Latest news with #HafsaKanjwal
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
‘Attack on people's memory': Kashmir's book ban sparks new censorship fears
Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir – Hafsa Kanjwal's book on Kashmir has just been banned, but it's the irony of the moment that strikes her the most. This week, authorities in India-administered Kashmir proscribed 25 books authored by acclaimed scholars, writers and journalists. The banned books include Kanjwal's Colonizing Kashmir: State‑Building under Indian Occupation. But even as the ban was followed by police raids on several bookstores in the region's biggest city, Srinagar, during which they seized books on the blacklist, Indian officials are holding a book festival in the city on the banks of Dal Lake. 'Nothing is surprising about this ban, which comes at a moment when the level of censorship and surveillance in Kashmir since 2019 has reached absurd heights,' Kanjwal told Al Jazeera, referring to India's crackdown on the region since it revoked Kashmir's semiautonomous status six years ago. 'It is, of course, even more absurd that this ban comes at a time when the Indian army is simultaneously promoting book reading and literature through a state-sponsored Chinar Book Festival.' Yet even with Kashmir's long history of facing censorship, the book bans represent to many critics a particularly sweeping attempt by New Delhi to assert control over academia in the disputed region. 'Misguiding youth' The 25 books banned by the government offer a detailed overview of the events surrounding the Partition of India and the reasons why Kashmir became such an intransigent territorial dispute to begin with. They include writings like Azadi by Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy, Human Rights Violations in Kashmir by Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska, Kashmiris' Fight for Freedom by Mohd Yusaf Saraf, Kashmir Politics and Plebiscite by Abdul Gockhami Jabbar and Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? by Essar Batool. These are books that directly speak to rights abuses and massacres in Kashmir and promises broken by the Indian state. Then there are books like Kanjwal's, journalist Anuradha Bhasin's A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370 and legal scholar AG Noorani's The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012, which dissect the region's political journey over the decades. The government has blamed these books for allegedly 'misguiding youth' in Kashmir and instigating their 'participation in violence and terrorism'. The government's order states: 'This literature would deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting a culture of grievance, victimhood, and terrorist heroism.' The dispute in Kashmir dates back to 1947 when the departing British cleaved the Indian subcontinent into the two dominions of India and Pakistan. Muslim-majority Kashmir's Hindu king sought to be independent of both, but after Pakistan-backed fighters entered a part of the region, he agreed to join India on the condition that Kashmir enjoy a special status within the new union with some autonomy guaranteed under the Indian Constitution. But the Kashmiri people were never asked what they wanted, and India repeatedly rebuffed demands for a United Nations-sponsored plebiscite. Discontent against Indian rule simmered on and off and exploded into an armed uprising against India in 1989 in response to allegations of election fixing. Kanjwal's Colonizing Kashmir sheds light on the complicated ways in which the Indian government under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, consolidated its control over Kashmir. Some of Nehru's decisions that have come under criticism include the unceremonious dismissal of the region's leader Sheikh Abdullah, who advocated for self-rule for Kashmir, and the decision to replace him with his lieutenant, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad, whose 10 years in office were marked by the strengthening of New Delhi's rule of Indian-administered Kashmir. Kanjwal's book won this year's Bernard Cohn Book Prize, which 'recognizes outstanding and innovative scholarship for a first single-authored English-language monograph on South Asia'. Kanjwal said the ban gives a sense of how 'insecure' the government is. 'Intensification of political clampdown' India has a long history of censorship and information control in Kashmir. In 2010, after major protests broke out following the killing of 17-year-old student Tufail Mattoo by security forces, the provincial government banned SMS services and restored them only three years later. At the height of another civil uprising in 2016, the government stopped Kashmir Reader, an independent publication in Srinagar, from going to press, citing its purported 'tendency to incite violence'. Aside from prohibitions on newspapers and modes of communication, Indian authorities have routinely detained journalists under stringent preventive detention laws in Kashmir. That pattern has picked up since 2019. 