This article traces and comments on recent events in which books have been destroyed to train AI and manufacture sole authorship over rare content from across the world, books destroyed by hooligans in the name of having “anti-national content”, and, finally, book censorship.

In July, 404 Media reported that rare books are being bought by big tech companies in order to train AI. These rare books are scanned and then destroyed. The knowledge produced by humans is being stored away for producing AI slop and to acquire a monopoly over who gets access to the knowledge. A world where every entity, be it joy, misery, or entertainment, is at a payable distance — from music to films to organic, non-adulterated food to medicine and now to knowledge. These rare books are either out of print or the last of their copies; by scanning them, preserving their knowledge and creating a monopoly over it, the big companies are creating a scenario like Fahrenheit 451.

Digital colonialism in the past few years has significantly increased. Every single individual carries data that is required by AI companies to train their bots to produce more realistic, human-like content. Written or visual AI content needs existing human-manufactured words and human datasets for it to work; acquiring control over millions of copies of rare books gives companies a new form of colonising ordinary people and their right to fine education. These rare books include legal entries and copies that were never digitised, so not only is it the destruction of history and culture and age-old human-written and edited works, but also the prevention of people in the present from acquiring actual truth. It is creating gaps in knowledge so false narratives can persist.

28th August, Maqtoob reports “Bajrang Dal workers on Thursday assaulted members of a civil society group who had gathered in an Ahmedabad garden to read books by Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai and Holocaust victim Anne Frank...” At a peaceful gathering, posters read “Ban the censorship, not the books”, and this was enough for Bajrang Dal hooligans to object, chant “

”, intimidate and violate the peaceful protestors.

The existing education system in India has many drawbacks as it is, but the current government and the New Education Policy ensure that the youth remain oblivious, uneducated on matters of significance and lack the ability to critique anyone in power. By banning books or endorsing massive censorship, as recently seen across Kashmir where there had been a massive crackdown in libraries, the authority is directly limiting access to a wider narrative and reality, and through hooligans like Bajrang Dal it is indirectly showing that the authority can summon up physical violence against a simple but liberating act, such as reading, if official censorship doesn’t work.

Sonia Gandhi’s upcoming autobiographical book was not published by Penguin India; allegedly, the publisher demanded the removal of a few paragraphs for it to be published. The autobiography is now published internationally by Penguin Random House; for both Penguin India and Penguin Random House, the parent company is the same: Bertelsman. Why is one publisher demanding removal of passages and the other is publishing worldwide? Clearly, the company itself has no issue regarding the content of the book. This raises the question of interference by people in authority.

Limiting artistic freedom is quite on-brand for the censorship authorities: when they cannot find a legitimate issue with one's art, limit it, censor parts as opposed to a complete ban, give a choice, so that, in the end, the argument does not revolve around the ban itself and direct accusations are made against the authority. Censorship allows the authority to refute arguments for a complete, unreasonable ban; censoring parts can be excused through arguments that the content instigated communal disturbances, promoted uncultured tradition or had harmful effects on the youth.

In recent times, internationally and domestically, we have all seen the manipulation of media and essentially the destruction of the same. Books are paramount to critical thinking, learning about history, which essentially helps in critiquing the existing authority, and building oneself. By destroying and limiting access to books and subsequently knowledge, the world leaders are set to make human bots in incredible numbers. The big companies and government bodies are not merely preventing the masses from seeking knowledge, but they are creating gaps in knowledge for the younger generation by maligning academic courses. If academia lacked resources and innovations before, now it has been infiltrated by false narratives and a list of books that do not threaten the existing powers. From destroying books to train AI to hooligans destroying books of Anne Frank (a holocaust victim) and Malala Yousafzai (an educational activist) to refusal to publish autobiography and demanding removal of passages, we are seeing predictions, or should we say prophecy, of Ray Bradbury becoming truer by the hour.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this Publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members.

