Indian authorities have prohibited 25 pounds in cashmere, accusing them of propagating “false stories” and advocating “secessionism” in this contested region, where strict media control has intensified in recent years.
This ban on prison sentences exposes people who sell or have these works, notably those of Arundhati Roy, novelist and activist winner of the Booker Prize, of the constitutional expert Ag Noorani, and eminent academics and historians like Sumantra Bose, Christopher Snedden and Victoria Schofield.
The order was issued Tuesday by the Regional Ministry of the Region, placed under the direct control of Lieutenant-Governor Manoj Sinha, chief administrator of Kashmir in New Delhi.
Sinha exercises considerable power in the region as a representative of the national government, while elected officials direct a largely helpless government, which took office last year after the first local elections since India withdrew its special status from the disputed region in 2019.
The ordinance declared the 25 pounds “confiscated” under the new Indian Criminal Code of 2023, in fact prohibiting traffic, possession and access to these works in the Himalayan region. Various provisions of the code provide three -year prison sentences, seven years, even perpetuity, for offenses related to the confiscation of supports, although no person has yet been imprisoned under these provisions.
“The 25 pounds identified were judged to be an encouraging secessionism and endangering the sovereignty and integrity of India,” said the Ministry of the Interior in his opinion. These books played “a crucial role in the disinformation of youth, the glorification of terrorism and the incentive to violence against the Indian state,” he added.
This measure was taken following “credible surveys and information” concerning the “systematic dissemination of false stories and secessionist literature”, often disguised as historical or political comments, he said.
In accordance with this prescription, the police searched bookstores on Thursday, searched sellers of books by the road and other establishments selling publications printed in Srinagar, the capital, and in several localities in the region, in order to confiscate the prohibited works, the police said. However, the authorities did not specify whether they had seized such documents.
Sumantra Bose, political scientist and author whose book “Kashmir at the Cross Roads” was among the prohibited works, rejected “any defamatory insult” targeting his work, reported the press agency Press Trust of India.
“I have been working on cashmere, among other subjects, since 1993,” said Bose. My main objective has always been to identify ways so that all violence ceases and that the populations of the region in conflict, India as a whole and the subcontinent can enjoy a stable future, free from fear and war. “
India and Pakistan, two rival countries with nuclear weapons, each administer part of the cashmere, but both claim the entire territory.
Activists in the part of cashmere under Indian control has been fighting the New Delhi regime since 1989. Many Muslim cashmiris support the objective of the rebels to unify the territory, whether under Pakistani domination or as an independent country.
India insists that militancy in cashmere is a terrorism sponsored by Pakistan. Pakistan denies this accusation, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate struggle for freedom. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and members of government forces were killed in the conflict.
Since 2019, the authorities increasingly criminalize dissent and have not tolerate any discourse questioning India’s sovereignty on cashmere.
Prohibiting books is not common in India, but the authorities of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have multiplied the searches in the independent media, imprisoned journalists and sought to rewrite history in textbooks and academics in order to promote the Hindu nationalist vision of its ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party.