'First they came for journalists, and realising they were successful in silencing them, they have turned their attention to academia,' said veteran editor Anuradha Bhasin, whose book on India's revocation of Kashmir's special status in 2019 is among those banned. Bhasin described the accusations that her book promotes violence as strange. 'Nowhere does my book glorify terrorism, but it does criticise the state. There's a distinction between the two that authorities in Kashmir want to blur. That's a very dangerous trend.' Bhasin told Al Jazeera that such bans will have far-reaching implications for future works being produced on Kashmir. 'Publishers will think twice before printing anything critical on Kashmir,' she said. 'When my book went to print, the legal team vetted it thrice.' 'A feeling of despair' The book bans have drawn criticism from various quarters in Kashmir with students and researchers calling it an attempt to impose collective amnesia. Sabir Rashid, a 27-year-old independent scholar from Kashmir, said he was very disappointed. 'If we take these books out of Kashmir's literary canon, we are left with nothing,' he said. Rashid is working on a book on Kashmir's modern history concerning the period surrounding the Partition of India. 'If these works are no longer available to me, my research is naturally going to be lopsided.' On Thursday, videos showed uniformed policemen entering bookstores in Srinagar and asking their proprietors if they possessed any of the books in the banned list. At least one book vendor in Srinagar told Al Jazeera he had a single copy of Bhasin's Dismantled State, which he sold just before the raids. 'Except that one, I did not have any of these books,' he shrugged. More acclaimed works on the blacklist Historian Sumantra Bose is aghast at the suggestion by Indian authorities that his book Kashmir at the Crossroads has fuelled violence in the region. He has worked on the Kashmir dispute since 1993 and said he has focused on devising pathways for finding a lasting peace for the region. Bose is also amused at a family legacy represented by the ban. In 1935, the colonial authorities in British India banned The Indian Struggle, 1920-1934, a compendium of political analysis authored by Subhas Chandra Bose, his great-uncle and a leader of India's freedom struggle. 'Ninety years later, I have been accorded the singular honour of following in the legendary freedom fighter's footsteps,' he said. As police step up raids on bookshops in Srinagar and seize valuable, more critical works, the literary community in Kashmir has a feeling of despondency. 'This is an attack on the people's memory,' Rashid said. 'These books served as sentinels. They were supposed to remind us of our history. But now, the erasure of memory in Kashmir is nearly complete.'
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Arundhati Roy to Noorani, J&K Home Dept bans publication of 25 books on Kashmir: ‘Propagating secessionism'
The Jammu & Kashmir Home Department has banned the publication of 25 books on Kashmir, including by authors such as Arundhati Roy and A G Noorani, saying they propagate 'secessionism'. A notification issued by the Principal Secretary of the Home Department, Chandraker Bharti, by order of Lieutenant-Governor Manoj Sinha, said: '…it has come to the notice of the Government, that certain literature propagates false narrative and secessionism in Jammu and Kashmir… This literature would deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting (a) culture of grievance, victimhood and terrorist heroism.' 'Some of the means by which this literature has contributed to the radicalization of youth in J&K include distortion of historical facts, glorification of terrorists, vilification of security forces, religious radicalization, promotion of alienation, pathway to violence and terrorism etc,' said the notification. It identified 25 books 'found to excite secessionism and endangering sovereignty and integrity of India, thereby, attracting the provisions of Sections 152, 196 & 197 of Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023'. The books include political commentaries and historical accounts such as The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012 by noted constitutional expert Noorani, Kashmir at the Crossroads and Contested Lands by Sumantra Bose, In Search of a Future: The Kashmir Story by David Devadas, Roy's Azadi and A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370 by journalist Anuradha Bhasin. According to the notification, the government has declared that publication of these