all of this sounds airtight until you notice that it quietly assumes the state's claim to sovereignty is automatically more legitimate than the people's claim to self-determination.
uti possidetis juris was created to prevent interstate border wars after decolonization, not to prove that every colonial border is morally or politically legitimate forever.
saying india is a "union of states" only proves what the indian constitution claims. states throughout history have written constitutions declaring territory indivisible. that doesn't magically settle disputes over sovereignty. constitutions don't create legitimacy out of thin air.
invoking the will of 1.4 billion indians is strange when the dispute concerns whether a particular population consents to being governed. self-determination is about the people directly affected, not being outvoted by a larger population elsewhere.
international law protects territorial integrity primarily against other states. it does not automatically erase all claims of self-determination by peoples living within those borders.
the "internal vs external self-determination" distinction is not as absolute as presented. the concept of remedial secession exists precisely because some scholars and legal theorists recognize that if meaningful internal self-determination is denied, demands for external self-determination may arise.
the instrument of accession was signed by a hereditary monarch, not through a popular referendum. arguing that one ruler's signature permanently settles the political future of millions of people is not exactly a democratic principle.
citing the supreme court's guidelines on afspa doesn't answer criticisms of afspa itself. a law can have procedural safeguards and still be accused of enabling abuses in practice. those are separate questions.
ultimately, the argument keeps shifting between legality and legitimacy. "the state says this territory belongs to it" may be a legal claim. whether people accept that claim is a political question. history is full of states whose legal claims were internationally recognized until they weren't.
if you're arguing from a constitutional and democratic perspective, the obvious counter is that a state's claim to territorial integrity becomes weaker when the state itself repeatedly violates the constitutional rights of the people it governs.
article 21 guarantees the right to life and liberty. yet the supreme court itself ordered investigations into hundreds of alleged extrajudicial killings in manipur and held that neither the army nor police can use excessive force, even under afspa. the court explicitly rejected the idea that "disturbed areas" are law-free zones.
in the eevfam case, petitions alleged 1,528 extrajudicial killings. a court-appointed commission examined sample cases and found the killings it investigated to be unlawful, which is precisely why the supreme court allowed deeper scrutiny.
if the constitution is supposed to be the basis of sovereignty, then constitutional rights cannot be suspended in practice while being celebrated in theory. rights are not rewards for obedience.
the 1984 anti-sikh massacres are another example critics point to. multiple inquiries and rights groups documented allegations of police inaction and complicity, while accountability took decades and remains incomplete. thousands were killed while the state largely failed to protect citizens guaranteed equal protection under the constitution.
the hashimpura massacre involved members of the provincial armed constabulary abducting and killing muslim men. decades later, personnel were convicted. critics argue that this demonstrates that state agencies themselves have sometimes been perpetrators of grave constitutional violations rather than protectors of constitutional order.
you can't invoke the constitution to defend sovereignty while ignoring the times the state itself violated the constitution through extrajudicial killings, massacres, torture, or impunity. territorial integrity may be a constitutional principle, but so are life, liberty, equality, and due process. if the state breaches those rights, people are inevitably going to question its claim to legitimacy.
and please idw the "state has a monopoly over violence" its a deeply immoral argument.
