‘So you are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great (American) civil war’
— Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The Writers’ Police!
Bruno Fulgini, a nondescript employee at the French Parliament, would not have imagined in his wildest dreams that his tedious and boring job at the Parliament library would lead him to a treasure hunt of another kind.
Nearly two decades back one witnessed him metamorphose into an author and editor, thanks to the sudden discovery of old files of the Paris police, which provided details of its surveillance work done way back in 18th century. A report filed by AFP then, quotes Fulgini tell us that ’Beyond criminals and political figures, there are files on writers and artists. In some cases, they go far in their indiscretions.’ (The Statesman and The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, 26th September 2006).
An edited version of these old files, focusing themselves on the writers of those times, had then come out and made waves. The said book ’Writers’ Police’ gives details of the way in which the greatest writers of late 18th century who were living in Paris at that time were kept under surveillance.
The Parisian police had a very specific agenda.
It was clear to these protectors of internal security of a tottering regime that the renowned literati then viz. Victor Hugo, Balzac or Charles Dickens, might be writing fiction, but their sharp focus on the hypocrisy of the aristocrats or the livelihood issues of ordinary people is adding to the growing turmoil in the country. They knew very well that they might be writing fiction for the masses but it is turning out to be a sharp political edge that hit the right target and is becoming a catalyst for change.
The Parisian police was engaged in tracking down the daily movements of the writers, was more subtle in its actions; its present-day counterparts in the West do not seem to have such patience.
The strongest democracy in the world namely the US has of late become a site of an ’unprecedented’ ’Multi-level barrage of US book bans’ as per PEN America.
PEN America, which is America’s largest non-profits dedicated to protecting free expression in literature and beyond, has even warned that the current barrage of book bans and the growing traction of the movement is dangerously reminiscent of authoritarian regimes throughout history.
An inkling of what was in store for the West was shared by Margaret Atwood, a multi-award winning novelist, essayist, poet and activist few years back , where she emphasised how ’We are entering a new era of book banning’.
And now there are indications that the biggest democracy in the World namely India is keen to follow the footsteps of the strongest democracy ?
Or it is too early to say that.
Time for Thought Police?
There is a sea change in the situation since last more than a decade in this part of South Asia.
As they say it much water has passed the Ganges, Jamunas, the Jhelums, Chinabs and all the rivers of the subcontinent.
The target of attacks has now become broader, more expansive and more unpredictable. It is no more restricted to the ‘leftist’ ‘progressive’ writers, historians.
It has been more than one and half month that Jammu-Kashmir witnessed the ’unprecedented’ banning of 25 books on Kashmir history at a single go written by a spectrum of national and international scholars - which even do not share a similar world view, books which had been in circulation for years, even decades together.
The notification issued by the Home Department is chilling, it not only claims that this literature ‘propagate false narrative and secessionism in Jammu and Kashmir’ but also says that it deeply ‘impact the psyche of youth by promoting (a) culture of grievance, victimhood and terrorist heroism’ and how they have ‘[c]ontributed 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.’ These 25 books have been ‘“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.’
This list of authors includes, A G Noorani, Arundhati Roy, Anuradha Bhasin, Sumanta Bose, Victoria Schofield and several others. What is shocking is that these books are based on massive research undertaken to carry conviction, have been published by internationally known publishers and have been vetted a few times by the legal advisers of these publications to avoid any controversy and have till date not faced any ban or controversy.
Anuradha Bhasin, managing editor of Kashmir Times, who has authored the book Kashmir - A Dismantled State (Dec 2022) - which tells the story of Story of revocation of Article 370, writes in an article how her book was vetted thrice by the publisher before publishing it. (Her book also stands banned with this order).
Last month this ’arbitrary move’ by the J & K government was raised before the Supreme Court in the form of a public interest petition to convey before the honourable court how this blanket banning of books written by renowned national and international level authors had been in circulation for years and share the broader concern that how it impinges on the constitutional right of citizens to freedom of speech and expression and how it will severely impact all sorts of critical thinking in Kashmir and about Kashmir.
What advocate Sanjay Hegde underlined before the highest court, pleading to take up the case perhaps needs retelling :
Appearing for petitioner Shakir Shabir, a Kashmir-based lawyer, Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde referred to Section 98 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which deals with the power to declare certain publications forfeited and to issue search warrants for the same. Hegde said, “Please see how the section operates. It has an all-India operation. That’s the problem. An official of a small state can decide that one series of books may be obscene… and then all over the country, they will be taken over. That is overboard”.
The honourable Supreme Court directed the J and K High Court Chief Justice to list the matter before a bench of three judges presided by him, and to “make an endeavour to decide it at the earliest.”
