Kashmir Book Ban Threat Academic FreedomSrinagar, 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.
‘Misguiding youth’
The government blames the banned books for allegedly ‘misguiding youth’ in Kashmir and instigating their ‘participation in violence and terrorism’. The banned literature offers a detailed overview of the events surrounding the Partition of India and the reasons why Kashmir became an intransigent territorial dispute. Critics view the book bans as an intensification of political clampdown in the region.
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. The literary community in Kashmir expresses a sense of despondency, labeling the ban as an ‘attack on the people’s memory’.
Source: Al Jazeera