Police in Indian-administered Kashmir have raided bookshops after authorities earlier this week banned 25 books, saying works like these by Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy propagate “false narratives” and “secessionism” within the contested Muslim-majority area.
In compliance with the order, police officers on Thursday additionally searched roadside e-book distributors and different institutions dealing in printed publications in the primary metropolis of Srinagar and throughout a number of places within the area to confiscate the banned literature, police stated. Nevertheless, officers didn’t specify if they’d seized any such materials.
“The operation focused supplies selling secessionist ideologies or glorifying terrorism,” police stated in a social media assertion. “Public cooperation is solicited to uphold peace and integrity.”
The raids got here after the federal government accused the writers of propagating “false narratives” about Kashmir, “whereas enjoying a crucial function in misguiding the youth” in opposition to the Indian state.
Authorities on Thursday additionally seized Islamic literature from bookshops and houses after the same directive in February.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947. Each declare the Himalayan territory in full.
Insurgent teams have fought since 1989 in opposition to the Indian rule of Kashmir, demanding independence or its merger with Pakistan.
Since 2019, Indian authorities have more and more criminalised dissent and proven no tolerance for any narrative that questions India’s sovereignty over Kashmir.
The order banning the books was issued by the area’s House Division on Tuesday – the six-year anniversary of New Delhi’s imposition of direct rule – though the ban took time to be dropped at wider consideration.
The ban threatens individuals with jail time for promoting or proudly owning works by constitutional skilled AG Noorani and famous academicians and historians like Sumantra Bose, Christopher Snedden and Victoria Schofield, amongst others.
The order declared the 25 books “forfeit” beneath India’s new felony code of 2023, successfully banning the works from circulation, possession and entry inside the Himalayan area.
Bose, a political scientist and writer whose e-book Kashmir on the Crossroads was among the many banned works, rejected “any and all defamatory slurs” on his work, the Press Belief of India information company reported.
“I’ve labored on Kashmir – amongst many different topics – since 1993,” Bose stated. “All through, my chief goal has been to establish pathways to peace so that each one violence ends and a steady future freed from concern and battle might be loved by the individuals of the battle area, of India as an entire, and the subcontinent.
“I’m a dedicated and principled advocate of peaceable approaches and resolutions to armed conflicts, be it in Kashmir or elsewhere on the planet,” he stated.
Roy’s 2020 e-book of essays, Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction, was additionally included within the ban.
Roy, 63, is considered one of India’s most well-known residing authors, however her writing and activism, together with her trenchant criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authorities, have made her a polarising determine.
Historian Siddiq Wahid stated the edict contravenes the structure, “which permits for the freedoms of speech and expression”.
“The record of banned books numbers a number of which are authored and revealed by people and establishments whose reputations rely upon supplying proof, logic and argument in the direction of the conclusions they draw,” Wahid informed the AFP information company. “Does that rely for something anymore?”
Indian-administered Kashmir elected a new government in September and October, its first because it was introduced beneath New Delhi’s direct management, with voters backing opposition events to steer its regional meeting.
Nevertheless, the native authorities has restricted powers, and the territory continues in sensible phrases to be ruled by a New Delhi-appointed administrator.
Chief cleric and separatist chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq stated the ban “solely exposes the insecurities and restricted understanding of these behind such authoritarian actions”.
“Banning books by students and reputed historians won’t erase historic information and the repertoire of lived recollections of individuals of Kashmir,” Farooq stated on the social media platform X.
Banning books by students and reputed historians won’t erase historic information and the repertoire of lived recollections of individuals of Kashmir. It solely exposes the insecurities and restricted understanding of these behind such authoritarian actions, and the contradiction in proudly…
— Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (@MirwaizKashmir) August 7, 2025