What is less known that the Jammu-Kashmir High Court has of late received accolades from civil liberty activists and democracy loving citizens for some of its recent interventions and there are high expectations that it will similarly break ’new grounds’ in ending this ’anamolous situation’ to put fetters on critical thinking.
From quashing arbitrary preventive detention and pulling Up DM, SSP Kathua For “Tainted Dossier" to slamming arbitray demolition of senior citizen's property and ordering compensation of Rs 86 lakhs for ’clandestine action’; from staying the the charge sheet against MLA Mehraj Malik to its most recent action where it even quashed a persons detention under PSA a Public Safety Act (PSA) against a local from Jammu’s Kishtwar, where it even observed that “merely recording Daily Diary Reports (DDRs) by the police alleging no specific acts cannot be the ground to detain a person”, its approach has definitely generated a sense of hope among law abiding citizens.
Perhaps it would be opportune at this moment to communicate to the judiciary, he legal fraternity as well as wider populace how this ’book banning’ is being viewed by various civil liberty and democratic rights organisations.
The detailed statement issued by PUCL explains why this banning is ‘illegal and unconstitutional’. It also underlines the many nuances of the ban and its implications for the people of Kashmir but rest of India as well.
One, according to the statement a constitutional democracy is based on the fact that dissenting opinions exist and should be respected. and the state government should appreciate that there may be viewpoints with which it disagrees, but it should learn to respect dissenting opinions. Two, it questions this omnibus forfeiture order of 25 books, without any specific reference to the content of any of the books, and says prima facie it appears that the exercise of the power of forfeiture is not a justified exercise of power under Section 98 of the BNSS and will not come within the reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of the Constitution. Thirdly, it refers to the Supreme Court’s decision where it had upheld the Bombay High Court order striking down the forfeiture of the book, ‘Shivaji – Hindu King in Islamic India’ by James Laine [`State Of Maharashtra & Ors vs Sangharaj Damodar Rupawate’ (2010)] and shares key features of the decision.
“Undoubtedly, the power to forfeit a newspaper, book or document is a drastic power inasmuch as it not only has a direct impact upon the due exercise of a cherished right of freedom of speech and expression as envisaged in Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, it also clothes a police officer to seize the infringing copies of the book, document or newspaper and to search places where they are reasonably suspected to be found, again impinging upon the right of privacy. Therefore, the provision has to be construed strictly and exercise of power under it has to be in the manner and according to the procedure laid down therein”.
It had further elaborated how in this case the Court also held that the grounds for forfeiture must be based upon reading of the whole book and ‘the State cannot extract stray sentences of portions of the book and come to a finding that the said book as a whole ought to be forfeited’. The government extracting sentences from the book to make its case for forfeiture was deemed insufficient within the understanding of the law, by the SC.
It does not need underlining this blanket ban the state government exhibits its total contempt for the freedom of speech and expression and also their egregious hubris (arrogance) as it has not even bothered to even seek to justify how, why and on what basis, each of the 25 books should be forfeited.
No doubt, this banning of 25 books has received widespread condemnation from thinking people from rest of Indian as well as from thinking people from rest of the world but perhaps the dangerous implications of this order have not been properly understood, appreciated in rest of India. A mere perusal of the notification exposes the drastic nature of the censorship it imposes on people in India.
The statement further adds how with this order,
1. The police are empowered to seize all copies of these 25 books after searching all locations. 2. The notification is marked to the Director Archives, Archaeology, and Museum and the Director of Libraries, among others, indicating that these published literature on Kashmir will disappear from publicly accessible facilities. Even homes are not exempt from this power of search, seizure and forfeiture. 3. A plain reading of the provision indicates the permissibility of this notification being enforced throughout the country, with the J& K police approaching jurisdictional magistrates in other states for warrants to search and seize these 25 books from bookstores around the country! It is not difficult to imagine how this will have a chilling effect on the development of critical inquiry into the situation in Kashmir.
Any sane and democracy loving person would concur with that PUCL has demanded:
That this forfeiture notice of 25 books be immediately withdrawn by the Jammu and Kashmir government. Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita be repealed as it is nothing other than the old sedition law in a new decolonial disguise.
What is noteworthy that PUDR another organisation committed to defence of human rights for around five decades is equally critical of this order on 05 August 2025, by ’[t]he Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir,’ wherein ’ 25 books were declared to be “forfeited” in terms of Section 98 of BNSS, the new criminal procedure code. 5 August marks the 6th anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and the “book ban” order came at a time when the National Book Trust, India was organizing the Chinar Book Festival in Srinagar.’
