Silencing the Shelf: What Happens When Stories Disappear?

In the heart of Jammu’s old city, there’s a small second-hand bookshop where dust settles gently on the pages, as if time itself has been trying to preserve them. Today, the dust is heavier not from neglect, but from absence. Whole titles have vanished, pulled out quietly, some even without a public explanation.

Twenty-five books. Among them names that have stirred the world Arundhati Roy, A.G. Noorani, Sumantra Bose. Banned, in the name of “public order” and “national interest.” The state says these works are “seditious” or “anti-national.” But here lies the uncomfortable question – when a book is silenced, is it the book’s words we fear, or the reader’s ability to think?

Book bans are never just about pages and ink. They are about narratives who gets to tell them, and who gets to erase them. In Jammu & Kashmir, a place where stories have always been layered, contested, and painfully human, removing literature from circulation doesn’t simply remove an argument. It removes the chance for dialogue. It removes the chance for disagreement without punishment.

We are told that some books can “provoke unrest.” Perhaps they can. But unrest does not always mean violence sometimes, it’s the stirring of the mind, the discomfort of confronting a version of history or identity that we’ve not been told before. If our democracy is strong, shouldn’t it have the courage to let its citizens read, question, and then decide for themselves?

The irony is, bans often make books more sought after. In private WhatsApp groups, in PDF form, in conversations over chai these words still travel, sometimes more powerfully because of the very act of suppression. What the ban achieves is not control over ideas, but control over the space where those ideas can be discussed openly.

And that’s the real loss. Not the banning of a book, but the shrinking of a public mind.

The story of Jammu & Kashmir has never been told by one pen, one voice, or one perspective. It has always been a chorus sometimes harmonious, sometimes clashing, but always richer for its diversity. When we narrow the bookshelf, we risk narrowing the mind of a generation that will one day inherit this land.

Maybe the question we must ask is not whether these books deserve to be banned, but whether we, as a society, can afford the cost of banning them. Because the day we fear our own readers is the day we admit we’ve already lost the argument.

The post Silencing the Shelf: What Happens When Stories Disappear? appeared first on JK News Today.