATEGIC NARRATIVE AND PAKISTAN’S RESPONSE

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the removal of Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution by discussing Pakistan and Indian narratives in terms of the Constructivist theory. This article further highlights the decisive role of narrative construction in shaping international opinion and outcomes in contested sovereignty disputes It presents the analysis of political speeches, official statements, and media coverage using qualitative discourse analysis in order to compare the process of how the move was framed in India with that of the counter-narrative of Pakistan. The results indicate that India planned its rhetoric by fitting into global security and counterterrorism narratives, a consistent position of Pakistan being a state sponsor of terrorism and justifying its own actions as a prerequisite to peace and integration. In comparison, the human rights and self-determination-informed narrative of Pakistan did not have a similar level of international traction. The paper concludes that the legitimacy of policies in a contested territory may be defined by the dominance of particular narrative frames and emphasizes that it is crucial that states should shape their discourses according to the current international expectations.