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Authorities in India illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir are conducting a mass filtering of books at the region\u2019s prominent libraries and educational institutions over allegations that they carry \u201cobjectionable\u201d content, including extolling leaders associated with Kashmir\u2019s pro-freedom movement.<\/p>\n
All educational institutions in the region have been ordered to vet books, journals, dissertations, doctoral theses and digital resources to \u201cprevent the procurement, circulation or retention of any publication containing misleading, factually incorrect, distorted, inflammatory, unlawful or otherwise objectionable material, including any content which directly or indirectly promotes, glorifies, legitimises or justifies terrorism, violent extremism, secessionism, radicalisation, communal disharmony or any activity prejudicial to the sovereignty, unity, integrity and security of nation,\u201d according to an order issued by the government on July 9.<\/p>\n
Authorities have also ordered an investigation to determine how books with \u201cseditious content\u201d made their way into public libraries and educational institutions in the disputed region. The inquiry, initially ordered only for school libraries, was broadened last week to include not just books, but also research publications, dissertations, journals, and content stored digitally by the universities.<\/p>\n
Kashmir is controlled in parts by India and Pakistan, but claimed in full by both the nuclear powers. In 2019, New Delhi annulled Indian-administered Kashmir\u2019s historic semi-autonomous status and brought it under direct federal control. Since then, the region has reported a widespread crackdown on educational institutions, rights activists and groups, journalists and other pro-freedom groups.<\/p>\n
When did the latest crackdown begin?
\nIt began earlier this month after Sunil Sharma, a politician belonging to the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), demanded a ban on a book titled Personalities and Legends of J&K, authored by regional educationists Hilal Ahmad and Santosh Meena.<\/p>\n
The 240-page book, of which Al Jazeera has a copy, is organised into five chapters featuring prominent politicians, activists, authors, poets, and historians from the region such as writers Salman Rushdie and Hari Kunzru, and Farah Pandith, the first-ever special representative to Muslim communities in the United States.<\/p>\n
However, authorities have objected to the inclusion of key Kashmiri separatists in the book.<\/p>\n
Among them is Maqbool Bhat, a former separatist leader who was hanged to death on the orders of an Indian court in 1984. The book calls Bhat a \u201cmartyr\u201d \u2013 one of the many thorny references the BJP has flagged.<\/p>\n
Also mentioned in the book is Masrat Alam Bhat, another separatist who led rallies during an uprising in 2010 and is currently in jail after his arrest during the 2019 clampdown.<\/p>\n
An entry on late separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani says he had called Kashmir a \u201cdisputed region awaiting political resolution under the aegis of the United Nations\u201d.<\/p>\n
What are the officials objecting to?
\nIronically, the book, along with another titled Great Personalities of Jammu and Kashmir \u2013 authored by Sushant Giri and published by a New Delhi-based outfit \u2013 was provided to public and school libraries in the region under a government-funded programme.<\/p>\n
But the BJP\u2019s Sharma described their presence as an example of \u201cacademic jihad\u201d, invoking a popular Islamophobic dog-whistle and arguing that such books were intended to incite unrest in Kashmir.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese forces are once again trying to poison the minds of young people and children, pushing them back towards separatism and terrorism,\u201d Sharma told reporters, demanding a ban on such books.<\/p>\n
Police in Kashmir, controlled by a New Delhi-appointed administrator rather than by an elected government in the region, immediately swooped down on the publishers of the two books and arrested three people, charging them with \u201cendangering the sovereignty, unity, and integrity\u201d of India.<\/p>\n
How have Kashmiri residents responded?
\nFor the region\u2019s residents, a sweeping institutional audit of books has brought anxiety.<\/p>\n
\u201cWriting or even reading about the region\u2019s past suddenly becomes fraught with risk. If you tell the story of Kashmir, you cannot escape the pain, the conflict and the realities of human rights issues,\u201d a senior Kashmiri journalist told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my own home, I have a collection of old human rights reports and archival books on Kashmir that the authorities would today classify as antinational. Out of anxiety, I am clearing them off my bookshelves. In Kashmir, books have become the new threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
A bookshop owner in the region\u2019s main city of Srinagar, again on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera that people like him are confused about which books to keep and what to discard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are unsure what will be considered antinational and what is in the national interest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The bookseller said a similar situation is under way in the libraries of schools, colleges and universities, especially in departments like law, social sciences and the humanities.<\/p>\n
How has government defended the move?