Limiting access to knowledge through destruction, policies and hooligans alike 

“Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is where one must arrive at.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

 year ago or so, I read letters to a young poet by 

for the first time. As someone who had only ventured into writing more profusely, with heedful words and chanced upon observations which were too difficult to put to words but the need got the best out of me. I remember sitting without a fan in my room in the torrid heatwaves of Delhi because the sound of the fan caused too much noise and I meant to stay with Rainer’s words with all my sincerity, might and lack of comprehension. Reading, comprehending words and being eloquent in my speech has never been my best pursuit, I started reading too late, and started reading the books I genuinely enjoy only recently, I do not regret the time I spent during my childhood and pre-teens being imaginative, entertaining myself with my own curated follies and vices, and spending time with the very few people I knew. Comprehension of words spoken by people and writers alike has always been difficult not because I didn’t know how to read or to understand the meaning of the words but to grasp the exact words and meaning seemed unnatural, distant because I did not know the experience or the events of life that led to the curation of those words. So as someone who scarcely read or understood what was spoken to them, I for the obvious reason lack eloquence in my speech.

In the very first letter, on page 3 of my copy of the book, I found myself being understood and bewildered at the same time as to how someone so distant, unknown to my being can articulate words that suit me so perfectly, curate sentences that I never could despite having experienced the same exact events and emotions? It made me feel rather incompetent. I had only this one thing in life that was my own – my words, and as it turned out I lacked in that very significant part of my life too. The quote in question is “

things are not as graspable and sayable as on the whole we are led to believe; most events are unsayable, occur in a space that no word has ever penetrated, and most unsayable of all are works of art

, mysterious existence whose life endures alongside ours, which passes away.” As I again read this, it confuses me and satiates me all at once. I have always tethered between elements, never experiencing or feeling the absolute nature of events and words. The quote does give me some understanding that not all we live can be documented in words, and it also makes me feel incredibly stupid as to why I couldn’t decipher this simple working of life and art, the very core of my being?

After finishing the book, I had many thoughts that were unsayable, so I let it be, I promised to come back to it some time in future and perhaps then I could say it. I wrote on the back of the book, like it was my diary and not a book, that perhaps the elements of the book that remained mysterious to me was because I was too inexperienced to truly grasp what Rainer wanted to convey, one such thing was solitude – I was never too alone to be in solitude, to relish in the act of solitary thinking and existing, and I never had too many companies to be an expert on life, which made me a poor judge of the book. A year later, I understand solitude because I have experienced it, and I had an epiphany that I am very childlike, I need things to be apparent, I need to know and witness the existence of all elements of life – feelings and events, for me to understand and comprehend certain words and sentences I read in books or hear in films. A year later I found myself in solitude, with no hindrances from others or life itself, I would sit in the garden on a bench, watch the birds – magpies and black kites, tons of pigeons and camouflaged parrots, I would sneak into places I wasn't allowed in, at times I sat on the bench being very still, no music or books, I would exist in stillness among the gushes of wind and the sound leaves make when chanced upon a high speed wind, I would listen to the birds, trying to identify their sounds, but there would be a magpie in there mimicking others, confusing me still. I found solitude to be nice, not entirely lonesome. I felt more myself when I was still among trees and birds than when I was with people – familiar and strangers alike. I am so loud among my family and friends, always chatting away words, and I am so quiet among my acquaintances, but exactly myself in my solitude.

If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up the riches…

” I thought I needed more of life to happen to me, more adventures perhaps, more something, anything really, I tried to put myself out there for people to pick on, I found them so dull and lacking in being authentic, they seemed to fabricate identities but they did not have the artistry to be believable or even admirable, and so I would feel rather drained and robbed off my own curations and artistry. The thing about authenticity is that it hardly exists, when every element of life seems to be decided for, when we have inculcated influences into our existence to become something or someone, willingly or unwillingly, it seems futile work to search for honesty or even to find one's own identity. People believe what they see to be fashionable, they try to morph themselves into a fancier version that is highly pushed by the media they consume. One only has to be told that something is art or beautiful or admirable for one to believe in it. It’s all narrative, it’s all influence, it’s all someone else’s belief that we keep on reiterating. As it turns out, I comprehended Rainer’s words wrongly, I did not need more life to happen or people, I only needed to exist in a space where I could summon up riches or demons alike.

