fatwa | Jaya's blog

International Booker Prize 2025 winners – Banu Mushtaq & Deepa Bhashti

On 20 May 2025, at a glittering ceremony at the Tate Modern, London, the International Booker Prize 2025 winners were announced. They were Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhashti. They won it for the collection of short stories called Heart Lamp: Selected Stories. It has been published in the UK by And Other Stories and in India/South Asia by Penguin Random House India. The original stories in Kannada were published by Abhiruchi Prakashana.

Heart Lamp is an extraordinary collection of short stories. In it Banu Mushtaq has written about the lives women lead. Or rather, she has depicted the life cycle of a girl to womanhood and the many, many responsibilities that are thrust upon her by men. There is also persecution and violation of the girl/woman’s rights by men/patriarchy. It is not necessarily always physical violence that is shown, but emotional, psychological, financial, sexual, and mental violence are construed as forms of gender violence globally. There is sufficient evidence in the stories to show how these are perpetrated upon women on a daily basis in the most ordinary of situations and frighteningly, by men and women, closest to them in their familial/friends circle. It is a vicious tyranny. Yet, Banu Mushtaq in her act of writing, illustrate how women can act and push back, if need be. It is definitely not easy fighting systemic patriarchy and the social indoctrination of girls from a young age as to how they should conduct themselves vis-a-vis boys/men. Most often than not they are taught to disregard their innermost feelings and wishes and conform to the wishes of society/family for their own good. These wishes could be as simple as pursuing higher education and learning to be independent. Having said that, while these stories are ostensibly about women and different responsibilities that motherhood brings with it, Banu also do not shy away from exploring masculine responses to the domestic scenarios. It is a brilliant balance that she achieves. Of course, it also left me wondering if the short story form gave her more freedom to mimic the manner in which women speak and live their chaotic lives, operating at multiple levels, rather than a longer form of writing. A question that remains to be answered.

Banu speaks Dakhni, a fascinating mix of Persian, Dehlavi, Marathi, Kannada, and Telugu. Deepa’s mother tongue is Havyaka, a dialect that harks back to Old Kannada and is spoken by a small community of upper-caste Brahmins from the Arabian coast. Yet, the rhythm of the English flows beautifully in the translation. In fact, it is impossible to discern how much of the translated text that is available to Anglophone readers is a direct and true translation of the Kannada text or has it also been transcreated along the way. Having said that, Heart Lamp is a wonderful introduction Banu Mushtaq’s oeuvre. Here is a perceptive extract from Deepa’s essay on translating this text that is published in the book:

When I began to work with Banu’s stories, I grappled with what this project would be: a lapsed Hindu and an upper-caste person translating a minority voice into our shared alien language. It would be a disservice to reduce Banu’s work to her religious identity, for her stories transcend the confines of a faith and its cultural traditions. Nonetheless, in today’s India, where a decade of far-right politics has descended dangerously into Hindutva-led majoritarianism, hatred and severe persecution of minorities – iterations of such violence are found in many other countries of the world too, lest we forget – it is essential to note the milieu that she lives in and works out of. While of course a translator need not be from the same background as the writer, it still felt important to me to acknowledge our differences, our respective positions and privileges, and use this awareness to be more responsible and sensitive in my translation.

These stories are very refreshing to read given that Banu does not capitulate to any form of othering but chooses to depict life as it is within the community. It is almost as if by reading these stories, she is encouraging cross-pollination of our diverse cultures, much in the fabulously elegant way she uses references to Rama and Lakshman and Shakuni Mama. It exemplifies our syncretic Indian culture. Hence, it is no surprise that years ago a fatwa was issued against Banu Mushtaq for her outspoken writings. In fact, she was also attacked but her husband managed to fend off the attacker. (“India’s Banu Mushtaq makes history with International Booker win” BBC dot com, 21 May 2025)

There is magic in this partnership. It worked as is evident in the International Booker Prize 2025 win.

