{"id":181925,"date":"2025-08-23T13:12:58","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/?p=181925"},"modified":"2025-08-23T13:12:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:12:58","slug":"iafn-slams-book-ban-in-iiojk-as-unprecedented-attack-on-academic-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/2025\/08\/23\/iafn-slams-book-ban-in-iiojk-as-unprecedented-attack-on-academic-freedom.html","title":{"rendered":"IAFN slams book ban in IIOJK as \u2018unprecedented attack on academic freedom\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-181926\" src=\"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2025\/08\/06-e1755936753647.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"867\" height=\"487\" \/><\/p>\n<p>New Delhi: The India Academic Freedom Network (IAFN) has strongly condemned the recent book ban in Indian illegally Jammu and Kashmir, calling it \u201can unprecedented attack on academic freedom\u201d and demanding its immediate revocation.<\/p>\n<p>The IIOJK administration, led by New Delhi-appointed Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, on August 5 this year \u2013 the sixth anniversary of the reading down of Article 370 \u2013 passed an order banning 25 books authored by acclaimed Kashmiri, Indian and international writers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy banning books that it disagrees with, the state is providing compelling evidence of its repressive attitude,\u201d the IAFN said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Questioning the Indian government\u2019s delay in restoring IIOJK\u2019s statehood, the IAFN noted, \u201cEven as elections have been held in J&amp;K and the Supreme Court has recorded the Union Government\u2019s assurance on restoring statehood, six years on, there is no sign of statehood. The order issued by the J&amp;K Home Department under the control of Manoj Sinha, the Lieutenant Governor (LG), now seeks to obliterate any mention of J&amp;K\u2019s political past and details of the repression the region has endured.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The statement added that the book ban seeks to counter ideas and arguments with the brute force of state power.<\/p>\n<p>The IAFN called upon the Indian government to immediately revoke the order and assure both the people of IIOJK as well as the academic community and the Indian public at large that such attacks on academic freedom will not be repeated. \u201cA book-banning Bharat can never be a vishwaguru,\u201d the statement emphasized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Delhi: The India Academic Freedom Network (IAFN) has strongly condemned the recent book ban in Indian illegally Jammu and Kashmir, calling it \u201can unprecedented attack on academic freedom\u201d and demanding its immediate revocation. The IIOJK administration, led by New Delhi-appointed Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, on August 5 this year \u2013 the sixth anniversary of &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":181926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}