The Jammu and Kashmir government has directed heads of government and recognised private schools, as well as coaching centres in the Kashmir division, to review all books on their premises for “inappropriate or objectionable content”, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

The Kashmir Directorate of School Education has asked institutions to screen books in libraries, offices, classrooms and staff rooms, including recently acquired titles and older publications, the newspaper quoted the directive as saying.

The heads of institutions have also been instructed to submit certificates to their respective chief or zonal education officers confirming that no book on campus contains any “objectionable material”.

The order issued on Monday, said the screening was intended to ensure that “no book contains inappropriate or objectionable content”.

“This includes material that may violate religious sentiments of any section, be it inappropriate content for students, content against prevailing laws with the potential to harm national interest, affect educational values, and established norms,” it stated.

If any objectionable content is found, heads of institutions have been asked to provide a detailed report including the book’s title, author, publisher, year of publication and the number of copies available, The Indian Express reported.

The information is then to be submitted to the higher authorities for review within seven days.

Chief education officers have also been asked to monitor compliance and submit reports to the Director of School Education by July 19, The Times of India reported.

The directive comes days after the Bharatiya Janata Party protested against the procurement of certain books by government schools, accusing the Union Territory’s National Conference government of promoting “academic jihad”.

The protests followed the withdrawal of two books from school libraries and the suspension of eight officials and termination of a contractual employee over the inclusion of what the government described as “pro-separatist content” in the books.

The withdrawn books, Personalities and Legends of J&K by Hilal Ahmed and Santosh Meena, and Great Personalities of Jammu and Kashmir by Dr Sushant Giri, were supplied to school libraries under the Samagra Shiksha programme for higher secondary classes.

The police also searched the premises of a publisher linked to one of the books after a first information report was registered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, The Indian Express reported.

Several political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir questioned the directive to remove the books and remarked that it amounted to erasing history.

National Conference MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi called the order “deeply troubling”. “Libraries exist to preserve knowledge, not curate political narratives. Erasing books does not erase history; it only impoverishes scholarship,” he wrote in a social media post.

Peoples Democratic Party leader Waheed Para told The Indian Express that the order was an attempt to “rewrite our collective memory”. “This is an attempt to rewrite our collective memory and erase our own history from the curriculum. It promotes selective learning while taking away future generations’ ability to question, think critically, and understand their past.”

He also questioned Jammu and Kashmir’s National Conference government for approving the directive. “We elected a local government to resist such actions and preserve our history,” he remarked. “Sadly, the Directorate of Education, under the elected minister’s authority, has approved and issued this directive.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.