What the statement underlines in the initial paras merit close attention:
"A ban on books, ideas, narratives, documentation efforts must be opposed and the courts have the power to strike down such orders on the strength of the Constitutional jurisprudence thus far developed – whether in the context of books or speech. This specific action of the State is patently unlawful and its significance exceeds the immediate fact of a ban on books. It is not only a continuation of the control that the State exerts on the everyday freedoms of the people of Jammu and Kashmir but it is also a further effort of the State to criminalize the recognition, discussion, documentation, advocacy and analysis of the well documented history, political movement for the right to self-determination, violence and militarization and its effects in Jammu and Kashmir. It is a further effort of the State to ensure that zones of armed conflict are not subject to any scrutiny by invoking claims of national security and terrorism."
PUDR draws attention to four aspects of this “book ban”.
First, on the law invoked. Section 98 BNSS is a reproduction of Section 95 of the earlier CrPC. Its application extends to forfeiture of copies “wherever found in India” as before. Section 98 BNSS can be invoked if the government finds application of any of the substantive provisions that remain the same as earlier with the exception of Section 152 BNS that is most relevant in the present case. Section 152 BNS is set up in the BNS as a new section. It creates an offence where 1) acts (for example, “words, either spoken or written”), 2) excite/attempt to excite secession or armed rebellion or subversive activities OR encourage feelings of separatist activities OR endangers sovereignty or unity or integrity of India. Section 152 BNS draws from Section 124-A IPC on sedition but in fact goes further and overlaps with Section 2(o) of the UAPA which defines unlawful activities and makes the same an offence under Section 13 UAPA punishable up to seven years whereas Section 152 BNS provides punishment for life. Section 152 BNS has been challenged in the Supreme Court as unconstitutional and arbitrary. This order provides a fitting example of arbitrary state action. Each claim advanced in the order has no empirical evidence to make any causal link between any one of the 25 books and acts of violence. For example, how does “promotion of alienation” lead to acts of violence? The order claims to be based on “investigations and intelligence”. No details are provided. Further, the supposed “grounds” include vague phrases such as “vilification of security forces”. This order is nothing but an arbitrary act, unlawful and unconstitutional.
Second, the effect of the ban. “Words” have been criminalized. No specific examples (sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters) have been identified. Effectively then, the books in their entirety – letter and spirit – have now been banned. It is not only the possession, sale, publishing etc that now stands criminalized – any future speech, event, book, article, discussion, human rights report – which draws from or is similar to the words, events, human rights cases, arguments, details in these books – stand criminalized. We are all effectively now put on notice.
Third, this order relates to Jammu and Kashmir, its history, politics, rights of its people and violations. The ban provides a specific challenge as it is in the context of Jammu and Kashmir and its people that have been at the receiving end of a concerted effort of the State to arrest/detain/demolish/censor/intimidate/ban its people, associations, journalists, political activists, human rights defenders. Since 05 August 2019 (a marker that may serve useful in the instant case to consider a specific time period), 12 organizations, including the Jamaat-e-Islami and Awami Action Committee headed by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, have been banned under the UAPA (despite operating publicly for decades) and many of their members arrested and prosecuted in NIA Courts in Delhi, Jammu and UAPA Special Courts in Jammu and Kashmir (Jammu and Kashmir has the highest UAPA cases – 947 cases in the period of 2020-2022). Kashmir Bar Association has been dismantled and its members arrested and prosecuted. Human rights organizations such as the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society have been targeted, members arrested and prosecuted, and their work (human rights reports, use of international law, human rights organizing, civil society initiatives) criminalized.
Independent journalists and newspapers have been intimidated, arrested and effectively shut down. Any association with members of banned organizations or non-State armed groups (for example family members) have been criminalized and action has been taken against their employment and property. Encounters between security forces and non-state armed groups continue to date. Except for the official version, no further information is provided and it does not appear that the law on encounters as mandated by the Supreme Court is followed in any of the cases. The armed forces operate under the cover of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1990 and a court-martial system that is closed to the public. The State operates in Jammu and Kashmir – much as in the instant book ban – on grounds of national security and terrorism.
