JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, June 12, 2025

‘No Story Is Ever Small’: Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp wins the 2025 International Booker Prize

by

Ira Mathur
18 days ago
20250525

On May 20, 2025, at Lon­don’s Tate Mod­ern, Banu Mush­taq made his­to­ry as the first Kan­na­da au­thor and In­di­an Mus­lim woman to win the In­ter­na­tion­al Book­er Prize. Her short sto­ry col­lec­tion, Heart Lamp, trans­lat­ed by Deepa Bhasthi and pub­lished by And Oth­er Sto­ries, fea­tures 12 sto­ries writ­ten over 30 years por­tray­ing the lives of women and girls in Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties in south­ern In­dia. She is the sec­ond In­di­an au­thor to win the In­ter­na­tion­al Book­er Prize, af­ter Gee­tan­jali Shree, in 2022.

This is the first book trans­lat­ed from Kan­na­da—a lan­guage spo­ken by around 65 mil­lion peo­ple—to be nom­i­nat­ed for the prize. Deepa Bhasthi is the first In­di­an trans­la­tor to win. The award al­so marks a first for Sheffield-based in­de­pen­dent pub­lish­er And Oth­er Sto­ries.

Born in 1948 in Has­san, Kar­nata­ka, Mush­taq at­tend­ed a Kan­na­da-medi­um school in Shiv­a­mog­ga as a child, where she mas­tered the lan­guage.

Mush­taq’s lit­er­ary ca­reer be­gan in the 1970s with­in the Ban­daya Sahitya (Rebel Lit­er­a­ture) move­ment, which chal­lenged caste, class, and pa­tri­ar­chal norms. Her writ­ings, root­ed in ac­tivism, fo­cus on the lived ex­pe­ri­ences of Mus­lim and Dalit women in south­ern In­dia. Dalit women be­long to com­mu­ni­ties once la­belled “un­touch­able” un­der the Hin­du caste sys­tem—so­cial­ly ex­clud­ed, eco­nom­i­cal­ly ex­ploit­ed, and po­lit­i­cal­ly si­lenced. They face the com­pound­ed op­pres­sion of caste and gen­der, of­ten work­ing in low-paid or un­paid labour, with lit­tle pro­tec­tion from caste-based vi­o­lence.

In 2000, Mush­taq was tar­get­ed by a fat­wa is­sued by cler­ics in Kar­nata­ka af­ter she crit­i­cised the treat­ment of women with­in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. Her name was de­nounced from pul­pits. Threats fol­lowed. Li­braries were told to pull her books. The in­ten­tion was omi­nous: to shut her down. She kept writ­ing and pub­lish­ing where she could while work­ing as a lawyer and teacher in Shiv­a­mog­ga.

This win felt per­son­al to me. I stud­ied Kan­na­da in school in Ban­ga­lore. It was the com­pul­so­ry state lan­guage, taught along­side Hin­di, Eng­lish and San­skrit. In a coun­try of 28 states, each with its own of­fi­cial lan­guage, Banu Mush­taq’s win breaks the dom­i­nance of Eng­lish and Hin­di, reaf­firm­ing Kan­na­da’s place in a lin­guis­tic land­scape now threat­ened by cen­tralised, Hin­di-first na­tion­al­ism.

Mush­taq, a lawyer and a known voice in pro­gres­sive Kan­na­da writ­ing came through her work as a lawyer—many of the women who came to her for le­gal help be­came the ba­sis for her char­ac­ters.

Ban­ga­lore (changed to Ben­galu­ru af­ter a Hin­du ruler, Veera Bal­lala II) is my home­town in In­dia. I went to school there. With this win, I had to un­pack the wave that came over me, as I am sure it has over every woman in In­dia whose sur­vival de­pends on a plur­al In­dia.

Banu Mush­taq’s win re­stored some­thing in me. Of Ban­ga­lore be­fore it was turned in­to Ben­galu­ru, a con­vent, girls in uni­form, a sun­lit tree, pat­terned shad­ows on a white field, in a class­room bent heads, oiled plaits, trac­ing the script of Kan­na­da.

We were taught by South In­di­an nuns that Kan­na­da, with its round­ed, al­most or­na­men­tal shapes, evolved from Brah­mi through Kadam­ba, de­signed for palm-leaf man­u­scripts that favoured curves over straight lines. Kan­na­da is among the old­est of the Dra­vid­i­an lan­guages, with a lit­er­ary his­to­ry from the fifth cen­tu­ry and an old­er spo­ken his­to­ry.

Its ca­dence is soft, its struc­ture syl­lab­ic, its stress even, with words end­ing in vow­els.

I had learned to keep my South In­di­an past to my­self. We weren’t na­tive to Ban­ga­lore—my moth­er was a Mus­lim Khan with roots in Afghanistan, my fa­ther a Hin­du from North In­dia—but it was where I was so­cialised to love the lan­guages spo­ken there: Tamil, Kan­na­da, Malay­alam, and Tel­ugu.

That Banu Mush­taq, a Mus­lim woman writ­ing in Kan­na­da, has won the 2025 In­ter­na­tion­al Book­er Prize is as po­lit­i­cal as it is lit­er­ary. She writes in a lan­guage spo­ken by around 65 mil­lion peo­ple (By the 1980s, Kan­na­da had been over­tak­en by Eng­lish in ur­ban life but re­mained in bu­reau­cra­cy, state schools, and lo­cal me­dia) in a coun­try of 1.3 bil­lion and at a time when Mus­lims—about 200 mil­lion—face grow­ing mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion (Pew Re­search Cen­ter, 2021).

Since 2014, the Mo­di gov­ern­ment has passed laws and poli­cies that have stripped Mus­lims of pro­tec­tions: the re­vo­ca­tion of Ar­ti­cle 370 in Kash­mir and the Cit­i­zen­ship Amend­ment Act.

Mus­lim women in In­dia re­main at the bot­tom of the so­cial lad­der, with poor­er ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, health­care, and le­gal sup­port than any oth­er group (Sachar Com­mit­tee Re­port, 2006; All In­dia Mus­lim Per­son­al Law Board, 2023).

A cam­paign to erase or re­name In­dia’s di­verse lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al his­to­ries has gath­ered speed. Mughal-era road names have been re­placed. Al­la­habad be­came Praya­graj. Au­rangabad be­came Chha­tra­p­ati Samb­ha­ji Na­gar.

In Kar­nata­ka, there have been calls to rewrite text­books to re­flect a more “In­di­an”—that is, Hin­du—view of his­to­ry. The sym­bol­ic mes­sage is that to be Mus­lim or to speak a re­gion­al lan­guage is to be pushed out­side the frame.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored