Indian authorities in Kashmir ban books by eminent writers and scholars
The ban threatens people with prison time for selling or owning works by authors such as Booker Prize-winning novelist and activist Arundhati Roy, constitutional expert A.G. Noorani, and noted academicians and historians like Sumantra Bose, Christopher Snedden and Victoria Schofield.
The order was issued on Tuesday by the region's Home Department, which is under the direct control of Lt. Gov. Manoj Sinha, New Delhi's top administrator in Kashmir.
Sinha wields substantial power in the region as the national government's representative, while elected officials run a largely powerless government that came to power last year after the first local election since India stripped the disputed region of its special status in 2019.
The order declared the 25 books 'forfeit' under India's new criminal code of 2023, effectively banning the works from circulation, possession and access within the Himalayan region. Various elements of the code threaten prison terms of three years, seven years or even life for offenses related to forfeit media, although no one has yet been jailed under them.
'The identified 25 books have been found to excite secessionism and endangering sovereignty and integrity of India,' the Home Department said in its notice. It said such books played 'a critical role in misguiding the youth, glorifying terrorism and inciting violence against Indian State.'
The action was taken following 'investigations and credible intelligence' about 'systemic dissemination of false narratives and secessionist literature' that was 'often disguised as historical or political commentary,' it said.
Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi's rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels' goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
Since 2019, authorities have increasingly criminalized dissent and shown no tolerance for any narrative that questions India's sovereignty over Kashmir.
In February, police raided bookstores and seized hundreds of books linked to a major Islamic organization in the region.
In 2011, police filed charges against Kashmir education officials over a textbook for first graders that illustrated the word 'tyrant' with a sketch resembling a police official. A year earlier to that, police arrested a college lecturer on charges he gave his students an English exam filled with questions attacking a crackdown on demonstrations challenging Indian rule in the region.
In some cases, the accused were freed after police questioning but most of these cases have lingered on in India's notoriously slow judicial system.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a key resistance leader in Kashmir, condemned the book ban.
'Banning books by scholars and reputed historians will not erase historical facts and the repertoire of lived memories of people of Kashmir,' Mirwaiz said in a statement. He questioned authorities for organizing an ongoing book festival to showcase its literary commitment but on ground banning some books.
'It only exposes the insecurities and limited understanding of those behind such authoritarian actions, and the contradiction in proudly hosting the ongoing Book Festival.'
Banning books is not common in India, but authorities under Prime Minister Narendra Modi have increasingly raided independent media houses, jailed journalists and sought to re-write history in school and university textbooks to promote the Hindu nationalist vision of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
26 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Pakistan suspends train services after railway bombing in insurgency-hit Balochistan
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan's railways on Monday suspended all train services to and from an insurgency-hit southwestern province for four days after separatists blew up a railway track, derailing six cars of a passenger train, officials said. No one was harmed in the attack Sunday in Mastung, a district in Balochistan, said railways spokesman Ikram Ullah. Engineers were repairing the damaged track, he said. The Jaffer Express was traveling from Quetta, the provincial capital, to the northern city of Peshawar when assailants targeted it with a bomb, Ullah said. The banned Baloch Liberation Army, in a statement, claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes months after BLA fighters hijacked a train in the same district, killing 21 hostages before security forces were able to kill 33 assailants. The attack came as Pakistan prepares to mark its 78th Independence Day on Aug. 14. Balochistan has long been the scene of insurgency by separatists seeking independence from the central government. The province is also home to militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban. Local administrator Shahid Khan said the government imposed curfews in some areas of the district of Bajaur along the Afghan border in the troubled northwest and advised residents to stay indoors, prompting many to flee to safer places in preparation for a possible security operation against the Pakistani Taliban. Bajaur was once a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, and the group has resurfaced there. TTP is a separate group but closely allied to the Afghan Taliban.
