DC Edit | J&K: Halt Libraries’ Crackdown
Glorifying him as a martyr undeniably contradicts India’s stance. But the administration’s response — suspending officials, blacklisting authors, withdrawing all their works, launching criminal investigations and ordering a territory wide sweep of every book in every institution — goes far beyond correcting a procurement lapse
The Jammu and Kashmir administration’s territory wide campaign to screen and purge “objectionable” books marks a profound and troubling shift. It is one thing for a government to decide what textbooks align with its educational vision. It is quite another to raid bookstores, blacklist authors, confiscate publications and police every shelf in every school and coaching centre. This is not curriculum oversight. It is state driven narrative control.
The trigger was the discovery of allegedly separatist linked content in two school library books — Personalities and Legends of J&K and Great Personalities of Jammu and Kashmir. These titles referred to Jammu and Kashmir as “India occupied Kashmir” and described pro independence leader Muhammad Maqbool Bhat as “Shaheed e Azam” or great martyr.
Bhat, co founder of the Jammu Kashmir National Liberation Front (JKNLF), a militant organisation advocating the reunification of J&K as an independent state, was hanged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail on Feb. 11, 1984 after being convicted on murder charges. Over time, he came to be seen as a foundational figure in the violent separatist movement that gripped the region for more than three decades.
Glorifying him as a martyr undeniably contradicts India’s stance. But the administration’s response — suspending officials, blacklisting authors, withdrawing all their works, launching criminal investigations and ordering a territory wide sweep of every book in every institution — goes far beyond correcting a procurement lapse.
That is part of a broader pattern. In 2025, the government banned 25 books by respected scholars, journalists and historians — from A.G. Noorani, Arundhati Roy, Sumantra Bose, Victoria Schofield, David Devadas and Anuradha Bhasin to Piotr Balcerowicz and others — alleging they promoted “false narratives” and “glorified terrorism”. Critics countered that these were rigorously researched works offering critical political analysis, not propaganda.
The new directive, therefore, intensifies that fear. Schools must now eliminate anything “prejudicial”, “age inappropriate” or “contrary to national interest” — elastic categories easily stretched to fit any inconvenient fact. Police raids on bookstores make the message unmistakable: Only one version of Kashmir’s story is now permissible.
Kashmir’s history — its conflicts, aspirations, traumas and political movements — cannot be erased by administrative order. Memory lives in people, not just pages.
Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution protects the freedom of speech and expression. The current campaign in J&K undermines that guarantee, replacing dialogue with decree.