‘A Book-Banning Bharat Can Never Be a Vishwaguru’: Academics Body Slams Kashmir Book Ban

Calling the move 'an unprecedented attack on academic freedom, even by the low standards of autonomy in Kashmir,' the body has called for the ban's immediate revocation.

The Wire Staff

Calling the move 'an unprecedented attack on academic freedom, even by the low standards of autonomy in Kashmir,' the body has called for the ban's immediate revocation.

‘a book banning bharat can never be a vishwaguru’ academics body slams kashmir book ban

Representative image. Photo: Pixabay

New Delhi: The India Academic Freedom Network has strongly condemned the book ban enacted in Jammu and Kashmir earlier this month. Calling the move "an unprecedented attack on academic freedom, even by the low standards of autonomy in Kashmir," the body has called for the ban's immediate revocation.

J&K lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha on August 5 this year – the sixth anniversary of the reading down of Article 370 – passed an order banning 25 books in the Union Territory that allegedly promoted secessionism and violence against the state.

The list of banned books include the widely acclaimed The Kashmir Dispute by Indian constitutional expert and public intellectual A.G. Noorani, Kashmir in Conflict – India, Pakistan and the Unending War by British author and historian Victoria Schofield, Azadi by Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy and Contested Lands by professor at the London School of Economics Sumantra Bose.

"By banning books that it disagrees with, the state is providing compelling evidence of its repressive attitude," the IAFN said.

Questioning the Union government's lackadaisical approach on the restoration of J&K's statehood, the IAFN said, "Even as J&K has had elections and the Supreme Court has noted the Union Government’s assurance that it would restore statehood, six years on, there is no sign of statehood. The order issued by the J&K Home Department under the control of Mr. Manoj Sinha, the Lieutenant Governor (LG) of the UT, now seeks to obliterate any mention of J&K’s political past and details of the repression the region has endured."

The book ban seeks to counter ideas and arguments with the brute force of state power, the statement said.

Citing the International Freedom Foundation's statement on the ban, the IAFN said that the move was unlikely to remain restricted to the Union Territory.

“'Once a work is declared forfeited under Section 98, every copy of such book can be seized by law enforcement, and police officers may act on the order wherever found in India. The notification S.O. 203 explicitly directs that all copies of the 25 titles are forfeited to the Government. This empowers authorities to seize not only physical stock in J&K, but potentially any copies in circulation nationally, including in other states or in transit through e-commerce.' Once books have been banned in one part of India on such specious grounds, all authors and publishers are unsafe throughout India," the IAFN statement said.

"We call upon the Government of India which has issued the order through the LG to immediately revoke the order. It must reassure the people of J&K as well as the academic community and the Indian public at large that such attacks on academic freedom will not be repeated, whether in J&K or in any other part of India. A book-banning Bharat can never be a vishwaguru," it added.

This article went live on August twenty-second, two thousand twenty five, at fifty-seven minutes past three in the afternoon.

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