Why is India so afraid of my book on the cashmere that she prohibited it? | Human rights

On August 5, 2019, the Indian government stripped the old state of Jammu-et-Cachemire of its special status under article 370 of the Indian Constitution, divided it into two entities and demoted the two units to the territories of the Union under the direct control of New Delhi.

As the sixth anniversary approaches, the region was taken in the grip of rumors of a probable more in -depth division or other administrative changes. The reports of an unusual jet activity on Srinagar have triggered a widespread panic among residents.

This mentioned painful memories of similar air activity coupled with a set of similar rumors similar at the time stretched before August 5, 2019. People were looking forward to.

The bomb that came to the sixth anniversary was an official order Prohibit 25 pounds This focuses on the history and politics of Jammu and cashmere – all accused of promoting “false stories” and “secessionism” – a radical judgment which does not resist the exam and is not based on any evidence.

My book has Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Cachemir after article 370, published in December 2022 by HarperCollins, is one of them. The book is a rare chronicle of daily reality in Jammu-et-Cachemire after 2019. Based on the ground research, in-depth interviews and the snack of data from other primary and secondary sources, it has pierced the claims of the Indian government of “normality” in Jammu-et-Cachemire.

The government justified the actions of August 5, 2019 on the grounds that they would inaugurate peace and development in the region, while making silence on natural persons and cyber restrictions in the old state, during which thousands of people, including pro-Indian politicians (three former chief ministers included), were arrested. The barbed wire and military barricades have transformed the region, in particular the cashmere valley, into a cutting zone, and the communication channels – from Internet to telephone lines – were pushed into a black hole.

Six months later, when some of these restrictions were slightly attenuated and the Internet was partially restored, the grip of the Indian state has become even more oppressive, with an exacerbation of raids and repression against journalists, political and social activists and civil rights defenders. The policy of generalized detention under laws such as the public Safety Act, which allows the government to hold anyone at no cost for up to two years, has been considerably increased.

These realities have almost never been reported. Journalism has been seriously limited in tightening the state, affecting in particular local publications. The newspapers that refused to line up were suffocated financially until they were exhausted. Those who compared were rewarded with sumptuous government advertisements that have advanced businesses, less journalism.

Either co -opted or terrorized, the newspapers were no longer daily chroniclers of events, developments and incidents in the region. Community voices were silenced when journalists no longer asked questions. The rich archives of certain newspapers, presenting the complex daily history of the region, have become inaccessible or have been deleted.

Over the past six years, the government has been extremely intolerant of any criticism. Any word of dissent invites punitive measures ranging from simple intimidation and interrogation to the confiscation of devices, and from the slap of income tax and money laundering with accusations of terrorism, sometimes accompanied by short detentions or prolonged arrests. While local journalism has been reduced to an extension of the government’s public relations department, all the votes of civil society have been strangled by intimidation, leaving major shortcomings in information.

It is this void that my book was aimed at filling. Focused on the first two years of the revocation of article 370, and in 12 chapters, I documented what was happening on the ground – the increased suppression of the masses, the lack of space for freedom of expression, the narrowed space their houses and their agricultural land.

The book is a continuation of the truth – the naked truth, which disputed everything that the Indian state said. A paranoid state whose only method of engagement in Jammu-et-Cachemire is by increasing its military imprint, its ruthless submission of residents and the silence of all the dissenting voices was obviously uncomfortable with what I documented. The book was a warning to the government that its control methods, the creation of a police and surveillance state, and the lost development models were not sustainable and would fail.

Over the past six years, the government has pulled wool over the eyes of the world by deceiving its achievements to bring peace, normality, tourism and development. The murders of April 22 this year of 26 innocent civilians have broken this bubble. It was an alarm clock to keep the government and examine its policies in cashmere and begins the correction of the course.

Instead, he still tackled with a horrible diabolization scale for cashmericis, ruthless detentions and even more brutal demolitions of houses. This, even if there was a general public conviction of terrorism, including vigilles and calls to reject violence – something unprecedented in the more than three decades of rebellion in the region – and even if the investigators indicated that foreign activists, and not the locals, were involved in the murders.

In the past three months, the government has shown that its control policy through severe security measures and ubiquitous surveillance would still be accelerated. The ban on 25 pounds, many of which provide rich, well -documented historical, political and legal stories in the complex and unwanted region, is an extension of the model. Thanks to this prohibition, there is an attempt to erase each trace of a counterattack and alternative memory.

By marking all the criticisms of the state and the stories which are not synchronized with the official version as “seditious”, the government can now grasp and destroy these books. Not only are written words criminalized – even the reading act will be wrongly considered a threat to the security and integrity of the nation. Although this cannot prevent the suppression of ideas and memory, the police from what people write and read is probably more intensified.

Although insane, shocking and irrational of scale and scope, the ban, which ironically coincides with a festival of chinar books supported by the government in Srinagar, sends a scary message: knowledge and information will be regulated by the State. What people write and read will be decided by the state. The police thought they were penetrating more deeply.

Last year, during the first elections of the Jammu-et-Cachemire assembly as a territory of the Union, the Minister of India of India, Amit Shah, had a search in regional political parties and alleged that “they (local politicians) gave young stones”, his government had given them “books and laptops”.

The cursor of such affirmations is exposed when the daily reality is that of the confiscation of digital devices, including laptops, during raids and interrogations, alongside a prohibition of cover book which only reinforces the central message of my work: cashmere is anything but normal.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.