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WATCH
School textbooks in Jammu & Kashmir describing Kashmir as 'India held' and calling a slain terrorist the 'father of the nation' have been withdrawn after public outrage, according to ThePrint and India Today. The J&K Lieutenant Governor suspended eight education officials and ordered an inquiry — but the deeper question is how separatist content survived six years of direct central rule.
Here is a phrase no child in a Union Territory governed directly from New Delhi should ever encounter in a government-approved textbook: 'India held Kashmir.' Not 'Indian-administered,' the careful euphemism of foreign correspondents. Not even the old UN terminology. A phrase straight from the lexicon of separatist pamphlets — printed, bound, approved by an education board operating under the authority of the Indian state, and placed in the hands of schoolchildren in 2025, a full six years after Article 370 was abrogated and Jammu & Kashmir became a Union Territory.
And it was not alone. According to India Today, the same set of textbooks reportedly glorified slain terrorists and separatist leaders, with one passage referring to a militant figure as the 'father of the nation.' The outrage, when it finally arrived, was swift and performative: the books were withdrawn, eight education officials were suspended, and the Lieutenant Governor ordered an inquiry, as reported by ThePrint. The machinery of accountability lurched into action. But the machinery of accountability is not the story here. The pipeline is.
The Pipeline Nobody Audited
Think about the journey a school textbook takes before it reaches a child's desk. An author writes it. A publisher prints it. A board reviews it. An education department approves it. A distribution chain delivers it to schools. At every one of these stations, in a Union Territory under direct central oversight, someone — a bureaucrat, a committee member, an inspector — had the authority and the duty to flag content that describes India's own territory as 'held' by India. Nobody did. Or — and this is the more unsettling possibility — somebody did, and was ignored.
ThePrint reports that the J&K Board of School Education is responsible for vetting and approving textbooks used in schools across the UT. The board operates under the administrative authority of the Lieutenant Governor's office, which in turn reports to the Union Home Ministry. This is not a state government with its own political compulsions and a chief minister looking over his shoulder at local sentiment. This is Delhi's direct chain of command. The fact that separatist content could travel the entire length of this chain without being caught is either a catastrophic failure of oversight or evidence of something more systemic — an institutional culture within J&K's education bureaucracy that the abrogation of Article 370 changed on paper but never reached in practice.
Political Pulse
The whisper in Srinagar's administrative corridors, according to sources familiar with J&K's education establishment, is that the rot runs deeper than eight suspended officials. The talk is that several publishers who supply textbooks to J&K schools have long-standing ties to networks sympathetic to separatist ideology — and that these relationships predate 2019, surviving the transition from statehood to UT status because the bureaucratic middle layer was never truly overhauled. The appointments changed at the top; the ecosystem below carried on. Trade circles and education policy watchers speculate that the vetting committees themselves may include individuals whose ideological sympathies were never examined after the constitutional reorganisation.
(This reflects corridor talk and unverified speculation in J&K's education circles, not confirmed fact.)
The political calculus is not subtle. For the BJP-led Centre, the abrogation of Article 370 was the signature achievement — the fulfilment of a seven-decade ideological promise. Every subsequent development in J&K is measured against that promise: are things actually different now? A textbook calling Kashmir 'India held' in 2025 is not merely an administrative lapse. It is a direct contradiction of the narrative that Delhi has normalised J&K and integrated it fully into the Indian republic. It hands ammunition to every critic — domestic and international — who argued that the abrogation was a legal formality that changed maps but not minds.
For the opposition, particularly the National Conference and the PDP, the episode is a double-edged sword. They can point to it as evidence of the Centre's administrative incompetence in J&K. But they cannot push too hard, because the content itself — glorifying terrorists, using separatist terminology — is indefensible in mainstream Indian politics. Any party seen as minimising the gravity of 'father of the nation' being applied to a militant risks being branded sympathetic to separatism. So the opposition critique will likely focus on governance failure, not on the content itself. Watch for that framing carefully in the coming days.
The Deeper Structural Failure
India Herald's read of what is really at work here goes beyond partisan blame. The structural problem is this: when India reorganised J&K in August 2019, the political architecture changed overnight. The bureaucratic architecture — the thousands of mid-level officials, board members, committee chairs, and subject-matter reviewers who actually run the day-to-day governance of education, land records, policing, and civil administration — did not. A UT administration that governs 12.5 million people through a bureaucracy largely inherited from the old state government is, in effect, running new software on old hardware. And the old hardware, in pockets, still carries the code of three decades of separatist-era institutional capture.
Consider one number that frames the scale of the problem: J&K has over 29,000 schools, according to government data. The volume of textbooks, supplementary materials, and locally published educational content circulating through this system is vast. A vetting apparatus that fails to catch 'India held Kashmir' in a textbook is not failing at the margins — it is failing at the most elementary level of content review. If the phrase had been buried in an obscure supplementary pamphlet, one might attribute it to scale. But this was reportedly in textbooks distributed to students, material that teachers would read aloud in classrooms. The failure is not one of volume. It is one of will, or culture, or both.
