On the 5th of August the Indian govt announced that it had changed the status of Jammu and Kashmir.  I think Professor Christine Fair has written a pretty good summary of the change and its implications (you can see it here), and you can read her article or a host of other articles to get the details (she has a bad rep in Pakistan right now, but I think this article does a very fair job of summarizing the issues involved, if you are a Pakistani nationalists you can ignore her comments about Pakistan, but the rest is still pretty useful in my opinion). Anyway, the bottom line is that the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir is no more. It was created after the Anglo-Sikh wars when the British sold Kashmir to the Dogra ruler and it operated as one of over 500 supposedly independent princely states in British India (the actual level of independence varied, none were truly independent in that a British “Resident” was around to make sure British interests were paramount, but the larger states had a good deal of internal autonomy, with their own armies and judicial systems); it included the vale of Kashmir (where most Kashmri speakers lived) as well as Jammu (mixed population, but dominated by Dogras), Gilgit and Batlstan (mostly Muslim and ethnically and culturally distinct from Kashmir) and Ladakh (Western Tibetan in terms of culture and religion). In 1947 the princely states were told they had to pick either Pakistan or India. The Dogra ruler dithered for a while (presumably because he wanted independence, and would prefer not to join either new state) but when Pakistan organized an invasion by Pakhtoon tribesmen to capture the state, he acceded to India and Indian troops landed to stop the tribal invasion and recapture Kashmir for India. They pushed the raiders back towards Muzaffabad, Pakistan also committed regular troops and the two dominions fought a mini-war for over a year. In late 1948 India took the case to the UN and the two sides agreed to a ceasfire that was supposed to be followed by a plebiscite, but that never happened. Instead both sides consolidated control over respective parts of Kashmir and the cease fire line has held with minor modifications since then. Pakistan insists that India should hold the plebiscite and let Kashmiris determine if they want to be with India or Pakistan. India insists that it is Pakistan that never fulfilled the first requirements for the plebiscite and that since then it has held elections in Kashmir and the issue is now moot. Or something like that, you can read more about the endless legal and procedural wrangles in a 1000 different posts from Pakistan and India and reach your own conclusions, but this post is not about the legal or diplomatic ramifications