International Booker Prize win for ‘Heart Lamp': Through her work, Banu Mushtaq reimagines feminism, faith and literary resistance

Indian Express

23-05-2025

Written by Manu V Devadevan
'Being in a body, he craves for food; being in a body, he spreads the lie. Beware! Don't slight me for being in a body. Get into a body like me for once, and see for yourself, Ramanatha.' These words of Devar Dasimayya, the eleventh century weaver-saint from Karnataka, come to mind as I read the last lines from the English translation of Banu Mushtaq's anthology of short stories, Heart Lamp. 'If you were to build the world again, to create males and females again, do not be like an inexperienced potter. Come to earth as a woman, Prabhu! Be a woman once, oh Lord!'
Mushtaq, who won the International Booker Prize 2025 for Heart Lamp, is no Dasimayya. Unlike him, who rejected gender binaries with a ruthless masculine resolve, Mushtaq is a feminist who is self-conscious of her womanhood in almost everything she writes. Her work also reminds us that in the 900 years that separate her from Dasimayya, the world might have changed beyond recognition, but there are still things that remain unchanged.
Born in Hassan, Karnataka, in 1948, Mushtaq is an advocate by profession and has been an activist associated with various progressive movements for nearly five decades. Her flair for writing, which goes back to her school days, received a clear direction during the turbulent years of the 1970s that led to the surge of Dalit, Bandaya (dissident) and women's writings in Kannada. Mushtaq was part of the Bandaya Sahitya Sanghatane (association for dissident literature) and has also been its convener. Her participation in the peasant and Dalit movement seems to have rekindled the anger against injustice she had developed in her younger years.
When Mushtaq began writing, there were no Muslim voices in Kannada writing about the community. She recalls that Muslims figuring in the works of Hindu writers were all bright as angels or dark as demons, with no grey shades to them. Exceptions weren't unknown (there is Poornachandra Tejaswi's unforgettable Dare Devil Mustafa), but they hardly left any mark. Earnest feminist voices had begun to be heard in the 1970s in works such as Srikrishna Alanahalli's Parasangada Gendethimma (1974), M K Indira's Phaniyamma (1976), some poems in H S Shivaprakash's Milarepa (1977), and Devanur Mahadeva's Odalala (1978). In her writings, Mushtaq brought feminism and Muslim representation in literature together, being aware that a Muslim woman had special challenges that cry out for a space of their own.
Mushtaq's oeuvre consists of a novel and six story collections, in addition to Kannada translations of an assortment of legal texts. While her writings are emblematic of the Bandaya school in which she was trained, they are neither bestsellers nor texts that have invited Kannada literary criticism's sustained attention. Mushtaq tells stories of Muslim families, often from an upper-middle-class economic stratum. At the heart of the stories are the womenfolk living mundane lives, but with a not-so-mundane and generally unfulfilled desire to live lives on their own terms. There is a restless calm in their everyday lives, which is made restless because the men and women in Mushtaq's stories have political awareness.
The politics of religion occupy considerable space in Mushtaq's stories. The quotidian conversations are often about issues such as the Shah Bano case, a Muslim's unceremonious funeral in a Hindu graveyard, a kafan from Mecca soaked in the holy Zamzam water, reading the Qur'an three times a day, and a tomb for one's wife that will put the Taj Mahal to shame. And it is not long before things assume a dogmatic air, making many a sensitive reader wonder if art should only remain political or become politics itself. In this sense, High-Heeled Shoe is a remarkable story because of the balance it succeeds in striking between art and politics. It is a moving treatment of a pregnant woman who ends up wearing high-heeled footwear.
Behind the calmness of everyday life, there are great waves of dissatisfaction with a range of catastrophes in the waiting. In the stories, many a woman appears cheerful, sensitive and reflective, but feels, like a few men at times, that she is a stranger in her own house, unable to make a choice. As the narrator in one of the stories says, 'I am a prisoner of a soul whose doors and windows are shut.' She is, in fact, ready to 'become an exploding volcano' at any time.
Mushtaq's primary commitment is to the Muslim women, and it is a deeply humanist commitment. She is essentially telling stories of betrayal, loneliness and longing for love. A student of Indian literature of the last five decades isn't unfamiliar with such stories. We live in times when the importance of listening to multiple voices is recognised more than ever before. But these are also times when the multiple voices we hear are increasingly filled with the same story. This sameness tends to prevail in Mushtaq's oeuvre too, but a piece like High-Heeled Shoe more than underlines her gift for telling stories that were never told before. One waits for the day when Mushtaq will have many untold stories to tell.
The writer is a historian and teaches at IIT, Mandi