Banu Mushtaq: Why my Booker Prize is a victory for women and secular Muslims

The celebrated author of Heart Lamp talks to The National about her life-long activism and why she will continue to use her voice to call for change

Banu Mushtaq won the International Booker Prize this year for Heart Lamp. Getty Images

Banu Mushtaq, the trailblazing Indian author who made history in May by winning the International Booker Prize for her novel Heart Lamp, says the award marks a collective victory – for literature, for women and for her secular Muslim identity in a country she sees as increasingly divided.

Mushtaq, 77, has spun the tales of everyday lives of Muslim women and girls, their rights and treatment under the patriarchal system in India.

Originally written in Kannada language, spoken predominantly in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Heart Lamp is the first collection of short stories to be awarded by the prestigious prize. The stories explore women and their different phases of life – from teenage years, to marriage, motherhood and even death. There are stories of grandmothers and aunts, sisters-in-law and neighbours, divorced women or those who have been abandoned by their husbands.

There is a heart-rending story of a mother who fails to save her infant daughter who dies of hunger, and another story of a woman who dies in childbirth after pushing out eight children.

There is a story of power dynamics between a woman and her daughter-in-law and a satirical take on an ignorant mutawalli, the manager of an Islamic trust who is caught between his sisters’ demand of their rightful share in ancestral property and his religious duties of burying an unidentified body for respect in the community.

Mushtaq with her book Heart Lamp at her residence in Hassan, Karnataka. AFP

As a Muslim woman, Mushtaq, who often calls herself a “critical insider”, says it is important for her to tell the stories of women’s rights and religious injustice.

“I cannot tolerate injustice. When I see such a situation, I become so furious but helpless at the same time. I don’t want to shout so I start writing about them directly,” she tells The National.

Post-partum depression and activism

Mushtaq is the eldest of the nine children, seven daughters and two sons, born to a progressive father and a teenage mother in Hassan in Karnataka. Being the oldest, she was fierce from a young age, she says. It's a quality that shaped her life as an activist, a lawyer and a progressive writer.

Muslims were supposed to study in Urdu, a language originated in India inspired from Persian and Arabic, and spoken mostly by the community. However, her father wanted her to study in the Kannada-language missionary school. She wrote her first story at the age of nine and her first book published in 1974.

“My father was a secular person and wanted us to study in the regional language spoken in the state. I was given admission on the condition that I pick up the grammar in six months,” she says.

A young Banu Mushtad, second from left, with her father Sheikh Abdul Rahman, mother Akhtarajan and sister Gowher. Photo: Banu Mushtaq

In contrast to community expectations, she studied science, attended university and worked as a teacher at a school and married a man of her choice at the age of 25, considered radical for the times.

Despite being a strong-willed woman, Mushtaq chose to become a housewife as expected by her in-laws. But the decision almost cost her life when she tried to kill herself due to post-partum depression after giving birth to her first child.

“It was a precondition that I should not continue the job,” she recalls. “It was a large family. We used to cook for 20 people three times a day. It was a shock for me because I always wanted to do something better but the circumstances restricted me to four walls.

“Within a year, I gave birth to a daughter. I already had unrest within me but may have post-partum depression. One day, I quarrelled with my husband. When he was sleeping, I got my hands on white petrol and poured it all over me. I was wild and about to light myself up. My husband got up and saved me,” she says.

Banu Mushtaq following her graduation in 1970. Photo: Banu Mushtaq

The horrific incident left her husband, Mohiyuddin, who worked with his family business, shocked. He decided to move out of the large family house so his wife could live life on her own terms.

“It was a big thing 50 years back. A son was not expected to rebel against the family,” Mushtaq says. “We went to my father’s home without a penny and within six months, I was pregnant with our second child.”

Mushtaq started stitching clothes to help run her family but she wanted more. In 1983, she fought and won local municipal elections. This eventually paved a way for her to get into social work and activism.

She was associated with the revolutionary Bandaya literature movement in Kannada literature that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s with a focus on social and economic justice, and it provided a platform for marginalised voices, including Muslims and Dalits or former untouchables.

“I started writing articles about Dalits and Muslims for newspapers as I was involved with the movement. People liked my writing and some of the major newspapers and weeklies requested me to send articles,” she says.

Fatwa and knife attack

A prolific writer, she kept writing from the 1980s but her focus changed when she realised the Muslim representation in books was missing.

“There is a particular reason. There were no women writers, only male writers, and they used to write about Muslim families but not Muslim women,” Mushtaq says. “They would write about Muslim men, a rickshaw-wala or somebody doing menial jobs and write as if they were the most vicious character. I used to wonder 'Muslim men were like everyone else, not all were bad.'

“I wanted to write about my neighbours, sorrows, happiness, feasts and particularly the Muslim world in India which was still an unexposed world, nobody had seen a glimpse so it will clear an understanding and bridge a gap between the society.”

Mushtaq has written 65 stories over three decades. But her fierce writing also upset many people in the community.

Mushtaq has written 65 stories over three decades. Photo: Booker Prize Foundation

In 2000, she was slapped with a fatwa for her advocacy of the right of Muslim women to enter mosques. Indian Muslim women are not traditionally allowed to offer prayers in mosques unlike their counterparts in the Middle East. She also survived a knife attack that year.

“In Islam, there is no such restriction but in South Asian countries because patriarchal politics restrict women,” she says. “But this irritated people. They said who am I? Why am I offering my views on this issue? They haunted me for three months,” Mushtaq recalls.

“People took the opportunity and one day, a person entered my office with a knife. Some of them started accusing me of bringing all the negative and exposing things in Muslim community.”

Mushtaq survived the knife incident after running to her home adjacent to the office and hiding in a bathroom.

Her International Booker Prize win is crucial for her, not only as a writer but also as a Muslim voice in India where majoritarian politics and communal polarisation is increasingly rising.

The political climate means Muslims in general, and Muslim women in particular, often face underrepresentation and are stereotyped. Mushtaq's writing brings authenticity, nuance, and complexity to what it means to be Muslim in India today.

She was recently called a “terrorist”. A usual trope used by right-wing fundamentalists against Muslims in India. She says she is writing about the incident in her upcoming autobiography.

“My subjects have changed after the Babri Masjid demolition. Even though there is patriarchy in Muslim society, now Muslims as a whole and the prejudices that are levelled against them is important for me,” she says.

“Somebody called me a 'terrorist' because I, as Muslim, won the Booker. I am not a cool person and thought of slapping the fellow, but I restrained myself. It haunted me for days.

“Booker Prize is a recognition for me that I am a woman, a writer and that I am a secular Muslim.”