Fourth, the need for a corrective and comprehensive judicial response. The role of the judiciary in these circumstances is crucial as not only must the judiciary stand up to arbitrary state action it must do so keeping in mind the specific nature of conflict and then apply the laws at its disposal. State policy cannot override the strict application of the law. National security cannot limit judicial scrutiny. Most importantly, as laws do not operate in isolation, the judiciary must apply the laws keeping in mind the history and reality of Jammu and Kashmir. As one recent example of such an attempt by the judiciary, Justice Kaul in his separate opinion – while agreeing with the majority on the abrogation of Article 370 – refers to a conflict that originates in 1947, occupation of Kashmir by other countries, insurgency from the 1980’s, migrations, entry of the army that created its own grounds realities and “the men, women and children of the State have paid a heavy price”. Justice Kaul calls for a collective understanding of what has happened in Kashmir and notes “numerous reports documenting these incidents” but no “commonly accepted narrative”. He notes that internationally victims have a right to the truth and “authoritative reporting of the results of the investigation”. He offers one route for this process in the form of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as seen in post-Apartheid South Africa.
A matter worth contemplation is the timing of the ban.
One does not know whether the decision makers in the ruling dispensation could even ponder about this timing itself. Does not it inadvertently or so puts a question mark over government’s much tommed tommed claim that situation in Kashmir is ‘normal’.
Nothing could be more ironic to demonstrate that around the sixth anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 - which was done to ‘ correct a historical wrong’ or open the floodgates of development to the region - the government decided to ban books.
May be the thinking could be that the government which could not even protect the lives of tourists from all over the country at Pahalgam (22 April 2025) because of its inept handling of security can prove its ‘hardline image’ once again.
The timing of this move of banning books is worth emphasising from another angle also.
It was the same time when valley’s first national book festival was being organised in Srinagar in mid of August, set against the picturesque Dal Lake, ( 17 to 25th August, 2025) where apart from NBT [National Book Trust, India] or National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), around forty publications from rest of India were participating.
The message was clear that the ruling dispensation even wants to decide what people should read, what people should remember, as a British writer of Kashmiri origin said in an interview, such banning of books is an attempt to ‘arrest thinking’.
It is abundantly clear that with its firm grip on the levers of power at the centre and many states its attempts to package and present a singular, homogenised version of history and silence all critical voices which present the other side of history, it is exposing its own fear of knowledge and truth, how it is ‘scared of words challenging its lies’.
It is a multipronged attempt to provide legitimacy to it own version of the world - which involves appointing its own people - who are close to the Sangh’s very own world view on key posts, filling new vacanices lying in various academic and research institutions with people who are either close to its world view or are pragmatic enough to toe the official line and also attacking every established vision of the world and India which is not conducive to its own world view, making arbitrary changes in academic courses without any explanation and discussion and also presenting its own version of things as the ‘history’.
Analysts have rightly noted how the “[T]he book ban is part of a wider campaign since the revocation of Article 370 in August 2019—a campaign aimed at dismantling Kashmir’s autonomy and identity’.
How media has been gagged, journalists have been arrested, Journalists detained, newspaper offices raided, critical reporting silenced ; how a digital censorship is enforced marked by frequent internet shutdowns, social media restrictions; how cultural erasure is being implemented by renaming landmarks, rewriting textbooks, and now, banning books.’
It is part of history book bans carry a long and dark lineage.
One can recall the situation in Nazi Germany when works by Jewish, socialist, and liberal authors were burnt to “protect” the nation. (1933)
Perhaps it would also be opportune to recall what Helen Keller wrote in an open letter to German Students then
Keller’s How I Became a Socialist was on the list of books to be burned. “History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.”
Or how in Turkiye,
Will books—repositories of knowledge that stimulate people to think—survive this onslaught?
Perhaps the last scene in the 1966 film, “Fahrenheit 451”, provides an answer. The only English movie directed by renowned French director Francois Truffaut, was based on a dystopian novel by American author Ray Bradbury, which depicts a future in which books are outlawed and burned. Fahrenheit 451 is supposedly the temperature at which books burn. It was written during the growing anti-communist hysteria in the United States after the Second World War, when McCarthy was leading a witch-hunt against communists and other anti-establishment people.
In the film, the central character is a fireman named Guy Montag, who destroys properties considered illegal, including books escapes to the countryside where he meets the Book People, a large community of ordinary citizens who have memorised texts to keep them alive.
One day, Guy Montag also selects a book to memorise and becomes one of the Book People.
Coming back to the ’Writers Police’, it is clear to everyone how all those meticulous efforts put in by the police to curtail the free flow of ideas proved futile. And how the French Revolution of those times emerged as a beacon of hope for thinking people across the world. Rather, it could be said that all those efforts at surveillance became a precursor to the storming of the Bastille.
Perhaps in this early half of 21st Century, right from democrats to authoritarians all over the world - who seem to have a new penchant for banning books - could very well remember this basic truth of history which was popularised by the French novelist and poet Victor Hugo in his 1859 novel Les Misérables.
’No power of earth can stop an idea whose time has come.’
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