Someone in Jammu and Kashmir’s home department must have spent months reading books on Kashmir before singling out 25 that could be banned and forfeited under Section 98 of the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. If that exercise was truly carried out, the person may be the most well-read in the region’s bureaucracy. A government notification announcing a ban on the books claims that “available evidence based on investigations and credible intelligence unflinchingly indicate that a significant driver behind youth participation in violence and terrorism has been the systematic dissemination of false narratives and secessionist literature, often disguised as historical or political commentary, while playing a critical role in misguiding the youth, glorifying terrorism and inciting violence against Indian State.” Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After 370 by Anuradha Bhasin.It argues that such materials “would deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting culture of grievance, victim hood and terrorist heroism.”What were the investigations based on? No evidence of the link between violence and the now banned books, one of them authored by me – A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After 370 – has been provided. What are the objectionable passages and words they found? They are either lost in obscurity or are some closely guarded secret. What evidence they found of the written word and terrorism or violence? Did the ‘misguided’ youth tell them during interrogation that first they dug into such books before they picked up a gun or resorted to violence? Or did someone in the home department or a committee of people turned into voracious reader(s) and deciphered the secret codes in the texts that preached secession, terrorism and violence? But more important, did anyone in the Jammu and Kashmir administration actually read any of the books, now declared as “propagating false narrative and secession”? If they had read, they would have been enriched with some intellectual depth, not the desire to heavy-handedly crackdown on knowledge and information that these books provide. At least, they would have known that some of these books are not available in India except in their exorbitantly priced foreign editions.So, was it a typical case of an ill-thought bureaucratic decision based on mere whims and imagination where books were randomly and selectively picked up, based perhaps on a random open AI search or the advice of some ‘unpadh salahkar’ (illiterate adviser)? But why? Was there a need? An old joke about authoritarian control goes: they had three cells, so picked up three accused. So, did someone at the top decided to ‘ban 25 books’ and their subordinates got busy in furnishing the list? It turns out that years of painstaking historical research and rigorous political analysis can be deemed criminal overnight at the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen because they wounded some official’s delicate sensibilities or, more likely, did not fit neatly into the imagination of a government that suffers from a compulsive disorder syndrome and cannot tolerate any word or idea that is out of sync with its own blinkered world view. That’s what many of the books in the list, including mine, did – challenge the state’s misinformation with truths the government deems inconvenient. The ban, in contravention to the freedom of expression guaranteed under the Indian constitution, is in the line with the Indian government’s exacerbation of authoritarian control across the country, particularly in Kashmir, where it ironically coincided with a government organised ‘Chinar Book Festival’ in Srinagar and the sixth anniversary of loss of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood, which the government claims has brought peace, progress and development in Kashmir. Also read: What Has Made the Government so Insecure That It Must Now Ban Books?So, if all was well, why was there a need to go on a book banning spree? Was it to take the government’s mechanism of control and surveillance to a new level on the anniversary of the reading down of Article 370? For six years, by silencing journalists and newspapers, by disappearing their archives, the government has been peddling the ‘normalcy in Kashmir’ narrative. The book ban may be the new method of reminding the people of Jammu and Kashmir who the boss is and to continue maintaining the oppressive climate of fear in the region. In the absence of any evidence that substantiates the government’s criminalisation of the books, one can only speculate the motives and reasons or how the list of banned books was prepared. However, it is not difficult to see its long-term repercussions. While I hear anecdotal references about a sudden increase in demand in the market for the now banned books, demonstrating a possible backfire effect, its deleterious impact will be that young scholars and book lovers would be deprived of knowledge and information and remain short of important literature on their reading list. Raids in Kashmir across book shops in Kashmir after the ban reveals that the chilling impact may go beyond the banned books or a clamp down on the shops. In a region where raids and crackdowns are a norm, it is not difficult to imagine that the ban would be used as a weapon to further harass people, snoop into their offices, homes and device and find some ‘seditious’ word in print to tighten the noose around them. A more damaging impact may be felt on future scholarship particularly from and on Kashmir. Writers and researchers, particularly the young, will shudder from daring to think about probing crucial questions and writing. Publishers may be even more hesitant to print books. As for me, many friends and acquaintances have been asking me this question: will you now stop? This article is my answer to them, for there is an even greater need to write now. Anuradha Bhasin is the executive editor of Kashmir Times.