SRINAGAR: The stage is set, and the carpets rolled. On August 2, 2025, on the banks of world-famous Dal Lake, thousands of readers and book enthusiasts, especially young Kashmiris, are excited about the nine-day books festival.
Three days later, bookstores in Kashmir, however, had uniformed visitors, for the second time this year, looking for the 25 titles that the government of J&K on August 5 ordered a ban and forfeiture of as the book festival happened.
Earlier, in February over 600 books related to Jamaat-e-Islami, a religio-political organisation proscribed a year ago, were seized with officials terming their sale as clandestine, a claim, rejected by the traders, who say the books are legally published in New Delhi.
“Books worth Rs 27,000 were seized from my shop,” said a bookstore owner in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk requesting anonymity as he feared state repercussions, he said.
The books banned on August 5 documented Kashmir’s turbulent past, human rights violations orchestrated by state including rapes, torture, and extra-judicial killings.
Several of these 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 of rights' abuses and massacres in Kashmir and promises broken by the Indian state.
Then there are books like Hafsa Kanjwal’s ‘Colonizing Kashmir’, journalist Anuradha Bhasin’s A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370 and legal scholar A G Noorani’s The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012, which dissect the region’s political journey over the decades.
Between Self Censorship & Streisand Effect
As cops raided the shops for these titles, a professor at the University of Kashmir received an oral order from a superior from the university’s administration department.
“Do you have these banned titles in your department’s library?” asked the superior.
“I am not aware sir, let me check and get back to you,” replied the professor.
The professor then went to their department’s library and searched for the titles, “we have some of them,” the professor called back the senior and informed him.
The professor was then told to get those books to the central library, they said.
After the professor took the books to the central library, he asked the seniors what they would do with these books.
“Whether we burn them, dump them, or put them in a shredder, that is none of your business,” they told the professor.
Critics say the government’s move to criminalise the literature is an attempt to redefine Kashmir’s history, and to erase its past.
But many also believe that the move can prove to be counter-productive as it could be seen on Kashmir’s social media platforms where many posts requesting access to these books are mushrooming these days.
“Kashmiri Internet users are providing digital links to these books across different platforms, and the number of reach is quite high,” said an observer based in Srinagar.
A Pattern of Erasure
However, this is not the first instance when an attempt has been made to erase a part of Kashmir’s history. Dr Manan, a scholar of History at the University of Kashmir says the failure to preserve the most important document of Jammu and Kashmir - the instrument of accession to India - is also a part of this pattern of erasure.
“The document should have been framed and put in a public library in Kashmir, but that’s not the case,” the professor remarked.
A quick internet search leads to documents that mention the conditional accession on the three points of defence, external affairs and communication. The latter, using abbreviated forms, lacks originality.
“There is a consistent effort to cover up or to erode some symbols or some signs that preserve memories or fit in a particular political narrative,” Dr Manan says.
The poor maintenance of archives, whether it is out of negligence or if it is by design, but Kashmir archives have not been preserved.
“You don’t see much of the record either available or acceptable. It is very hard to get,” Dr Manan says.
Erasure, Dr Manan says, is not always something to worry about, however, “it becomes a problem when it jeopardises a people’s political rights.”
And when erasure is done to erode a political problem, “it should be resisted,” Dr Manan says.
Not a new move
As per Dr Manan, a professor of history and one senior journalist, the recent book ban is not a maiden act of the Indian government to erase Kashmir’s political identity and history.
“Since 1947, there have been consistent efforts to erode some signs, symbols pertaining to Kashmir’s political identity,” they said.
Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, a renowned Indian journalist says the Jammu Massacre of 1947 where hundreds and thousands of Muslims were killed and the demography of Jammu was changed, is not remembered as it should have been. “Because it is politically and morally inconvenient."
Besides, Dr Manan believes that the sheer insensitivity to Kashmir’s history with regard to it being completely excluded from the school books since the very beginning, is also a part of erasure.
“It is good that the students in Kashmir learn about Indian history from their school books, but it is equally important that they must be taught about their own glorious and contentious past,” says Dr Manan.
As per an academic research paper, the documentary and photo-journalistic modes of visual representation were a key aspect of the visual cultures of Kashmiri resistance, but after 2019, with the heightened criminalization of Kashmiri journalists and human rights activists, visual and photographic archives associated with human rights documentation have begun to disappear.
This is true for the search engine giant Google as well, since 2019, a lot of visual documentation, images and videos have been removed from the search engine, said a technology observer based in Srinagar.
The renaming of infrastructures, removing the Martyrs Day’s holiday on 13th July from official holidays, and the reshaping of important architecture like Lal Chowk’s Ghanta Ghar are an attempt to erase Kashmir’s political history and identity, Dr Manan and one senior History professor said.
Dr Manan cites another example. The Indian government and its forces have on many instances termed the brutal mass rape in Kashmir’s twin villages of Kunan-Poshpora as “propaganda”, this in itself is an attempt to distort Kashmir’s history, he said.
“Do you remember Kunan-Poshpora?” one of the 25 banned books is a documentation based on the testimonies and facts of the case that counter the official narrative.
Memories move forward
As per Dr Manan, Kashmiris have been historically accused of having dementia. “They witness different events, they endure, they move forward, yet they carry the essence of it.”
It is part of Kashmiris struggle to preserve memory, says Dr Manan.
Through poetry, public discourse Seena-ba-Seena or the oral tradition of story telling where elders narrate their past to the younger generation, Kashmiris have preserved the memories of their past, says Dr Manan.
And now in the present times, younger generations do it by digitally archiving the newspaper articles, and multimedia content. “So, be it the banning of books or any other form of erasure, it is nearly impossible to hide history in contemporary times,” Dr Manan says.
Will the latest ban prove counter productive?
For 28-year-old Irtiza Ganie, a scholar of Library Sciences at the University of Kashmir, the ban has sparked curiosity in her, and she wants to explore what such material these books contain “that the government wants to erase from history.”
Ganie hopes to find the reason why Kashmiris are still suffering, and “what was the exact reason due to which we landed in such a situation,” Ganie told the Kashmir Times.
16-year-old Nowsheen, a student from Srinagar believes that her generation has not witnessed the tumultuous periods which happened in Kashmir - the killings, disappearances, curfews,..and much more.
“However, by banning the books, even the ones not interested in books among her classmates are beginning to question India’s democracy and are looking to get access to these titles,” Nowsheen said.
Prohibiting someone from doing something takes away the sense of freedom and choice, and when you impose such restrictions, they have a potential to backfire, maintains a Srinagar-based psychologist, who is also a member of the American Psychological Association.
Amber Simnani, who studies economics in the United States and is from Srinagar says, the mainstream discussions in India about Kashmir “tend to view Kashmir as a battleground where Pakistan-based militants are at a continuous war with the Indian Army. Kashmir only makes headlines when there are armed skirmishes in the region or at the borders, so in terms of what is missing, I think there is a lack of comprehensive context of history which such books contain, and everyone should read them.”
The official narrative misses everything, says 22-year-old Amara. “The only statement the government has to offer is that “Kashmir is an integral part of India”, and all the rest is missing from this narrative.
“The state is laughable,” remarks Dr Manan over the question of their intent for banning books.
“Situation coupled with intention will decide why something is being banned. And that should be questioned,” says Dr Manan.
“You only ban books when you don’t have a counter narrative, and if you want to change the thought of the younger generation, come into the discursive space and provide your argument, let the students think and question their own history,” Dr Manan argues.
“No ban can erase our lived realities,” remarks a senior professor of history from the University of Kashmir.
(The identity of the reporters who worked on this story is being withheld for fear of reprisal)
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