370 Days Without Article 370
Prabodhan Manch Parle
An AoP established 4 years back, with a YouTube subscriber base of 7500 and in-person registered database of 2500+, we now have 1750+ donors of whom about a quarter have made repeat donations. We can be reached through our website, our WhatsApp (text only), our email and our Twitter handle @ManchParle.
As we entered the second month of lockdown X.0, we realised that the new normal was to have an e-gathering over a Webinar. Our team put together the entire infrastructure and we were able to host our first Webinar .. with more than 1050 registrations and many more viewers. Going further down using technology,in this fifth month of partial lockdown, we decided to stream both sessions (Part 1 and Part 2) simultaneously on Youtube and Facebook, getting an overwhelming response.
Speaker's Introduction
A writer, political commentator, active blogger and columnist, Sunandaji was born in Kashmir, had to leave and move to Delhi where she did most of her education and early career before moving to the United States ‐ and is now based in Houston, Texas
The Topic – “370 Days Without Article 370“
Every challenge gives rise to a new opportunity ‐ and for Prabodhan Manch Parle ‐ moving to Webinars has allowed us much more flexibility ‐ since we are no longer bound by the availability of a hall in Vile Parle ‐ and that‐ enables us to address many more topics in a timely manner and with a very varied set of illustrious speakers.
August 5th is now going to be etched in the annals of history for two landmark events ‐ one that took place in the week that went by and one from a year ago. Both events ‐ a culmination of a 70‐year‐old struggle and the fulfilment of two of the oldest political promises made to the nation.
Article 370 of the Indian Constitution ‐ drafted in Part 21 and then titled "Temporary, Transitional and Special Provisions", became a permanent feature in 1954 ‐ and the subject of intense debate and political division in India. In every election the BJP (and its erstwhile avatar of Jana Sangh) promised a repeal of that Article. But somehow it wasn’t happening. Even after a historic mandate in 2014 not much seemed to happen in the 5 following years ‐ in fact the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir had a PDP / BJP government ‐ and all seemed lost for those championing the cause of abrogation of this article.
But then ‐ everything changed on August 5th 2019. Both houses of the Indian Parliament voted with a 2/3rd majority making all clauses of Article 370 ‐ except clause 1 ‐ to be inoperative. More than a year from that historic event … it is time for us to understand what went into the making of this decision, what has happened on the ground in the year since and what are the challenges facing us going forward.
To speak to us on this topic, we wanted a speaker with many different facets … preferably ‐ roots in Kashmir ‐ so as to understand the historical nuances; a very good engagement with the current situation ‐ to know what has transpired in last 370 days; an international perspective ‐ to help put forth what future engagement is going to be, and above all, is knowledgeable and erudite ‐ as the audience of Prabodhan Manch Parle expects. It’s a tall order but we actually found someone having all those credentials, Sunanda Vashisht ji from Houston, Texas.
here's your link to the YouTube upload:https://youtu.be/yWDmhR1jobU