Kamala Harris isn’t especially known for foreign policy. The first-term U.S. senator from California and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s running mate doesn’t serve on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and never made international affairs her raison d’être in the Senate as others have. Yet. there is one issue on which Harris has been unusually outspoken: Kashmir.
On Aug. 5, 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Article 370, a core part of the India-Kashmir relationship that gave Kashmir a certain amount of autonomy relative to other Indian states—the ability to select a flag but also the ability to apply a different set of laws. The revocation of the article has been a longtime goal of Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but it was both a deeply unpopular move in Kashmir and a slap in the face to Pakistan, which disputes ownership of parts of the region. Immediately on the heels of the decision came a massive lockdown that included suspensions of communications, strict curfews, and the arrests of thousands of local political leaders—among them were multiple former chief ministers of Kashmir.