Author Banu Mushtaq (L) and translator Deepa Bhasthi, winners of the International Booker Prize 2025 ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

It was an honour and a privilege to interview the winners within hours of their win being announced. We recorded a special video podcast on 21 May 2025. The audio tracks were uploaded on the TOI website and Spotify. The video will be uploaded on YouTube shortly.

This morning’s Delhi NCR edition of Times of India has carried the news/podcast in all editions across India. It was on the front page and six articles inside. The QR code to the TOI Bookmark episode was embedded in an article and the brand name highlighted.

Front page, the Times of India, Thursday, 21 May 2025

The Times of India, Thursday, 21 May 2025

The prestigious literary prize, worth £50,000, is split equally, giving the author and translator their due recognition. The winners were announced by chair of the judges, Max Porter. He said ‘Heart Lamp is something genuinely new for English readers. A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation. This was the book the judges really loved, right from our first reading.’ Heart Lamp is the first collection of short stories to have been awarded this literary prize.

Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist and a lawyer and is from the state of Karnataka, southern India. Mushtaq began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 1980s: critical of the caste and class system, the Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers, of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women. She is a prominent champion of women’s rights. She was inspired to write stories by the experiences of women who came to her seeking help.

She is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. She writes in Kannada and has won major awards for her literary works, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards. Her International Booker Prize 2025 winning book Heart Lamp is the first book-length translation of her work into English, having been translated into Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam.

Kannada is spoken by an estimated 65 million people. These stories were written by Banu Mushtaq over a period of 30 + years, from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by Deepa Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multi-lingual nature of southern India. When the characters use Urdu or Arabic words in conversation, these are left in the original, reproducing the unique rhythms of spoken language.

Author Banu Mushtaq (R) and translator Deepa Bhasthi, winners of the International Booker Prize 2025 ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India. Bhasthi’s columns, essays and cultural criticism have been published in India and internationally. Her published translations from Kannada include a novel by Kota Shivarama Karanth and a collection of short stories by Kodagina Gouramma. Her translation of Mushtaq’s stories won a PEN Presents award in 2024, a scheme from English PEN designed to support and showcase sample translations, giving UK publishers access to titles from underrepresented languages and regions. They were collected as the International Booker Prize 2025 winning book Heart Lamp.

Max Porter presents author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi, winners of the International Booker Prize 2025 ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

Listen to their acceptance speech.

Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize, said: ‘Heart Lamp, stories written by a great advocate of women’s rights over three decades and translated with sympathy and ingenuity, should be read by men and women all over the world. The book speaks to our times, and to the ways in which many are silenced.

‘In a divided world, a younger generation is increasingly connecting with global stories that have been skilfully reworked for English-language readers through the art of translation. Since 2016, the International Booker Prize has promoted the world’s best writing in translation, and it’s been fantastic that this year’s nominated titles have come to life through our “A feast of fiction from around the world” campaign, which we’ve been delighted to see projected through new and returning collaborations with cultural venues, festivals, booksellers and content creators.

‘Next year the prize celebrates ten years in its current form, and I am optimistic that the anniversary will lead more people to discover and embrace great translated fiction.’

The winning book was chosen by the 2025 judging panel, chaired by Porter, which comprised: prize-winning poet, director and photographer Caleb Femi; writer and Publishing Director of Wasafiri Sana Goyal; author and International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator Anton Hur; as well as award-winning singer-songwriter Beth Orton. The judges were looking for the best work of long-form fiction or collection of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 May 2024 and 30 April 2025.

Both Mushtaq and Bhasthiwere nominated for the International Booker Prize for the first time this yearand Heart Lamp is Mushtaq’s first English-language publication. Mushtaq is the second Indian author to win the prize, and follows Geetanjali Shree who won in 2022 for Tomb of Sand, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Bhasthi is the first Indian translator to win the prize. Mushtaq is the sixth female author, with Bhasthi the ninth female translator, to be awarded the prize since it took on its current form in 2016.