\nThe BJP has defended the crackdown, arguing that the inclusion of \u201cseditious\u201d literature amounts to \u201cfanning militant violence\u201d in the restive region.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not history or education \u2026 The book attempts to revive separatist ideology among the youth,\u201d Sharma said. \u201cIt is an attempt to spread hatred against India and its armed forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not the first time the Indian government has tightened control over Kashmir\u2019s academia and publications.<\/p>\n
Last year, authorities banned 25 books, claiming they undermined India\u2019s sovereignty, spread false narratives and instigated separatism. The banned titles included those authored by reputed jurists, scholars, journalists and award-winning novelists, including AG Noorani, Sumantra Bose and Arundhati Roy.<\/p>\n
The police raided more than a dozen bookshops to ensure those books were removed.<\/p>\n
Before that, the police also banned books written by Abul A\u2019la Maududi, a prominent 20th-century Islamic scholar who founded Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamic organisation now banned in Kashmir.<\/p>\n
Police said their action was \u201cbased on credible intelligence regarding the clandestine sale and distribution of literature promoting the ideology of a banned organisation\u201d. In the process, at least 668 books were confiscated from several bookshops in Srinagar.<\/p>\n
What do the authors and experts say?
\nThey are calling the crackdown \u201can exercise in intimidation\u201d to criminalise the act of reading a book.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if there\u2019s objectionable content here and there, how does that matter? After all, books are not bombs,\u201d journalist and writer Anuradha Bhasin told Al Jazeera. \u201cWhen was the last time someone read a book and chose to pick up a gun?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bhasin\u2019s The Dismantled State was among the 25 books banned last year. She said the administration was \u201cgoing overboard\u201d in its attempt to sift through each and every title that has ever been published on Kashmir.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many books will you parse through? There are thousands and thousands of them,\u201d she said. \u201cEven using AI to identify such so-called objectionable references entails the risk of flawed reading. I don\u2019t think removing material was ever their motive. It was to criminalise the act of purchasing and reading the books themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bhasin said the crackdown on books will \u201ccreate a scare\u201d and force people to \u201csteer clear\u201d of Kashmir-related books that discuss and debate the context behind one of South Asia\u2019s \u201cintractable\u201d disputes.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome to think of it. The very word \u2018objectionable\u2019 is ambiguous. Anything can be potentially objectionable. The libraries will no longer have these books if the staffers are going to be suspended for ordering them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Political scientist Sumantra Bose, whose two books \u2013 Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict\u201d (2021) and Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka (2007) \u2013 were among those banned last year, described the latest orders as \u201cabsurd\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf an authority wants to spend inordinate time, energy and resources looking for needles in not one but a million haystacks, that\u2019s their choice. I personally don\u2019t think it\u2019s a sensible path, nor will it yield the desired result,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Mohamad Junaid, a Kashmiri anthropologist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, called the auditing of books in Kashmir \u201cmemoricide\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the \u201coverpolicing\u201d of books suggests that Kashmiris were being rendered \u201cincapable of understanding their own condition as the first step towards their physical erasure as a people\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a deliberate attempt to alter facts about the past and forcibly change people\u2019s perception of their own lived experiences. The government wants young Kashmiris to have no way to understand their own condition and to normalise its own control,\u201d Junaid told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Editorial Note: This article is reproduced in full from Al Jazeera. The only editorial change is the use of “Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir” instead of “India-administered Kashmir” in the opening paragraph, in accordance with our editorial policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Authorities in India illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir are conducting a mass filtering of books at the region\u2019s prominent libraries and educational institutions over allegations that they carry \u201cobjectionable\u201d content, including extolling leaders associated with Kashmir\u2019s pro-freedom movement. All educational institutions in the region have been ordered to vet books, journals, dissertations, doctoral theses …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":205809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"yoast_head":"\n