Bookshelves in Jammu and Kashmir seem to be the new battleground with lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha’s administration extending its crackdown to works of acclaimed national and international writers by ordering forfeiture of 25 titles, citing the threat of radicalisation and glorification of terrorism.

The order accuses these books of promoting false narratives and secessionism and inciting violence against the Indian State.

The forfeiture order has been issued under Section 98 of the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, which, according to experts here, makes it unlawful to buy, sell, possess, print or distribute the publications and requires the owners to surrender them to the authorities.

Among the books to be forfeited are Arundhati Roy’s Azadi, Sumantra Bose’s Kashmir at the Crossroads and Contested Lands, A.G. Noorani’s The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012, Anuradha Bhasin’s A dismantled State (The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370), David Devadas’s In Search of a Future (The Story of Kashmir), and Hafsa Kanjwal’s Colonising Kashmir: State-Building under Indian Occupation.

Other important books by renowned international authors are Kashmir in Conflict by Victoria Schofield and Independent Kashmir by Christopher Snedden.