I have always found insignificance in everything, others life and words, mine as well, mine more than others, what exactly is so important about a stranger’s life or words ? but Rainer says “

” and I agree but still with apprehension, because things are only significant to people because they know it to be true, when written or crafted into art, it ceases to belong to the person who held it to such degree of seriousness and it starts to belong to the people who read it or see it and interpret it to their understanding. There is a difference between knowing and understanding, and that difference creates the height of significance. My words are important to me because it is a reaction of what I have endured and enjoyed, others merely would try to understand the meaning of with accordance to their experience and knowledge, therefore they will never truly know what I meant, unless you are a good writer or even a decent one who writes with precision for others to know the intricacies and happenings of one's world, but I do not consider myself as such.

My only loss from this collection of letters is the loss that comes with translations. What exactly did I lose when I couldn't read the text in the language it was originally written in, in the exact words of the author? It was still incredible, more holy than a gospel, but how devastating it is to not understand the exact words/language of my favorite author. I only hope, each year when I read the letters again like I am receiving them for the first time with my newfound understanding of life and art, which would evolve later for certain, I write a letter like Rainer would actually read it.

A letter to a poet from a young writer 

Is the Indian audience too sensitive for an honest film bringing up discussions of police brutality, political discourses, caste violence, and genocide that have happened in this very country by its own people, or does the government fear sound and aware citizens? In recent years, India has seen bans and censorship of films, lack of artistic freedom, and infiltration of political agendas into the art. When films with little to no accuracy are celebrated, and allegorical or biographical films that depict real events and issues in the country are banned or redacted to the point that authenticity and artistic vision are lost, where does artistic freedom stand in this country then? 

In January of 2025, the film Santosh, directed by British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri, was set to be released. The film is set in North India, where a widowed woman, Santosh, who joins the police force, investigates the murder of a young Dalit girl. The film is persistent in its raw portrayal of misogyny, violence against Dalits, and the darker side of the Indian Police force. The film was banned in India despite receiving applause internationally. 

In July of 2026, another film was taken off by the censor board after the filmmakers struggled for years for its theatrical release. The film is Satluj, directed by Honey Trehan, starring Diljit Dosanjh. 

Satluj, which was previously named “Ghalughara”, a historical Punjabi term associated with the massacre of Sikhs in 1746, 1762 and 1984, by the recommendation of the CBFC, was then changed to Punjab’95 and now to Sutlej, depicts the life of Shaheed Jaswant Singh Kharla, who was a human rights activist. He investigated the cremation of thousands of unidentified bodies that happened in Punjab between the years 1984 and 1994. The film was set to release in 2023 in theaters, but after unreasonable cuts and censorship recommended by CBFC, the filmmakers found a loophole and released the uncut version on the OTT platform Zee5. The film was taken down shortly in India, while it is still available to watch in other countries. 

Media in any form is not merely for entertainment; it inspires, educates, and tells stories unheard of or hidden from us by the government. Now more than ever, censorship and bans across media platforms are increasing– suppression of independent media channels, films documenting corruption of administrative powers, and books that pose differences in ideological viewpoints are banned. In a country with cultural, lingual, and religious differences in every few villages, the same country’s government does not consider differences of challenging and opposing viewpoints in cinemas. 

Sutlaj does not oppose the ruling government; it exposes the darker side of the administration that runs our country. The same administration that is designed and bound by the constitution to protect the people of this country exploits us at their convenience and to what extent. The film does not diminish or conceal the horrifying truth of the genocide of sikhs. Through Jaswant Khara’s character and his discoveries, it lays out the brutality that was unleashed on the people of Punjab as cleanly as the filmmakers could. This is what makes censorship nowadays: not to protect children from harmful content, not to release communal films like Kashmir Files or Kerala Story– no, these are the films that are encouraged; and the ones that critique administrative powers and their misuse are banned or censored. 

A question that kept coming up was “Why is the current government backing a ban that discusses a genocide that happened in the opposition’s rule?” and the answer to this is that the ruling party holds accountability for graver administrative misuse. When a film like Maachis by Gulzar can be released in the aftermath of the Genocide, when the wounds were still raw and fresh, when there was a chance of a communal upheaval, then why decades later was the film Sutlaj banned? 

