Kashmir: India bans books by prominent writers over alleged 'secessionist' content
Indian authorities banned 25 books in Kashmir on Wednesday, including several written by prominent authors, alleging they promote "false narratives" about the contested territory and "incite secessionism".
The New Delhi-run Home Department issued a notification which accused the books and authors of playing "a critical role in misguiding the youth, glorifying terrorism and inciting violence" against the Indian state.
The ban listed 25 books it said had "been identified that propagate false narrative and secessionism", including Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy's Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction; The Kashmir Dispute 1947–2012 by A G Noorani and US-based academic Hafsa Kanjwal's Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation.
The government alleged that the content of the books "would deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting a culture of grievance, victimhood and terrorist heroism".
Kanjwal, an associate professor of South Asian History at Lafayette College, told Middle East Eye that the government's ban "reveals the deep insecurity at the heart of its settler colonial project in Kashmir".
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"On one hand, it hosts events like the Chinar Book Festival, urging Kashmiri youth to read and celebrate literature. On the other, it aggressively censors the kinds of stories and histories Kashmiris are allowed to access," the award-winning academic said.
"This contradiction is central to how settler colonialism operates: through erasure and replacement. Erasure of memory, history, and identity combined with a long-standing effort by the Indian state to overwrite Kashmir’s past and replace it with a narrative that legitimises its control. The book ban must be seen in this broader context," she added.
Attacks on human rights and freedom of expression have escalated since 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government unilaterally stripped Kashmir of its decades-long autonomy and statehood.
Earlier this year, Indian authorities seized more than 600 books by or about Syed Abul A'la Maududi, a noted twentieth-century Islamic scholar and founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the largest religious organisations in the Indian subcontinent.
Other books included in this week's order included A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370 by journalist Anuradha Bhasin and Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, a book of ethnographic essays on Kashmir.
"Banning books is a defining feature of fascist regimes that fear truth and people’s capacities to question state-imposed histories," Mona Bhan, a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University and one of the editors of Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, told MEE.
"The recent move to ban books marks yet another assault on Kashmiri identity and history, reflecting the broader impunity with which India has exercised control over Kashmir since 1947," she said.
"These bans are intended to suppress critical thinking and credible scholarship on Kashmir, making way for state-sanctioned narratives to dominate the Indian public," she added.
Kashmir has remained at the heart of a decades-long dispute between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan, both of which claim the territory in full but control separate parts.
Since 1989, the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir has been in a state of insurgency, with tens of thousands of people arrested, brutalised or killed. Kashmiris widely view the armed revolt as a legitimate freedom struggle.
The United Nations views the territory as disputed between India and Pakistan, with several resolutions maintaining the Kashmiri people's right to self-determination and calling for a resolution to the dispute through a UN-monitored plebiscite.
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