Banu Mushtaq is not just a writer, lawyer and activist.
She is a “Muslim woman writer”, a label that, the Booker Prize winner said, continues to define and confine her.
Speaking on the opening day of the Exide Kolkata Literary Meet, partnered by The Telegraph, Mushtaq reflected on identity and how it shapes a writer’s life and work.
“I am not a writer. I am a Muslim woman writer. That tag always haunts me,” Mushtaq said at the Alipore Museum, the new venue for Calcutta’s annual tryst with books and ideas. “I have to write under identities. I am answerable to those identities. Even today, I have not broken free from them.”
Mushtaq inaugurated the festival and later featured in a session on her short story anthology Heart Lamp, which won the International Booker Prize 2025. She became the first author writing in Kannada to receive the coveted award.
Heart Lamp is also the first short story collection to win the Booker. Comprising 12 stories written between 1990 and 2023, the book poignantly captures the lives and hardships of Muslim women in southern India. Mushtaq shared the prize with Deepa Bhasthi, who translated the stories from Kannada into English.
At the session, Mushtaq was in conversation with journalist Chinki Sinha, who asked her about the challenges of finding a publisher. Mushtaq said the struggle did not end with publication — in many ways, it intensified.
“Getting published is difficult. But things get more difficult after you are published,” she said. “I was made to explain my theories. I was condemned for my writing. I was humiliated, trolled and thrown out of the community.”
Recalling the trauma, Mushtaq spoke of sustained abuse from people who, she said, knew neither about literature nor her work.
“Writing is easy, but sustaining it is more difficult,” she said. “From head to toe, I was orally raped... by men who could not understand my writing or my characters, but abused me continuously.”
The emotional toll manifested physically. Mushtaq developed rashes all over her body. Dermatologists could not help. When she went to a psychiatrist, he told her the rashes were a symptom of self-rejection. “He advised me to come out of that self-rejection. It was tough... but that is how I slowly recovered from the rashes,” she said.
Despite all of this, Mushtaq said she harboured no bitterness.
When the floor was opened to questions, a woman from the audience spoke of the resilience of Mushtaq’s women characters. “You give strength to all of us women. Your characters don’t turn bitter. There is so much strength and positivity. Is that your feminism?” she asked.
Mushtaq replied that feminism, for her, could be summed up in one phrase: equal treatment and equal opportunities. The pervasive nature of patriarchy was what made her women rebellious, she said.
“Leaving home or divorcing a person is not the only relief a woman can get,” she said. “Patriarchy is rooted in the domestic arena. From there, it spreads to the streets — to offices, colleges and hospitals. Go to any institution and patriarchy has reached there before you. Even Parliament and courts are not free of it. The government is not ruling us. Patriarchy is. That is why my women are rebellious.”
The audience responded with loud applause.