A criticism of the administration is a criticism of the government. When people watch films of police brutality and violence, they will know how corrupt the system was and how corrupt it still is because the acts of violence by the administrative powers never end. The people, in the present, will see that the situation of our administrative system is still the same: the police still terrorize lower-class citizens who have no power or awareness of their rights; they still get harmed physically and psychologically without any justice; at times they are rewarded with more harm than justice. 

Police brutality has often been touched upon in Indian cinema, but scarcely does it depict the scale of damage it does to common, ordinary people who cannot withstand an authority with power. When the people of India can suffer the direct result of brutality, discrimination, and violence, then it is granted that the Indian audience can stomach truthfulness and authenticity in cinemas. The bans nowadays are more political than protective. When our freedom of speech and expression is compromised like many other rights, we need to establish firmer codes on which cinema is offensive and which is acceptable. 

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this Publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members. 

The Ban on Satluj: can a reiteration of the past be too sensitive for the present audience ?

This article aims to explore the manipulation, corruption and infiltration of humans by the organised system that runs the world. From the very beginning, what we experience, feel, and dream about is monitored and well established by the system. They habituate us to their liking, to benefit in their vices, and we willingly or unwillingly submit before them. The normalised mechanization of human existence and generalized norms result in the lack of individual choices and more in collective submission. The questions of resistance are raised often, but in actuality the act itself seems impossible, and so, only the thought remains. This article is akin to this experience, raising questions, resisting with words, but in practice, despite having answers, the impossibility of it all seems to persist still.


How does one resist the system while being enclosed within it? The organised system is too intricate in its organisation, its formation and execution. Each person serves a purpose in this organisation, and if that person ceases to be useful, they come in abundance, ready to be used to fulfillment– like Ophiocordyceps unilateralis- the parasite infects an ant’s brain, commands the ant to climb to a growth where the fungi can survive and then devours it whole when its purpose is fulfilled. The ordinary people are the ants in this web of the organised system; the system commands us and hollows us out till nothing remains. We resist, we speak, we boycott– but all are bootless cries. We are still inside the system, still in abundance, still serving someone else’s purpose, still quantified into mere numbers rather than human beings.

The organisation begins when, at three years of age, a little child is sent to be “educated” in schools. The children must know the perils of these organisations. They are intuitive, and so they resist (which is smothered in the near future); they cry before they go off to be educated and to be civilised. They rush back home crying still, but are sent back again the next morning and the ordeal is repeated throughout their lives, which they never anticipate, but accept at some point in their childhood. The schools are but mere habituation centres; the children are taught everything unimportant to their survival and everything important to the system that manufactures modern slaves. From very early on, the children learn about the sound of the bells; the school decides when they eat their lunches. They want us to be hungry at the same time, so they can get rid of our hunger altogether, reviving us when they want, starving us because they can. The parents give the rights to their children’s life, character, and what they ought to become, too readily to the organisation, oblivious to the kind of contrivance they will make out of these children. The rules get stricter as the children grow- they are taught obedience, hierarchy, respect, and submissiveness. Even in the smallest of schools, there is a power that the children must show obedience to- the children must stand up in respect when encountered with the power, lower their gazes to not be disrespectful, and always be aware that any sort of rebellion (which might as well be for a basic human right) will be seen as treachery and one can be thrown out of the system (which they never do, they hammer at your knees till they bend). The need to establish hierarchy is the essence of the organised system; without it, the world will collapse (or that’s what they want us to believe). The Principal, teachers, prefects, seniors, juniors and the staff– each play their part of being dominant to the lower levels and submissive to the upper levels, perfecting the act till each individual’s psyche is infiltrated by a collective experience of identity, self-worth, and imagination. They forcefully put you in tiny boxes called classrooms with no room for individual development; all your conundrums have the same roots, all your misery is shared with twenty to forty other people, and so you confide in one another, bond over the shared experience, and acquire a sense of pseudo-collectiveness instead of uniting as individuals to form friendships and relations.