an hour ago
India's opposition parties protest against a controversial electoral roll revision
NEW DELHI -- NEW DELHI (AP) — India 's opposition parties held a protest Monday calling for the rollback of a controversial revision of the voter list in one of the country's poorest states, where key elections are scheduled in November, and warning it could lead to voter disenfranchisement. Hundreds of lawmakers and supporters began the protest from parliament and were confronted by police, who stopped them from marching towards the election commission office in the capital, New Delhi. Police briefly detained some lawmakers, including opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. India's opposition accuses the Election Commission of India of rushing through a mammoth electoral roll revision in eastern Bihar state, saying the exercise could render vast numbers of citizens unable to vote. The revision of nearly 80 million voters involves strict documentation requirements from citizens, triggering concerns it could lead to the exclusion of vulnerable groups, especially those who are unable to produce the paperwork required to prove their citizenship. Some of the documents required include birth certificates, passports and matriculation records. Critics and opposition leaders say they are hard to come by in Bihar, where the literacy rate is among the lowest in India. They say the exercise will impact minorities the most, including Muslims, and disallow them from voting. India does not have a unique national identity card. The widely used biometric-linked identity card, called 'Aadhaar,' is not among the documents listed by the poll body as acceptable proof for the electoral roll revision. The election agency has denied the allegations and said it has ensured no eligible voter is 'left behind." It has also said the 'intensive revision' is a routine update to ensure the accuracy of electoral rolls and is needed to avoid the 'inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants." According to the commission, some 49.6 million voters whose names were included in a similar exercise in 2003 are not required to submit any further documents. But that still leaves almost 30 million other voters potentially vulnerable. A similar roll revision of voters is scheduled to be replicated across the nation of 1.4 billion people. Bihar is a crucial election battleground state where Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has only ever governed in a coalition. Poll results there could likely impact the balance of power in India's Parliament, where Modi's government relies on coalition partners, including a regional party from Bihar. Modi's BJP has backed the revision and said it is necessary to update new voters and delete the names of those who have either died or moved to other states. It has also claimed the exercise is essential to weed out undocumented Muslim immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh who have fraudulently entered India's electoral rolls. Critics and opposition leaders have warned that the exercise is similar to that of a controversial 2019 citizenship list in India's eastern Assam state, which left nearly 2 million people at risk of statelessness. Many of those left off the final citizenship list were Muslims. They have been declared 'foreigners' and some of them faced long periods of detention. Gandhi, the opposition leader, made public last week his Congress Party's analysis from southern Karnataka state that alleged nearly 100,000 votes cast for an assembly seat in the 2024 general election were fraudulent. India's election commission dismissed his claims. 'A clean voter roll is imperative for free and fair elections,' Gandhi said Sunday in a post on X.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
'Fake news' does exist. But Trump is dangerously wrong about where it comes from.
I'm calling on fellow conservatives, bipartisan leaders, business executives and everyday citizens to join me in defending the integrity of journalism. The American free press is alive but not well. It's slowly being suffocated by attacks on its credibility, lawsuits that are often meritless and allegations of 'fake news' hurled at every inconvenient truth. Here's an inconvenient truth: If we allow the press to be stripped of its freedom and stature, we are handing over our own power as American citizens to know what is really going on. We're cutting off our ability to access facts and decide for ourselves where we want the country to go. The latest assault is President Donald Trump's $20 billion lawsuit filed against Rupert Murdoch, The Wall Street Journal and the two reporters behind a story about a bawdy birthday note from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. The president disagrees with the story and is punishing everyone involved with an outrageous lawsuit and remarkably inaccurate social media claims disparaging The Journal, one of the most respected newspapers in the world, as 'a useless rag.' That language is designed, of course, to diminish the newspaper's reputation and trust in retaliation for what Trump sees as an unflattering story. Opinion: Gen Z men voted for Trump to drain 'the swamp.' After Epstein, they feel duped. Time-honored tradition of attacking the messenger President Abraham Lincoln famously called our government 'of the people, by the people, for the people.' If we, the people, want to keep it that way, then now's the time to take a stand against this erosion of our right to a free press. I say this as a lifelong conservative whose first job was with the Republican National Committee and later served in President Ronald Reagan's administration (a reference that shows my youth, I know). I've built a career in strategic communications and also served as the CEO and publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, both Pulitzer Prize-winning news outlets. I'm not afraid to say when President Trump has done something right. But on this issue, he's dangerously wrong. I've seen the news media business from every angle, and I'll be the first to tell you that the media does get the story wrong sometimes. But an outlet with journalistic integrity will issue corrections when warranted. A news outlet that only publishes flattering articles about someone in power − as Trump is attempting to force the industry to do − may be the most 'fake news' of them all. The ongoing outcry about the unreleased Epstein files shows that Americans still want to hold truth to power. Guess what? That's infinitely harder to do without a free press. What other entity can petition the courts for sensitive documents, get context and insider insight from influential leaders in every industry, corporation and government office, and then disseminate that information on a trusted platform? Trump is right in one sense. There's plenty of fake news circulating on the internet today. It isn't coming from the media outlets that still have rigorous fact-checking standards. You won't always like the news coverage, and you may not always think it's fair. I don't, but I do know that it's essential, and no political leader should try to extinguish a First Amendment right and silence independent voices. Republicans, beware: Censorship by the right is no better than by the left | Opinion As President Reagan, who often found news stories he disagreed with, once said: 'There is no more essential ingredient than a free, strong and independent press to our continued success in what the Founding Fathers called our 'noble experiment' in self-government.' Public needs to call Trump out on what he's doing I'm calling on fellow conservatives, bipartisan leaders, business executives and everyday citizens to join me in defending the integrity of journalism. Debate opinions all you want − and keep them confined to opinion articles − but we can't allow this full-scale, ongoing attack of the press that's coming from both the highest office and the conversation of everyday Americans. It will hurt our country, our democracy and ourselves. In 2026, America will celebrate her 250th birthday. Let's make sure she reaches that milestone with the First Amendment intact and supported by a citizenship that understands the value of journalism in a free and fair society. Brian Tierney is the CEO of Brian Communications and former publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and
