25 books banned in Jammu and Kashmir for inciting ‘secessionism’

In 1980, shortly after Indira Gandhi nominated her to the Rajya Sabha, Nargis hurled a crass accusation at him. Seeing herself as no less than Mother India and thereby, also its protector, like her political “godmother”, Nargis accused the filmmaker of “perpetuating poverty” and asserted that Ray “distorted India’s image abroad”.

Her charge bolstered Indira Gandhi’s first attempts at playing victim over the emerging administrative and political challenge due to events in Punjab, a self-created crisis. Every time Sikh activists indulged in wanton violence and professed a demand for a separate Khalistan state, the PM would say “a foreign hand” was behind deteriorating law and order in Punjab and other North Indian states.

That coinage by Indira Gandhi was nauseatingly repeated by a bevy of sycophants of that era. It formed the core of the political narrative of those times and was a precursor of the contemporary discourse whipped up by slanderous nametags like “anti-nationals”, “urban-Naxals”, and so on.

Despot’s dictum

Back then, Nargis could do little to stem Ray’s creativity and he continued making profound films besides remaining very much the multi-faceted artistic personality that he was, even while sadly, cancer consumed her. Even Indira Gandhi became a victim of the Frankenstein monster she had created.

But almost around the time that Nargis was levelling the accusations against him, Ray was giving finishing touches to a film, Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds), based on his dystopian imagination of a kingdom ruled by a despotic king.

Even those holding the grievance that Ray did not make “overtly political” films peevishly accepted that Emergency made it evident to him that despite India being democratic, autocrats could emerge anywhere, anytime.

In one iconic sequence of the film, the ruthless king instructs fawning aides to “shut all schools”. The reason was “elementary”, although not in the Watsonian way — “Whoever goes to school learns more; those who learn more, do not obey instructions (and asks questions); and thus, all schools must be closed.”

Also read: How banning 25 books in Kashmir is far more dangerous than we could imagine

This scene flooded my mind as I read that Jammu and Kashmir’s Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, had “ordered” a certain (Chandraker) Bharti from the Indian Administrative Service to ban (officially “forfeit”) 25 books because these have been found to “excite secessionism and endangering sovereignty and integrity of India”.

The order detailed that “a significant driver behind youth participation in violence and terrorism has been the systemic dissemination of false narratives and secessionist literature…often disguised as historical or political commentary”.

Actor Utpal Dutt’s (who portrayed the role of the despot) expressions came to mind as I read this and realised that this Ray classic, outwardly a “children’s film”, was timeless.

Intrusive searches followed the order in bookstores across the Kashmir Valley. The state police were instructed to seize any of these books if found.

The order was signed on August 5, the sixth anniversary of the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A from the Indian Constitution — a clear testimony that even after six years of central rule, belatedly having an “elected” government, although in name only, the administration of the Union Territory, was unable to counter the written word.

Power of written word

It must be having some power!

After having written several books, besides possibly thousands of articles, and intending to write more, this acceptance disguised as diktat was reassuring — that writers and journalists (there are scribes too whose books were in the “scroll of honour”), Kashmiris, and more importantly, non-Kashmiris too, were not expending their time, energy and resources in futility.

Intrusive searches followed the order in bookstores across the Kashmir Valley. The state police were instructed to seize any of these books if found.

The authors, whose books were listed as causative factors for continuing political violence in Jammu and Kashmir, include many globally acknowledged academics, scholars, writers, and journalists, who have, importantly, not altered their stance on the seething unrest and frequent disturbances in this region for several decades — from when the Bharatiya Janata Party was not in office and was in Opposition.

The authors’ “problem” in most of these books, from which the analyses in most cases have stemmed, was from the policies and practices of a series of governments from the time, when Kashmir was under the rule of a monarchy.

Undoubtedly, the order accepts the “failure” of India’s current political regime, through a “proxy” positioned as LG, to root out political opposition to the state’s agenda.

Also read: Arundhati Roy’s ‘Azadi’ among 25 books banned in J-K for ‘glorifying terrorism’

Furthermore, Sinha’s directive was also issued barely weeks after the entire political establishment in the country politically berated Indira Gandhi and the Congress, not just for imposing the Emergency, but also for introducing press censorship in the past.

Infringing on rights

What then, is this order? Does this order not wholly violate Article 19, which provides “freedom of speech and expression”? Is the order not a testimony to an Emergency-like situation being upon Kashmir and its people?