The children are grown-ups now; they have left school– psychologically trained and physically morphed. Now they enter the formulation stages of the system. The college is where it's all decided- who will be formulated into puppets, who will be cast out as rebellious, and who will be the combination of the two– resisting while still benefiting from the system. Presently, we all are in the combination. Most people seem to turn complacent more than they seem to revolt; they have been trained well. The college provides one with more freedom, or rather, a sense of freedom– bells do not ring, you can be late to classes, argue with teachers or be friends with them if you must, roam around the campus, wear what you want, explore yourself, be an individual. All seems very gratifying and freeing at its crux, but the core is still rotten, still controlled and managed by this organised system. More than half of the students graduating from school choose to go into STEM because that is socially acceptable. The remaining students who choose to study a subject from the humanities have rebelled their way into the arts, and now they must excel in order to be relevant. The act of being relevant is in itself a representation of how the organised system formulates the modern slave. First, it is important to the system to keep broilers naked and vulnerable, stripped of any sort of freedom or individuality, and then they proffer you profusely with a sense of freedom, and so you clutch onto the sense for as long as you have it. One becomes oblivious of the consequences when they are in a reverie; the perils are so far beyond the periphery to seek out, and it is so very dreamlike inside the periphery to ever want to get out. The grown-ups in college live in the reverie, tasting joy, joining societies, socialising with peers, living life at last. Some might still be wary of the consequences because they have known too many restrictions to be completely oblivious.

The last stage is execution or utilisation of the manufactured products. And so at twenty-five, the grown ups with all their senses and freedom “choose” to work in the cooperate while fantasizing about opening a small business of their own, earn enough money to acquire a sense of luxury– get a big enough house, eat farm bred meat everyday, buy expensive imported stuff, show off a little, seek the society's validation as to how “successful” they are while still being a chatterbox of how corrupt the government is, how fascist it has become, the advancing monopoly of a certain group of MNCs, and cruelty against minorities (but only when it comes to the sect they belong to). The final product of this organised system is a person who speaks, comprehends words, recognises the perils, critiques the system and is still a slave. They want a sound slave, an intelligent one. A foolish one will be useless; how will the big companies work? The organised system requires the knowledge of the modern slave to still be relevant and to proliferate. And the modern slave knows that they are a slave and are still willing to be one for as long as they are fed crumbs of freedom and life, because they have been habituated well.

The question still persists- how can one take themselves out of the system? How can they cease to be zombies? Do they become outlaws? Spend the rest of their lives in jail, appealing for a trial and getting none? We have enough of those, and the system keeps them in check. Do we reject all forms of organised system, religion, and government entirely? But how will that work out for us? Rejecting the organised system will result in being exiled in a desert with no water, no food, and no people because all that is by the grace of the organised system. Rejecting organised religion will result in being exiled from human connections and mocked for eternity. Rejecting the government is something we often do, but what has come out of it is still very obscure, very stagnant. What we ought to do or think or believe has become something very unnatural and out of the world at this point in time.

What we do in actuality is that we wait, we hold our breaths, and with watchful eyes we search for a change to come by. When we are oppressed, we resist; we revolt at last, a revolution is finally attained, and we repeat the same cycle in a different font a century later. The time gone by- a history of today. What present will be the history of the future? And so the cycle repeats; we perform our parts, the curtains are never drawn.

 is pursuing a Bachelor's degree in English from Jamia Millia Islamia.

We Know Too Many Restrictions To Be Oblivious Of The Consequences

This article aims to explore the literature on partition that proffers people with a perspective on women’s agency, dehumanisation of women, and the cruelty they endured during the partition. The oral testimonies and accounts employed by feminist writers like Urvashi Butalia, Kamla Bhasin, and Ritu Menon to narrate untold horrific events that occurred in the years that led to the partition have been a poignant and limited source that portrays women's brutality. By putting women in the centre of the partition, the aforementioned writers describe partition not as a political division but a gendered human catastrophe.

When a flock of bar-headed Goose or the Siberian crane flies from their homeland to a distant or alien land because of weather changes, we call it migration. However, when the largest human displacements occur, when not one but millions of people have to abandon their soil, their life, their relations and families to go live somewhere they have nothing to grasp onto- we fail to give it meaning or terminology. The partition of India in 1947 is often described as one of the greatest migrations, but the people who left India and went to the other side or the people who came to India from across the border, were not ready for the migration like flocks of birds. The displacement was the result of years of communal riots and tension; it was as historical as it was political. Both countries, to this date, continue to fight the horrors of the partition. As the devastation unfolded, we saw a great deal of something which was not political or historical, but emotional and psychological. The psychological aftermath of the partition led to the development of “Oral Histories”. The oral accounts of events enabled the survivors to tell the repercussions of political agendas on ordinary human lives and how some events of the past cannot be determined by official records.