At just over 200 pages long, Heart Lamp was the second longest book on a shortlist of slim books: four of the six shortlisted works are under 200 pages long, with Under the Eye of the Big Bird the longest, at 278 pages.

The other shortlisted writers and translators were photographed holding their books at the Tate Modern too. Here are the pictures:

The International Booker Prize 2025 ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

Hiromi Kawakami and Asa Yoneda at the International Booker Prize 2025 ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

This is a selection by an eminent jury that is spot on. Read Heart Lamp.

22 May 2025

* The photographs have been used with due permission from The Booker Prize Foundation.

Taslima Nasreen’s “Shameless”

06 05 , 2020 No Comments

In 1993 Taslima Nasreen wrote Lajja ( “Shame”) in Bengali. It was her response to the anti-Hindu riots that had broken out in Bangladesh after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Ayodhya, India on 6 December 1992. The novel was published in Bengali and within six months sold over 50,000 copies. It brought the author “fame” that till then had been unheard of in the subcontinent. Prior to this, the only other author to have had fatwas issued against them was Salman Rushdie, an author of South Asian origin but residing in UK at the time. Lajja became one of the first books in translation to be talked about by many readers internationally and this was at a time even before the Internet. ( Dial-up modems, with limited email access, were introduced in India in 1996!) Lajja became a bestseller rapidly. The English edition for the subcontinent was published by Penguin India. Subsequently a new translation was commissioned by Penguin India in 2014-15. The translator of the later edition was Anchita Ghatak. The book was banned in Bangladesh and fatwas were issued against the author. Taslima Nasreen fled to Europe and later laid roots in India. At first she chose to live in Calcutta/ Kolkatta and is now based in Delhi. Years later, Taslima Nasreen still needs security cover wherever she travels.

Lajja was explosive when it was first published as it was a Muslim author, upset by the communal riots in her land, who was writing sympathetically about a Hindu family. The story details the progressive radicalisaion of Suranjan who firmly believes in a nationalist Hindu outlook. So much so it is a belief he continues to nurture even after he, along with his family, flee Bangladesh to become refugees in India. In India he becomes a member of a Hindu nationalist party. Pirated editions of Lajja were sold in India. It became an international bestseller and was translated into many languages. Taslima Nasreen, a doctor by training, has become an established writer with more forty publications. She defines herself as “a secular humanist, a human rights activist, and a prolific and bestselling author, who has faced multiple fatwas calling for her death”.

More than twenty-five years later, Taslima Nasreen is back with a sequel to Lajja. It is called Shameless. Arunava Sinha, the translator, told me “the original title was Besharam but eventually the Bengali book was published, also in 2020, with a very tame title, e kul o kul. The book was written more than ten years though.” Nevertheless Shameless is a unique experiment in writing a novel. It has shades of Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of An Author” with Suranjan as the protagonist but in conversation with Taslima Nasreen. The opening pages of the novel have Suranjan, the character, visit Taslima Nasreen, the author, and bring her up-to-date with the events in his life. It then develops into a fascinating narrative where a novel is obviously being drafted but it has so many overlaps with reality. With the author-turned-character (or is it character-turned-author?) providing pithy comments and at times intervening in the story by persuading the characters to act in one way or the other. It is a work of art. Shameless is a sequel to Lajja but seems more that that — Taslima Nasreen seems to have sort of trickled into the space between reality and fiction to put herself under the lens. But the conversation is more than that. It is a conversation between writer and character, commentary on the turbulent times. Taslima Nasreen’s was an emotional response to the increased communalisation in the subcontinent after the fall of the Babri Masjid. It was not necessarily literary writing. But in the intervening years Taslima Nasreen has evolved as a writer. With Shameless she has given herself space to speak frankly without hopefully attracting any more bounties for her head. Also the writing is very close to her memoir (Dwikhondito, 2003, translated into English as Split: In Two, 2018 — translated by Maharghya Chakraborty). Interestingly in recent years her voice as an author comes through very strongly in the English translations despite her experimentation with a gamut of translators. A testament to her strong writing. There are sufficient examples in the novel that indicate her belief in being a secular humanist stem from having experienced or witnessed firsthand many incidents in the name of religion. Much of this she distills into her writing of Shameless, exemplifying how much of the personal informs the political.