This government at the Centre has taken upon itself to remind citizens that there are Fundamental Duties, duly enshrined in the Constitution (inserted during the denigrated Emergency period). They are told that before asking for rights, these duties must be done.

But, is it not a duty of the government to ensure that rights of the people are not impinged upon?

However, as is known to anyone who has taken stock of any event with a historical perspective, proscribing literature, books, and other publications did not begin in 2014. It will also probably not end at any point in future, easily, when the tenure of the current regime comes to an end and a new one takes guard.

But understanding the logic, or its absence, in preparing this list of 25 books and proscribing these, is important. This is one aspect of this development that has been overlooked, as most commentators have dwelled on the history of banning books or because of the self-felt need to respond as quickly as possible, restricted themselves to analyses of the reasons of the State.

However if one delves deeper into some of these lesser-discussed books, leaving out more in focus ones like those written by the late AG Noorani and the noted J&K based journalist, Anuradha Bhasin, it is obvious that most of these tomes provide self-explanatory reasons which ensured them becoming part of this “scroll of honour”.

The offending tomes

Take, for instance, the first book in the list, Human Rights Violations in Kashmir, a 2022 publication written by Polish scholars (Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska), not widely known in India among the non-academic community. But this did nothing to prevent it from heading the scroll, despite being published by a strictly academic or “highbrow” publishing house.

To begin with, the phrase, “human rights violations”, that too in Kashmir, is intensely problematic for the State.

The description of the book is the final nail in the book’s coffin in the Union Territory under the Central rule. It states that the book “examines root causes responsible for a human rights violations-prone environment and climate of impunity in which the actors perpetrate their crimes unpunished, unwrapping legal and extralegal nexus behind the crimes”.

These are tough words, which spares none in the officialdom. The chapters, too, are titled in a “problematic” way for a government whose survival has been considerably dependent on preventing truth from coming out.

Also read: Love in a land of silence: Mehak Jamal’s Kashmir through ‘loal’

The selected root causes and structure of human rights violations examined in the book are: majoritarian Hindu nationalism; militancy and Islamisation; militarisation and armed forces impunity; and; the legal tools of impunity. The book also analyses “manifestations of the human rights violations in the Valley” in detail.

Conspiracy to destabilise

This book cannot be picked up from any shelf in Kashmir. However, the list essentially serves the purpose of whipping up a narrative that there is a major international “conspiracy” to destabilise, even break up, India, and these select books play a crucial role in whipping up anti-India (and anti-Hindu) sentiments.

The exercise to ban these books can also be dubbed as pointless, given that some, like Kashmiris Fight for Freedom by Mohd Yosuf Saraf, have long been unavailable in India. Saraf, who was the Chief Justice of the High Court of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, passed away in 1995.

The book’s inclusion in the list is solely to bring in Pakistan, a publisher there, and thereby create a bogey — although the company’s name is spelt wrongly in the order (clearly underscoring the competence, or the lack of it, of the officials who put together the list).

Digging up facts

Academic Hafsa Kanjwal’s Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building under Indian occupation, from the state’s perspective, commits a cardinal sin by using the term “under Indian occupation”.

Additionally, the book “interrogates how Kashmir was made integral to India through a study of the decade-long rule (1953-1963) of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, the second Prime Minister of the State of Jammu and Kashmir”.

It is not that this is a fanciful unsubstantiated exercise, for the author, who had to leave Kashmir as a child in 1993, draws on documents from the past besides collecting testimonies from the present.

A historian’s job is to examine the narratives of the past and not to drum up support for what an authoritarian regime projects as “true” history and she does that with aplomb. In an interview, she spoke about her last visit to Kashmir in 2019, when she went to see her ailing grandmother. Every time she “returned”, Hafsa felt this could well “be the last time that you’re allowed back here”.

With her book banned and her coming into notice prominently, this might well be how the future turns out to be.

Army under scanner

Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? is a 2016 non-fiction book authored by five Kashmiri women — Essar Batool, Ifrah Butt, Munaza Rashid, Natasha Rather, and Samreena Mushtaq — and it provides stark images of the alleged 1991 mass rape by Indian security forces.

Also read: 6 years after Article 370 abrogation, J-K yet to see durable peace Manoj Joshi

Although the BJP was not in power then, either in Kashmir or at the Centre, the opposition to this book, and reason for this book’s inclusion in the list, is that actions of the armed forces are questionable. Can they do any wrong in the hypernationalistic imagination of the BJP and Sangh Parivar?