books and their copies or other documents 'need to be declared as 'forfeited' in terms of Section 98 of Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023'. The international books that were banned include Kashmiri-American author Hafsa Kanjwal's Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian occupation, Haley Duschinski's Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, Victoria Schofield's Kashmir in Conflict and Christopher Snedden's Independent Kashmir. Seema Kazi's Between Democracy & Nation: Gender and Militarisation in Kashmir, Essar Batool's Do you Remember Kunan Poshpora? and Ather Zia's Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir have been banned. The publication of Jamaat-e-Islami founder Moulana Abul A'la Maududi Maududi's Al Jihad fil Islam and Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna's Mujahid ki Azan are among the banned books. The other banned books include Law and Conflict Resolution in Kashmir by Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska, USA and Kashmir by Dr Shamshad Shan and Tariki-i-Siyasat Kashmir by Dr Afaq. The complete list is below: 1. Human Rights Violations in Kashmir Piotr Balcerowicz and in Agnieszka Kuszewska Routledge (Manohar Publishers & Distributors) 2. Kashmiris Fight for Freedom Mohd Yosuf Saraf Feroze Sons Pakistan 3. Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building under Indian occupation Hafsa Kanjwal Stanford University Press 4. Kashmir Politics and Plebiscite Dr. Abdul Gockhami Jabbar Gulshan Books Kashmir 5. Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? Essar Batool & others Zubaan Books 6. Mujahid ki Azan Imam Hasan Al-Bana Shaheed, edited by Maulan Mohammad Enayatullah Subhani Markazi Maktaba Islami Publishers Delhi 7. Al Jihadul fil Islam Moulana Moudadi Darul Musannifeen-Markazi Maktaba Islami Publishers Delhi 8. Independent Kashmir Christopher Snedden Manchester University Press and Sanctum Books Delhi 9. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir Haley Duschinski, Mona in Bhat, Ather Zia and Cynthia Mahmood University of Pennsylvania Press 10. Between Democracy & Nation: Gender and Militarisation in Kashmir Seema Kazi Oxford University Press 11. Contested Lands Sumantra Bose Harper Collins India 12. In Search of a Future: The Story of Kashmir David Devadas Viking Penguin 13. Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War Victoria Schofield Bloomsbury India Academic 14. The Kashmir Dispute: 1947-2012 A G Noorani Tulika Books 15. Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict Sumantra Bose Pan Macmillian India 16. A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370 Anuradha Bhasin Harper Collins India 17. Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation & Women's Activism in Kashmir Ather Zia Zubaan 18. Confronting Terrorism Edited by Maroof Raza Penguin India 19. Freedom in Captivity: Negotiations of belonging along Kashmiri Frontier Radhika Gupta Cambridge University Press 20. Kashmir: The Case for Freedom Tariq Ali, Hilal Bhatt, Angana P. Chatterji, Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy Verso Books 21. Azadi Arundhati Roy Penguin India 22. USA and Kashmir Dr. Shamshad Shan Gulshan Books 23. Law & Conflict Resolution in Kashmir Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska Routledge 24. Tarikh-i-Siyasat Kashmir Dr. Afaq Karwan-e-Tahqiq-o-Saqafat Kashmir 25. Kashmir & the future of South Asia Edited by Sugata Bose & Ayesha Jalal Routledge Bashaarat Masood is a Special Correspondent with The Indian Express. He has been covering Jammu and Kashmir, especially the conflict-ridden Kashmir valley, for two decades. Bashaarat joined The Indian Express after completing his Masters in Mass Communication and Journalism from the University in Kashmir. He has been writing on politics, conflict and development. Bashaarat was awarded with the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2012 for his stories on the Pathribal fake encounter. ... Read More
Al Jazeera
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
The Kashmir conflict explained
India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir for decades, and Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control, a de facto border that cuts Kashmir into two, are caught in the middle of it all. Why do India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir? And what do Kashmiris want? #AJStartHere with Sandra Gathmann explains. This episode features: Sumantra Bose – Professor of international and comparative politics, Krea University Hafsa Kanjwal – Associate professor of South Asian studies, Lafayette College Amitabh Mattoo – Professor, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University Special thanks to Alia Chughtai, senior producer at AJLabs, for helping and advising the Start Here team with this episode.