Arunava Sinha’s translation is superb. He is a renowned translator who has made available many Bengali writers in English but with Shameless his professional expertise as a translator par excellence is established. He channels Taslima Nasreen’s authorial voice beautifully. His past experience of working with Bengali authors has helped him tremendously to hone his expertise in being utterly respectful to the desire of the author to be heard in the original language and carry it forth impeccably into the destination language, enabling the readers in English to appreciate the text for what it is. It works brilliantly in a translation like Shameless where the author herself has a lot to say, much of it tricky.

The time lapse between the publication of Lajja (1993) and Shameless (2020) marks a significant period of socio-political history in the subcontinent as well. With Shameless Taslima Nasreen seals her place as a relevant author who creates political art, a need of the times when plainspeak is not necessarily always welcome.

6 May 2020

Freedom of Speech and Prix Voltaire Prize, 32nd IPA Congress, 11-13 Feb 2018, New Delhi

13 07 , 2018 No Comments

From 11-13 February 2018 the 32nd International Publishers Association (IPA) Congress was held at Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi. The International Publishers Association (IPA) is the world’s largest federation of national, regional and specialist publishers’ associations. Its membership comprises 70 organisations from 60 countries in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe and the Americas. The congress was organised in Delhi along with the collaboration of the Federation of Indian Publishers ( FIP).

It was a wonderful congress with multiple panel discussions that fortunately ran in succession rather than in parallel and many fascinating conversations were to be had on the sidelines. It was a phenomenal gathering of publishers from around the world. The full programme can be accessed here.

Day two the discussions continued as energetically as before. The highlights of the events on this day were the panel discussion on “The threat of self-censorship in publishing”. It was chaired by Kristenn Einarsson, CEO Norwegian Publishers Association; Chair, IPA Freedom to Publish Committee and the panelists were Trasvin Jittidecharak, Silkworm Books, Thailand and Jürgen Boos, President and CEO, Frankfurt Book Fair, Germany.

The Keynote speech was delivered by Norwegian publisher William Nygaard. On 11 Oct 1993 he was shot three times in the back outside his home. Although the crime was never resolved it is widely believed that this was linked to the fatwa William Nygaard received for publishing Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Both before and after the attack he has been a great defender of the freedom to publish and of free speech. His speech begins at 2:49:41 in the YouTube link given below:

Kristenn Einarsson during the course of conversation remarked that through libel laws economic sanctions are being imposed so allowing not necessarily governments but also people in power to really hit you economically if you publish something they don’t like or go to court with. So just a threat of that is hindering publishing.” Juergen Boos confirmed that the perception of self-censorship is on the rise particularly with the more and more populist governments being elected to power. At 3:32:12 Kristenn Einarsson remarks that the panel should have included an Indian publisher who could not make it and then opened the discussion to the floor except that once again no Indian stood up instead Edward Nawotka, Bookselling and International News Editor, Publishers Weekly spoke. He can be heard speaking off camera. ( Another equally telling observation is that while composing this blog post I discovered that Amazon India does not sell Rushdie’s Satanic Verses despite selling all his other books! )

Later in the day the 2018 IPA Prix Voltaire award ceremony was held. The award was given to Chinese-born Swedish scholar Gui Minhai who is a prolific writer often commenting on Chinese politics and political figures. He is one of the three shareholders of Causeway Bay Books in Hongkong. He went missing in Thailand in late 2015. It was received on his behalf by his daughter Angela Gui. “I think that my father’s version of optimism is perhaps precisely the kind that Voltaire describes. It’s an optimism that in the face of unimaginable cruelty still believes in change. And it’s an optimism that isn’t crushed by lies, force and humiliation.”

