Jaishankar said only if India had been hard-headed and had a "good sense of international politics", the call to knock on the UN's door would not have been taken

India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar believes taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 1948 was an error and that by abrogating Article 370, New Delhi closed a "window of vulnerability" which it had been "foolish enough" to open.

According to Jaishankar, India, at the time, perceived the UNSC as a neutral arbiter whereas the Western voices on the table harboured a bias toward Pakistan and exploited India's vulnerability on the issue.

"Today it is very clear, in fact not now, it was very clear by 1970s, that taking the Kashmir issue to the UN Security Council was a fundamental error because you are taking it at the court where the judges are all stacked against you. These were Western countries who had a bias towards Pakistan," said Jaishankar while speaking about his book 'Why Bharat Matters'.

The external affairs minister speaking further said only if India had been hard-headed and had a "good sense of international politics", the call to knock on the UN's door would not have been taken. He added Article 370 had profound implications not just within the country but also on the country's foreign policy and it took decades to finally abrogate it.

“We had a misreading of the world and sanctity of the UN, its impartiality and the Council being neutral arbitrators. We were taken for a ride by countries that had their geopolitical agendas set. As an issue of vulnerability, it was used against us and they continued to use it for decades. Article 370 was not just a call we had to take within the country, but had profound policy implications,” he added.

Indian SC Upholds Abrogating Article 370

Jaishankar's statement comes a couple of weeks after the Indian Supreme Court delivered a historic verdict, approving the Union government's 2019 decision to abrogate Article 370.

A five-judge Constitution bench, presided by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, Justices SK Kaul, Sanjeev Khanna, B R Gavai and Surya Kant delivered the judgment on December 11.

While reading out the verdict, the CJI made it clear that Article 370 was a temporary provision “on a reading of the historical context in which it was included" and thus its exclusion was perfectly in the realms of constitutional boundary. He added that J&K holds no internal sovereignty after accession to India.

(With inputs from agencies)