‘Attack on people’s memory’: Kashmir’s book ban sparks new censorship fears

Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir – Hafsa Kanjwal’s book on Kashmir has just been banned, but it’s the irony of the moment that strikes her the most.

This week, authorities in India-administered Kashmir proscribed 25 books authored by acclaimed scholars, writers and journalists.

The banned books include Kanjwal’s Colonizing Kashmir: State‑Building under Indian Occupation. But even as the ban was followed by police raids on several bookstores in the region’s biggest city, Srinagar, during which they seized books on the blacklist, Indian officials are holding a book festival in the city on the banks of Dal Lake.

“Nothing is surprising about this ban, which comes at a moment when the level of censorship and surveillance in Kashmir since 2019 has reached absurd heights,” Kanjwal told