The suspension of eight officials is the predictable first move — visible, punitive, and reassuring to headline writers. But suspensions do not reform ecosystems. The inquiry the LG has ordered will matter only if it goes upstream: who are the publishers? What are their affiliations? Who sat on the vetting committee? Were they appointed before or after 2019? Were their backgrounds examined? Were the terms of reference for textbook approval updated after the abrogation? These are the questions that will determine whether this episode is treated as an isolated failure or as a symptom of an unreformed institutional layer that Delhi has been content to ignore as long as the surface looked calm.
What Comes Next
The likely next moves are predictable in outline but consequential in detail. The LG's inquiry will almost certainly result in a wider audit of textbooks across J&K — not just the ones that sparked this controversy, but the full catalogue of approved educational materials. Expect the Union Home Ministry to take a closer interest; the political sensitivity is too high for this to remain a UT-level matter. The BJP's political machinery will use the episode to reinforce the narrative that Article 370's abrogation was necessary precisely because this kind of institutional separatism was embedded in J&K's governance — expect that argument in Parliament and on television within days.
But the harder question — the one that will not be answered by an inquiry report filed in six months — is whether Delhi is prepared to do the unglamorous, expensive, politically complex work of actually reforming J&K's education bureaucracy from the inside. Not replacing a few officials, but rebuilding the vetting infrastructure, scrutinising publisher networks, retraining or reassigning committee members, and establishing a review mechanism with genuine accountability. The abrogation of Article 370 was the dramatic act. The integration of J&K — real integration, the kind that reaches into a classroom and ensures a child is not being taught that their own country is an occupier — is the slow, grinding, unsexy work that follows. Six years on, a textbook that calls Kashmir 'India held' is the report card on how that work is going. The grade is not encouraging.
More from India Herald
Key Takeaways
- School textbooks in J&K containing the phrase 'India held Kashmir' and glorifying terrorists passed through an official vetting and approval process under direct central oversight — six years after the abrogation of Article 370, according to ThePrint and India Today.
- Eight education officials have been suspended and an inquiry ordered by the LG, but the deeper question is whether the bureaucratic middle layer inherited from the old state government was ever genuinely reformed after 2019.
- The episode hands political ammunition to critics of the Centre's J&K integration project and is likely to trigger a wider textbook audit and Union Home Ministry involvement in the coming weeks.
- J&K has over 29,000 schools — the scale of the textbook pipeline means this failure is unlikely to be an isolated incident, raising questions about how many other materials with similar content remain in circulation.
By the Numbers
- J&K has over 29,000 schools through which textbooks and educational materials circulate, per government data — the vetting failure is a systemic challenge, not a one-off lapse.
- Article 370 was abrogated in August 2019 — six years have passed without the education board's approval pipeline catching textbooks using separatist terminology, according to reports in ThePrint and India Today.
- 8 education officials suspended by the J&K LG over the textbook controversy, with an inquiry ordered, as reported by ThePrint.
The 5W+H: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
- Who: J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha's administration suspended eight education department officials over the textbook controversy, according to ThePrint.
- What: School books containing separatist content — including the phrase 'India held Kashmir' and references glorifying terrorists and separatist leaders — were withdrawn from circulation, as reported by India Today and ThePrint.
- When: The controversy erupted in July 2025, with the suspension orders and inquiry following public outrage, according to ThePrint.
- Where: Jammu & Kashmir, a Union Territory under direct central administration since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019.
- Why: The books reportedly passed through the J&K Board of School Education's approval process despite containing content that contradicts India's constitutional position on Kashmir, raising questions about systemic vetting failures, according to ThePrint.
- How: The separatist content was identified in privately published textbooks that had received board approval; the LG ordered an inquiry and suspended officials responsible for curriculum vetting, as reported by ThePrint.
Frequently Asked Questions
What separatist content was found in J&K school textbooks?
According to India Today and ThePrint, the textbooks described Kashmir as 'India held Kashmir,' glorified slain terrorists, referred to a militant figure as the 'father of the nation,' and included content sympathetic to separatist leaders — all in material approved by the J&K Board of School Education.
How many officials were suspended over the J&K textbook controversy?
The J&K Lieutenant Governor suspended eight education department officials and ordered an inquiry into how the textbooks were approved and distributed, according to ThePrint.
Who is responsible for approving school textbooks in Jammu & Kashmir?
The J&K Board of School Education is responsible for vetting and approving textbooks. Since the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, J&K is a Union Territory, and the board operates under the administrative authority of the Lieutenant Governor's office, which reports to the Union Home Ministry.
Has separatist content in J&K textbooks been an issue before?
Concerns about separatist and anti-India content in J&K educational materials have been raised periodically over the years. The current controversy is significant because it occurred six years after the abrogation of Article 370, which was partly justified as a measure to end such institutional separatism.
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