Indian author scripts History with international Booker Prize Win

Indian writer-Lawyer activist Banu Mushtaq has a script history by winning the International Booker Prize for the anthology of the short story, Heart Lamp.

It is the first book written in the Kannada language, which is spoken in the South Indian state Karnataka, to win the prestigious prize.

The stories in Hartlamp were translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi.

With 12 short stories written by Mushtaq for three decades from 1990 to 2023, Heart Lamp grips the hardships of Muslim women who live in South India.

The victory of Mushtaq is behind the back of Geetanjali Shree’s grave of Zand – translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell – winning the prize in 2022.

Her oeuvre is known among book lovers, but the Booker International Win has a larger spotlight on her life and literary oeuvre, which reflects many of the challenges that causes women in her stories, caused by religious conservatism and a deep patriarchal society.

It is this self -awareness that Mushtaq may have helped in making some of the most nuanced characters and plot lines.

“In a literary culture that rewards spectacle, Hartlamp urges the value of the attention – to lives that lived on the edges, to unnoticed choices, to the power that is simply needed to continue to exist. That is the silent power of Banu Mushtaq,” ” judgement In the Indian Express newspaper says about the book.

Mushtaq grew up in a small town in the southern state of Karnataka in a Muslim neighborhood and, like most girls around her, studied the Koran in the Urdu language at school.

But her father, an employee of the government, wanted more for her and at the age of eight she registered at a monastery school where the medium of instruction was the official language of the state – Kannada.

Mushtaq worked hard to become fluent in Kannada, but this alien tongue would be the language she chose for her literary expression.

She started writing while she was still at school and chose to go to university, even while her colleagues married and raised children.

It would take a few years before Mushtaq was published and it happened during a particularly challenging phase in her life.

Her short story appeared in a local magazine a year after she was married to a man at the age of 26, but her early years were also characterized by conflicts and struggle – something she openly spoke about, in various interviews.

In one interview With Vogue Magazine she said: “I had always wanted to write, but had nothing to write (over) because suddenly, after a love marriage, it was told to wear a burqa and to devote myself to household work. I became a mother who suffered from postpartum depression at 29”.

To another interview To the weekly magazine she spoke about how she was forced to live a life that is locked up within the four walls of her house.

Then a shocking act of resistance released her.

“Once, in an attack of despair, I donated white gasoline on myself, with the intention of on fire to myself. Fortunately he felt (the man) felt it on time, hugged me and took the match box away. He begged me and put our baby on my feet and said,” she did not leave us, “she told the magazine.

In Hartlamp, her female characters reflect this spirit of resistance and resilience.

“In the regular Indian literature, Muslim women are often flattened in metaphors – silent patients or tropics in someone else’s moral argument. Mushtaq refuses both. Her characters tolerate, negotiate and push back – not in ways claiming headlines, but in ways that are important for their lives,” ” revision of The book in the Indian Express newspaper.

Mushtaq continued to work as a reporter in a prominent local tabloid and also associated with the Bandaya movement – which focused on tackling social and economic injustices through literature and activism.

After leaving journalism a decade later, she started work as a lawyer to maintain her family.

In a legendary career of several decades, she has published an abundant amount of work; Including six short story collections, an essay collection and a novel.

But her sharp writing has also made her a target of hatred.

In one interview She spoke to the Hindu newspaper about how she received threatening phone calls in the year 2000 after she had expressed her opinion to support the right of women to offer prayer in mosques.

A fatwa – a legal statement according to Islamic law – was published against her and a man tried to attack her with a knife before he was overwhelmed by her husband.

But these incidents did not come to Mushtaq, who continued to write with severe honesty.

“I have consequently challenged chauvinistic religious interpretations. These issues are now central even now in my writing. Society has changed a lot, but the core issues remain the same. Although the context evolves, the fundamental struggle of women and marginalized communities remain,” “” told The weekly magazine.

Over the years, the writings of Mushtaq have won countless prestigious local and national prizes, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe Award.

In 2024, the translated English compilation of the five short story collections of Mushtaq won between 1990 and 2012 – Hasena and other stories – the Pen Translation Prize.