evidence: At the end of October, Jammu and Kashmir will cease to be a state of India. [...] By stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its statehood and dismembering it - an action without precedent in post-Independence India- the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has gone far beyond that. [...] Second, Delhi's repression in Jammu and Kashmir from the 1950s onwards was always justified by the peculiar argument that keeping Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir as part of India, by any means necessary, was essential to validating India's claim of being a "secular state". Mr Modi and Mr Shah, both hardline Hindu nationalists, have no use for such contorted rationales.