(7 Aug 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir – 7 August 2025
1. Various of soldiers on the street
2. Wide of book shop and soldiers on the street
3. Wide exterior of book shop
4. Various of books on display
5. Various of a man working at the book shop
6. Various of books on display on the shelves
7. SOUNDBITE (Urdu) Haya Javaid, Srinagar resident:
"India is a democratic country. When you ban books, it definitely creates curiosity among people about what the book was about, and they become more inclined to read it. This is a modern world, you cannot simply ban a book and expect it to disappear. There are many other mediums through which people can access and read it. Actions like these make people (feel) fed up. I think it’s better not to give too much importance to such things, as these are the reasons people get upset."
8. Various of people walking on the streets
9. Various of soldiers
STORYLINE:
Indian authorities have banned 25 books in Kashmir that they say propagate “false narratives” and “secessionism” in the disputed region, where strict controls on the press have escalated in recent years.
The ban threatens people with prison time for selling or owning works by authors such as Booker Prize-winning novelist and activist Arundhati Roy, constitutional expert A.G. Noorani, and noted academicians and historians like Sumantra Bose, Christopher Snedden and Victoria Schofield.
The order was issued on Tuesday by the region’s Home Department, which is under the direct control of Lt. Gov. Manoj Sinha, New Delhi’s top administrator in Kashmir.
Sinha wields substantial power in the region as the national government’s representative, while elected officials run a largely powerless government that came to power last year after the first local election since India stripped the disputed region of its special status in 2019.
The order declared the 25 books “forfeit” under India’s new criminal code of 2023, effectively banning the works from circulation, possession and access within the Himalayan region.
Various elements of the code threaten prison terms of three years, seven years or even life for offenses related to forfeit media, although no one has yet been jailed under them.
Banning books is not common in India, but authorities under Prime Minister Narendra Modi have increasingly raided independent media houses, jailed journalists and sought to re-write history in school and university textbooks to promote the Hindu nationalist vision of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Meanwhile, curriculums related to Muslim Mughal rulers who ruled much of India between sixteenth and nineteenth centuries have been altered or removed.
Last year, An Indian court ended decades-old ban on Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” owing to absence of any official order that had banned the book in 1988.
AP video by Mehraj Ud Din
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