Jammu and Kashmir Bans 25 Books, Including Arundhati Roy’s, Over Alleged Secessionist Content

The administration in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir has banned 25 books, including works by Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy, claiming they promote a “false narrative and secessionism” in the region.

The order was issued by the union territory’s home department on the instructions of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, a former BJP minister appointed by the Modi-led central government. According to the directive, the government found that certain literature “propagates false narrative and secessionism in Jammu and Kashmir.”

The banned titles include historical and political works authored by noted academics, journalists, and human rights scholars, both from Kashmir and abroad. Among them are Roy’s Azadi, which contains essays on the alleged enforced disappearances and killings in Kashmir, and Independent Kashmir by Australian political scientist Christopher Snedden.

Other titles include Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation by Hafsa Kanjwal, a US-based academic, and Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus and Sri Lanka by Sumantra Bose of the London School of Economics. The order directs that these books be removed from circulation and forfeited by all bookshops in the region.

Officials allege the contents glorify terrorism, distort historical facts, promote violence, and contribute to the radicalisation of Kashmiri youth. The order states that the literature may “deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting a culture of grievance, victimhood and terrorist heroism.”

Jammu and Kashmir is one of the most militarised zones in the world and has been the focus of a decades-long dispute between India and Pakistan. Since the 1990s, the region has faced a separatist insurgency and a military crackdown, with repeated allegations of human rights violations including enforced disappearances, killings, and suppression of dissent—claims the Indian government has consistently denied.

Authors affected by the ban have condemned the move. Angana Chatterji, a scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and co-author of Kashmir: The Case for Freedom—also banned—called the order an attempt to “criminalise scholarship and render it seditious.”

She warned that the ban would have far-reaching consequences: “It restimulates psychological operations to terrify and isolate Kashmiris, and silence their pain and resistance.” Chatterji further argued that the move is part of a wider agenda to erase the documented history of state violence and dissent in Kashmir.

Criticism of India’s crackdown on freedom of expression in Jammu and Kashmir has grown since August 2019, when the region was stripped of its special status and brought under direct central rule. Earlier this year, police raided bookshops and seized over 650 books, claiming they promoted a “banned ideology.”

The latest ban is seen by many as another blow to academic freedom and the right to dissent in the conflict-ridden region.

Jammu and Kashmir Bans 25 Books, Including Arundhati Roy’s, Over Alleged Secessionist Content

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