India, Aug. 18 -- The Jammu and Kashmir administration abruptly banned 25 books by authors, branding them "dangerous" under the new penal code. The attempt to silence books in the Valley feels less like a show of strength and more like an admission of fear

In an age when the world's knowledge is a click away, banning books is like trying to dam a river with your bare hands - futile, messy, and bound to fail. And yet, on August 5, as the Chinar Book Festival in Srinagar - backed by the Union Culture Ministry - was meant to celebrate the written word, the Jammu and Kashmir administration under Lieutenant-Governor Manoj Sinha decided to pull 25 titles from shelves. These works, by noted authors like AG Noorani, Sumantra Bose, Arundhati Roy,...