By Nikita Jain
Since the decision to impose a ban on 25 books by the Jammu & Kashmir Home Department earlier this week, the police have begun showing up at bookshops and publishing houses to raid and seize copies of literature labelled as “glorifying terrorism” by the authorities.
Among the authors whose works have been banned are renowned Islamic scholar Syed Abul A’la Maududi, veteran academic and constitutional expert AG Noorani, acclaimed writer and activist Arundhati Roy, political scientist Sumantra Bose, historians Ayesha Jalal and Sugatha Bose, and Kashmiri academics and writers Ather Zia and Essar Batool.
One of title is Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation by the US-based academic Hafsa Kanjwal. The Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize winner called the decision an “eradication of Kashmir’s history”.
“For me, the book ban is a clear attempt by the Indian government to escalate its desire to erase Kashmir’s history – including of occupation and resistance,” Kanjwal told Maktoob.
“The idea is to erase to replace — replace with a narrative that situates Kashmir as “integral” to India and its long history of resistance to occupation as a ‘false narrative’. This is part of the normalization project of the Indian government, which is not new. My now-banned book actually examines how the Indian state and its client regimes in Kashmir have been censoring knowledge production on Kashmir for decades,” she said.
The decision comes amidst the ongoing Chinar Book Festival, as well as the reports of the ruling government spending Rs 70 crore for print ads in Kashmir’s newspapers.
“But this ban won’t succeed. It’s clear that those behind the order don’t have a sense of human psyche nor history. Because whenever books are banned, people want to read them! Not only that, bans reveal the extent to which the state will try to hide its crimes and those who may otherwise be on the sidelines or not fully understand a situation, will sudden be curious and want to know more. The only way to counter such ludicrous statist repression is to read more, and not allow for the erasure to occur,” Kanjwal further said.
Echoing the same sentiments, journalist and author Anuradha Bhasin said that the publishing houses that have published the books are some of the most reputed houses globally and won’t publish books if they don’t have facts and figures. She also compared the decision to the times of “Nazi”.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.