CBC
14-05-2025
- Politics
- CBC
'Very tense, very scary': Calgary couple visiting Kashmir caught in crossfire
Social Sharing Syed Arshid Hussain and his wife travelled to Pakistan-administered Kashmir to visit his 85-year-old mother, who lives there, just about a week before the current escalation began between India and Pakistan. The Calgary couple is staying in a village about 20 kilometres from the Line of Control — the de facto border between Indian and Pakistani-run Kashmir — where Hussain said he could still hear cross-border firing, despite the ceasefire deal between the two nuclear-armed nations. "We can hear the firing and it's very tense, very scary," he told the Calgary Eyeopener on Monday. "I don't know when it can escalate again, the way it is going." The recent escalation between India and Pakistan has left dozens dead and injured on both sides of the border — the majority of them in Kashmir. While the ceasefire seems largely to be holding across the two countries for now, Hafsa Kanjwal, an associate professor of South Asian history at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, warns the deal does not necessarily equate to peace for the Kashmiri people. "I am, of course, relieved that a broader regional escalation has been prevented with a ceasefire as such. But in the Kashmir region, there's never really a ceasefire," she said. "Kashmir continues to always be at the receiving end of violence." Kashmir the 'flashpoint' of India-Pakistan conflict Over the four days of back-and-forth strikes between India and Pakistan, Hussain said he and his family have been bracing themselves as missiles and drones fly across the night sky and explosions are heard not so far away. Hussain, who is the president of the Kashmir Canada Association of Calgary, has advocated for peace in the region for years. India and Pakistan's dispute over Kashmir has spanned nearly eight decades, dating back to 1947, when India became independent from the British and the partition began to establish the state of Pakistan. "Kashmiris were promised a plebiscite or some sort of referendum [to decide their own future] back in the late '40s, and up until now that hasn't happened. And Kashmiris have tried to push that right to self-determination using peaceful means, sometimes using armed means," Kanjwal explained. "There is both a sense of fatigue, exhaustion in Kashmir, [and] the feeling that the whole world only pays attention to the region when things become volatile between India and Pakistan." "The Kashmir issue is the flashpoint between these two nuclear countries," Hussain said. "And if that issue is not resolved, I don't see any ceasefire or any negotiation that will bring peace in this part of the world." The pathway to peace Riyaz Khawaja, a Calgarian who is originally from Srinagar, a city in the Indian-administered side of Kashmir, visits his parents back home frequently. He said the whole back-and-forth has been a major stress for the entire valley. "There was a lot of panic everywhere," Khawaja said. "They announced the ceasefire [so] there's a bit of relief on everyone and hope that the ceasefire commitment stays on both sides and the peace will return." The ceasefire, first announced Saturday by U.S. President Donald Trump on Truth Social, breaks from the usual tradition of international actors staying out — at least publicly — of India and Pakistan's affairs, according to Kanjwal. In a later post, Trump said, "I will work with you both to see if, after a thousand years, a solution can be arrived at, concerning Kashmir." While the dispute has not played out over a "thousand years," Kanjwal clarified, the move by Trump to help negotiate a resolution has "inadvertently" internationalized the conflict in a way it hasn't been in the past. Whatever may come of this development, Kanjwal said the pathway to lasting peace will need India and Pakistan to demilitarize the region and make space for Kashmiris to have a voice at the negotiating table. Both Khawaja and Hussain, from opposite sides of the Line of Control, said they felt the same way — that the Kashmiri people need to be included. Coming home to Calgary Hussain told the Eyeopener his children in Canada are very concerned for him and his wife, calling every half-hour to check on them. The couple were originally scheduled to return to Canada this week, but now he says he's waiting on his airline to rebook him. Since the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, both Indian and Pakistani airspace has been shut down for periods of time. But even when he does get a flight out of the region, coming home to Canada won't be the breath of relief it should be for Hussain. His elderly mother will be left behind. "It's very stressful because when I see my almost 86-year-old mother, seeing her after three years and now I just like … I don't know how to decide to leave her in a situation like this and then go back to Canada.
