This may seem like a positive change to some — all previous efforts failed to solve the conflict in the region. Women from Kashmir will now be able to keep their inheritance even if they marry non-Kashmiris and much-needed investors will be able to buy land in the area. Archaic, misogynistic laws may be abolished, as may the provisions which, for no obvious reason, prevent other Indian citizens from moving to the state. But why were these changes made? And what might they lead to?

The Modi government and its supporters are making it clear that there is no longer a future in Jammu and Kashmir for those who do not support the Hindu Rashtra and the majority culture of India. This revocation is an important step beyond using violence and arrests to silence protesters in the region. The pursuit of a unified Hindu state over the last five years has involved dismantling India’s democracy and turning it into a hybrid regime, which in turn may be at risk of becoming outright authoritarian. This deterioration may take place in several steps.

First, civil society organisations working for secularism, equality and democratic values are targeted. Then the media. And then minorities — Muslims, Dalits and Christians fall under suspicion of not subscribing to the new common norms of Hindu nationalism. The methods employed include forced conversions, attacks under the pretext of protecting cows and the propagation of a yoga-inspired ideology which sees homosexuality as a disease.

Gautam Navlakha, previously an editorial consultant for Economic and Political Weekly, is facing charges from the Pune police claiming he aided Islamist and Maoist terrorists. He is also accused of agitating for Dalit rights, leading to the Bhima Koregaon protests in 2018. None of the allegations have so far been proven. It is true that Navlakha is working for civil liberties and human rights. He also reported on the Naxalite movement in Chhattisgarh and the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. But this is not a crime in a democracy.

In a poisonous political climate, too many Indian journalists and human rights activists are meeting a still worse fate — like that suffered by Gauri Lankesh, who criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party and worked for women’s rights. In 2017 at her home in Bangalore, Lankesh was shot in the head, neck and chest with seven bullets. Her murder, and that of other activists working for democratic and secular values, was it seems carried out by organisations intent on building a Hindu Rashtra.

It is in this context that the Modi government is taking a further step to disable important features of India’s democracy. Now the integrity of the Indian constitution is being targeted. The process by which Article 370 was rendered ineffective, and Jammu and Kashmir turned into a Union territory, was carried out in a series of well-planned and coordinated steps.

First, the government declared that security threats in Jammu and Kashmir required that various visitors to the state — journalists, tourists and pilgrims visiting the Amarnath cave — be swamped with reinforced security and military personnel. Kashmiri political leaders were detained or placed under house arrest as the state was locked down. Amit Shah finally submitted a political proposal to parliament ending the special status and autonomy enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir since 1950.

To a large extent, these actions can be described as ruling by decree. Leaving aside the use of force in the area, the most outrageous aspect of the process by which these changes were carried out was the manner in which state legislature — and the people themselves — was bypassed in the decision-making process.

The government argued that since Jammu and Kashmir was under presidential rule, its legislature could not be consulted. In this situation, parliament was to be seen as the body representing the people of Kashmir. It voted overwhelmingly to shut down Article 370 and convert Jammu and Kashmir into a Union territory. This is how the people of Kashmir were ‘consulted’ when the most dramatic changes to the constitutional status of their state since independence were made.

In effect, as Siddharth Varadarajan argues, this approach allows the central government to do anything by decree in any state in India, as long as presidential rule is first introduced there. Rule by decree is effectively replacing the federal structure of India.

India has gone down a similar path before. During the emergency of 1975–1977 under Indira Gandhi, presidential rule was imposed and democratic rights suspended. A backlash ensued, causing the decline of the Indian National Congress followed by separatism in Punjab, Kashmir and the Northeast. Yet democracy managed to recover.

This time there are significant differences. For example, the role played in the region by authoritarian China is much more important today. The Modi government is also mobilising the majority culture of the country in an unprecedented way. Under these conditions, a fast democratic comeback is potentially more difficult.

Sten Widmalm is Professor in political science at the Department of Government, Uppsala University.