When the Government of India banned 25 books for “glorifying terrorism” and “inciting secessionism” in Jammu & Kashmir, the usual chorus of outrage followed: accusations of “censorship,” “silencing dissent,” and “erasing history.” But let’s strip away the rhetoric and look at the reality—these works are not harmless expressions of opinion. They are intellectual tools that, knowingly or not, feed into Pakistan’s decades-long propaganda machine designed to radicalise Kashmir and delegitimise India’s sovereignty.
Pakistan’s Long Game in Kashmir
Since 1947, Pakistan has invested heavily in building an anti-India narrative around Kashmir. This started with its own school textbooks omitting the 1947 tribal invasion orchestrated by Pakistani forces — the very event that prompted Maharaja Hari Singh to sign the Instrument of Accession to India.
In the 1990s, this propaganda escalated: Radio Pakistan broadcast nightly bulletins lauding slain militants, while Pakistani newspapers lionised Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders. In recent years, the ISI has turned to social media, seeding hashtags, videos, and “academic” content that rebrands terrorists as “freedom fighters” and their victims as “collateral damage.”
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has documented how separatist leaders in Kashmir received Pakistani funding to organise protests, circulate anti-India literature, and incite youth. This literature — much of it published under the guise of scholarship — is exactly what the latest ban targets.
Authors and the Problem of Selective Storytelling
The banned list includes prominent names such as:
- Arundhati Roy’s Azadi frames India’s security forces as “colonial occupiers” but offers almost no discussion of Pakistan’s role in fuelling armed insurgency.
- Hafsa Kanjwal’s Colonizing Kashmir advances the “settler colonialism” analogy, comparing India’s constitutional integration of J&K post-2019 to Israel’s policies in the West Bank — a comparison that ignores both the absence of mass state-sponsored settlement and the legal accession of Kashmir to India in 1947.
- Christopher Snedden’s Independent Kashmir—exploring secession as a viable “solution,” lending intellectual legitimacy to separatist demands that militants have exploited for decades.
When such books are quoted in international forums—from human rights panels to campus debates—they
become part of a curated echo chamber: India as aggressor, Pakistan as victim, militants as heroes.
Why the Ban is Within Global Democratic Norms
Free speech is a pillar of democracy — but no democracy permits the unchecked spread of literature that encourages violence or undermines national integrity.
- United Kingdom: Under the Terrorism Act 2006, it is a criminal offence to publish or possess material that “glorifies terrorism,” even indirectly. Radical Islamist tracts and IRA propaganda have been seized under this law.
- Germany: The dissemination of Nazi ideology or Holocaust denial is banned outright, recognising the power of words to incite hate and violence.
- France: Makes it a crime to deny genocide, not as censorship, but as a safeguard against historical distortion.
India’s use of Section 98 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023 follows the same principle: when literature becomes a weapon, it can be lawfully disarmed.
The Cost of Allowing Propaganda to Flourish
Kashmir has lost more than 40,000 lives since the insurgency erupted in 1989 — civilians, soldiers, and elected leaders among them. Militant recruitment has often followed exposure to propaganda — posters, songs, and yes, books that romanticise “martyrdom” while vilifying the state.
In 2016, after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed, a booklet circulating in South Kashmir titled Shaheed ka Safar (“A Martyr’s Journey”) turned him into a folk hero. It sparked weeks of unrest that left more than 90 dead and thousands injured. This is the real-world effect of unchallenged extremist narrative-building.
Moving Beyond Bans: Building the Counter-Narrative
Bans alone are not enough. India must also invest in accessible, credible counter-narratives:
- Historical accounts that detail the 1947 tribal invasion and the legal accession of Jammu & Kashmir to India.
- Documentaries and literature that spotlight victims of militant violence, both Hindu and Muslim.
- Academic collaborations that fact-check and rebut distorted portrayals of the region.
This is exactly what the West learned post-9/11: the battle against extremism is fought not just in courtrooms and on borders, but also in classrooms, libraries, and publishing houses.
Conclusion
The bans are not about erasing history; they are about preventing the weaponisation of history. In Kashmir, where an adversary has spent over seven decades perfecting the art of narrative warfare, the printed page can be as potent as the bullet.
India’s responsibility is twofold: to protect the rights of its citizens, and to safeguard its sovereignty and integrity. In a region as volatile as Kashmir, these duties sometimes require difficult decisions — including restricting works that, however artfully written, serve the cause of those who would tear the nation apart.
As other democracies have learned, defending freedom sometimes means drawing firm lines against those who would exploit it to promote violence. India’s ban on these 25 books is such a line — one drawn not in fear of ideas, but in defence of peace.