The documentation of human sufferings of the partition in literature has paved a way for people who were afflicted by the partition as well as for the people who were just witnesses of the horrid event, to resonate or to understand what happened in the years that led to the violence and what actually happens when 14-15 million people get displaced in a mere few days. But since writers and officials have always been more empathetic towards the sufferings of men in particular, given that any event in history is directly a result of what “men” do, which is perhaps true and affects only men, which is almost always wrong, the partition literature in the early days had reflected this discriminatory documentation of human suffering.

Feminist writers of the time gave voices to the voiceless women who suffered not just the partition, but the horror of being born a woman. The 

by Urvashi Butalia traverses through different stories of women during partition, from silent victims to trauma hidden in domestic lives to communal fights within families to violence that occurred in the name of “honour”, the book echoes the silenced victims of the partition. One of Butalia’s stories narrates the story of a sikh man who killed all the women in his family because he feared them getting raped by the rioters. The impact of murdering your own family members in an act of impulse induced with fear and systematic patriarchy on the human psyche cannot be comprehended in mere words; a daughter being murdered at the hands of her own father cannot be documented in a text. The undocumented sufferings of women were those that women were abducted in broad daylight by the men of the “other community” and raped and murdered because a woman represents “honour” which they get raped for, and that same honour is stripped off of her when men deems them convenient. Some accounts in her book describe how partition was not a momentary event that came and went; its scars were/are carried out by the ones who survived, by the children who lost their entire families and crossed borders alone, by the families whose family is yet to be completed because half of them were left on the other side of the border. The doom of the survivors is that they don’t survive; they live the same suffering through the years, till they die.

“Twelve million people were displaced as a result of Partition. Nearly one million died. Some 75,000 women were raped, kidnapped, abducted, and forcibly impregnated by men of the ‘other’ religion, thousands of families were split apart, homes burnt down and destroyed, and villages abandoned. Refugee camps became part of the landscape of most major cities in the north, but, a half century later, there is still no memorial, no memory, no recall, except what is guarded, and now rapidly dying, in families and collective memory.”

Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon, in their co-authored book, “

Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition”, 

narrate the Partition from a feminist and gendered lens. Through oral testimonies alongside official records and recoveries, Bhasin and Menon describe the brutality against women not as something that happened in a flick, but something intentional, systematic and symbolic. When women are abducted, raped and converted in the name of politics, honor and reclaiming authority, it is intentional and symbolises how women are deemed and treated as pawns in the games men so like to play.

“Abduction was central to partition, not accidental”

“National honour was protected at the cost of women’s lives”

And so, when the flock of humanity fled from one side to the other, when the flock couldn’t remain a flock and were divided in communities- life long camaraderie forgotten and hatred taking refuge in humanity’s core, there was one community which remained together, battling the same horrors and fighting the same regime that makes them voiceless and that community was of the women. Women across borders in both countries suffered multiple atrocities at the hands of the “other community”, and that was the community of men. Women throughout history have been silenced, their voices muffled, their faces smeared, and their lives brutalised in accordance with the demands of the oppressor. The partition is one such account of women’s suffering, which saw a ray of light because of feminist writers of the time.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members.

Articles by Sufia Siddiqui

Limiting access to knowledge through destruction, policies and hooligans alike

A letter to a poet from a young writer

The Ban on Satluj: can a reiteration of the past be too sensitive for the present audience ?

We Know Too Many Restrictions To Be Oblivious Of The Consequences

Literature Depicting Women’s Agency During Partition

Limiting access to knowledge through destruction, policies and hooligans alike

A letter to a poet from a young writer

The Ban on Satluj: can a reiteration of the past be too sensitive for the present audience ?

We Know Too Many Restrictions To Be Oblivious Of The Consequences

Literature Depicting Women’s Agency During Partition