I will now put on record the silences, says International Booker prize winner Banu Mushtaq

New Indian Express

31-07-2025

There's no black-and-white morality in your stories. For example, in 'The High-Heeled Shoe', Nayaz both loves and tortures his wife. Why do your women characters often endure so much?
What choice do they have? Patriarchy begins at home. Even if a woman leaves her husband, where will she go? Predators are everywhere, even at the workplace. She must earn, find shelter, and try to live with dignity. But even as a beggar or domestic worker, patriarchy haunts her. If she returns to her mother's home, she might be turned away. If she finds work, her employer may exploit her. Patriarchy follows her everywhere. This is why she endures and protests in her own way.
I believe 50 per cent of women would leave their partners if they had shelter. But they don't. Not even children are safe. In the womb itself, a girl child is aborted. There are posters in Rajasthan: 'Spend `600 now, save `6 lakhs later.' Misogyny begins before birth.
You began writing during the Bandaya Sahitya movement in Karnataka. How did that shape your writing, both in content and style? Do you still feel that spirit today?
Bandaya gave me permission to be angry in Kannada. It allowed me to disrupt, to write. I was one of the few Muslim women in that space. It was liberating but isolating. There was a fire, a solidarity with others who burned with questions. Bandaya made me brave. That spirit still burns in my writing but in more quieter and precise ways. Bandaya is a lens, a way to perceive and internalise the world. Its slogan — Hudga aagali, kavya haadga aagali! (Let this sword become a poem) is deeply humane. It doesn't ask the sword to cut, but to unite. That gave me the strength to use my craft with purpose.