Explanation of Jihad

Al Jihad fil Islam, or The Concept of Jihad in Islam, was written by Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, an Aurangabad-born Muslim who went on to rise through the ranks of political power in Pakistan.

This book, which brought the early, unapologetic Islamist to public attention, was serialised in a newspaper in 1927. His idea of Islam was all-encompassing and he did not shy from calling for an Islamic State extending to the entire world and not the territories where Muslims were numerically dominant.

Of all the books in the list, this is one which calls for greater scrutiny to decide if it should be publicly circulated or be restricted to academic scrutiny. This book, however, remains of immense importance, one for providing a rational explanation of Jihad and why that is the correct path for Muslims, and two, because Maulana Maududi was the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami on both sides of the border.

Why the ban?

Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration, by Australian scholar, Christopher Snedden, is another proscribed book on the list. An author who has written on Kashmir’s troubles past for decades, one of his earlier books, Kashmir: The Unwritten History published in 1993, was taken up for review by the late doyen of journalism, BG Verghese.

The review was balanced and highlighted the positives from the Indian POV — Sneden confirmed that “autonomy of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the Northern Areas was a sham despite various constitutional reforms. The Ministry of Kashmir Affairs ruled the roost from Rawalpindi and appointed all key officials. Moreover, the Upper House or Kashmir Council, over which the PM of Pakistan presided, sat in Islamabad and was the dominant chamber vested with budgetary control. The constitutional position of the Northern Areas, now Gilgit-Baltistan, is even less autonomous because of its strategic importance, Chinese presence and non-political Islamist religious demography. Snedden also certifies Pakistan’s jihadi endeavours and cross-border infiltration into J&K.”

While a writer with such a perspective should be agreeable to the Indian State, Verghese also wrote that Snedden’s argument that “India must give Pakistan something to settle the matter” was little but “pernicious reasoning” and India must promptly show such a viewpoint was little but “one-sided and misleading”.

It is only a myopic perspective, which the current regime clearly suffers from, that would look solely at the negatives while judging an argumentative book, which points out that “in a rare India-Pakistan agreement, they concur that neither J&K, nor any part of it, can be independent.” Why then a ban?

Different takes

The list also has different books written by the Bose siblings — Sumantra and Sugata — for different takes on Kashmir.

While the former’s two books, Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka, and Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, are banned in J&K, the latter’s proscribed book, Kashmir & the Future of South Asia, has been jointly edited with Ayesha Jalal. Among the chapters in this book, mention must be made of The State of Azadi: Voices from Pakistan-administered Kashmir by Anam Zakaria, who has also authored a book on the same theme: Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which is based on one of the rare travels through Pakistan-administered Kashmir to hear its people — their sufferings, hopes and aspirations.

Another chapter which needs to be singled out is from the volume edited by Tariq Ali, Hilal Bhatt, Angana P Chatterji, Pankaj Mishra, and Arundhati Roy and titled, Kashmir: The Case for Freedom. There is little related to the title in this piece by Bhatt, which is more an account of his journey on a train, Faizabad Special run by Indian Railways in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the outbreak of communal riots.

It is only a myopic perspective, which the current regime clearly suffers from, that would look solely at the negatives while judging an argumentative book, which points out that “in a rare India-Pakistan agreement, they concur that neither J&K, nor any part of it, can be independent

Bhatt writes he escaped being killed as many of his friends were, by not truthfully replying to a question about his religious identity. Having been a witness and documented the gruesome killings of Sikhs travelling in trains across India in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, I can empathise with Bhatt and can only say that it is indeed unfortunate that the J&K governor banned a book which includes such a moving piece of writing.

But it shows the ruling dispensation’s discomfort with one more facet of truth coming out on a gory episode that is projected as valorous by the powers that be in today’s India.

The proscribed books also include the one by fellow journalist and one-time colleague, David Devadas, whose book In Search Of A Future (The Kashmir Story), was published in 2007 and was lauded by former defence minister George Fernandes for stating what needed to be said.

Because I do not live in Kashmir, it can be safely stated that, at the moment at least, no law is being violated with the presence of Devadas’s book in my bookshelf, along with a few others, lying in the precise corner from which retrieval is not difficult. Peculiarly, as the author pointed out, the book was “criticised from contrary viewpoints at the time. Some pilloried it for not being even-handed, not backing “azaadi” and for espousing peace and dialogue”.

This only confirms that the J&K governor and his cohorts were not really concerned with the contents of the books, but were driven by other motives while passing the order.

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not reflect the views of The Federal.)