Bangladeshi Publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan was given a posthumous Special Award. He was brutally hacked to death inside his office at the hands of suspected religious extremists for his association with secular science writer Avijit Roy and other freethinking, secular and atheist writers on 30 October 2015. His widow, Razia Rahman Jolly, told the audience, “We have sacrificed our sunshine. We are in darkness,” but she promised to continue her husband’s work and keep publishing books in Bangladesh. In fact 12 July 2018 was Dipan’s birthday and Jose Borghino, Secretary General, IPA tweeted:

Today we celebrate the birthday of Faisal Arefin Dipan, the Bangladeshi publisher who was brutally murdered by religious fanatics in 2015 and was awarded the IPA's Special Prix Voltaire this year. His wife, Razia Rahman Jolly, says: 'Dipan was murdered and we lost our sunshine.'

— José Borghino (@JoseBorghino) July 12, 2018

Months after the panel discussion was recorded at the IPA in Delhi, prominent Tamil publisher Kannan Sundaram, Kalachuvadu Publications, who is known for publishing Perumal Murugan, delivered a talk at the May Sahitya Mela in Dharwad, Karnataka, on May 26. It was published as an article for Scroll “As intolerance grows, India needs a brand of secularism that keeps a distance from religion, caste: Today, majoritarian fundamentalism is the biggest threat to a writer and an artist’s free expression.” ( 9 July 2018) This is what Kannan Sundaram says:

If one truly believes in freedom of expression, one has to fight to preserve the right of expression for ideas that one cannot stomach. For many people who consider themselves progressives, freedom of expression is often about fighting for the right to express only ideas they believe in. Some argue that freedom of expression is allowed only for rational thought. For ideas they consider regressive, they demand a ban and prosecution by the state. This strain of thought we know has led to the imprisonment and murder of writers throughout modern history by various regimes claiming to be revolutionary. Fascism can come from the right, left or centre of the ideological spectrum. It may come from any ideology or even from an ideological vacuum if people blindly and reverentially follow a demagogue.

In today’s context, majoritarian fundamentalism is the biggest threat to a writer and an artist’s free expression. If the Bharatiya Janata Party rules for another term, with full majority, it is sure to cause untold harm to the idea of India.

…

Intolerance is not a Hindutva creation. All ideologies, and political, religious movements and political parties in India have contributed to increasing intolerance. There is not one political party in India that has ever endorsed freedom of expression except mouthing it when it suits them. It is part of no political party’s manifesto. This soil was nurtured by intolerance over the decades by all political formations. Now, Hindutva has sown its seeds, watering it with blood and reaping it electorally. Yet, few have learnt the lesson. Hindutva intolerance cannot be met by anti-Hindutva intolerance. The real counter is to meet it with tolerance, discussion, debate, peaceful demonstration and campaigns – which are all, of course, relatively tougher options. We have to draw on the positive aspects of our tradition that have nurtured strong unifying points for different milieus and cultures.

Writers have always faced intolerance from family, neighbourhood, religion and caste. No government or party has ever supported their right to write. What is different now is that Hindutva organisations have been able to knit together multiple castes under their platform and launch major campaigns against writers or simply bump them off with hired killers.

…

A new definition of secularism in India has to define secularism as maintaining equidistance from all religious and caste formations.

The next important thing is to prepare a policy paper on freedom of expression and convince all secular parties to discuss and accept it.

Only time will tell how much freedom publishers and writers genuinely have, can they contribute to the cultural quotient as mentioned by Richard Charkin earlier at the congress or do many subscribe to the policy of self-censorship?

Read more about the congress on the IPA blog maintained by James Taylor.

13 July 2018

fatwa Posts

International Booker Prize 2025 winners – Banu Mushtaq & Deepa Bhashti

Taslima Nasreen’s “Shameless”

Freedom of Speech and Prix Voltaire Prize, 32nd IPA Congress, 11-13 Feb 2018, New Delhi

Tags

Search