An invite prolonged to Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq to inaugurate the historic Mysuru Dasara pageant has attracted the wrath of the BJP and right-wing teams in Karnataka. The detractors used a 2023 video of the writer at a literary meet – the place she criticised how Kannada was not allowed to develop by protecting sure teams out – to query the federal government on why it selected her to kick off the celebrations in September.
In Might this 12 months, author and activist Banu Mushtaq grew to become the primary writer writing in Kannada to win the distinguished Booker Prize in literature for a compilation of her brief tales, ‘Coronary heart Lamp’, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi. Following this, the Karnataka Authorities introduced final week that the writer would inaugurate the pageant.
Expressing unhappiness over the Congress authorities’s resolution, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya shared a clip circulated by right-wing teams to allege that Mushtaq’s choice was geared toward focusing on the bulk group.
The video confirmed Mushtaq’s speech, by which she says, “As a girl from the minority group, I’ll place my views in entrance of you about Kannada. I don’t know whether or not you’ll prefer it. You didn’t give a chance in any respect to develop Kannada as a language, for Banu Mushtaq or her household to make use of the language. You made Kannada into Kannada Bhuvaneshwari, a goddess, made a crimson and vermillion flag, and made her sit on a pedestal.”
She continued, “The place ought to I stand now? What ought to I see? How ought to I get entangled? My expulsion didn’t begin in the present day. It began way back and is culminating now,” she mentioned, criticising the idolisation of the language. In the identical approach by which girls are accorded divinity however are “later subjected to subjugation, harassment and torture, you’re treating the language too within the method,” she is heard saying within the video.
Taking to X, Tejasvi Surya posted, “The so-called Anti-Communal Activity Power, the Hate Speech Invoice, the Rohith Vemula Invoice pushed at Rahul Gandhi’s insistence, the doubtful Dharmasthala SIT, and now the Congress authorities’s resolution to have Smt. Banu Mustaq – who has overtly expressed her opposition to the worship of Kannada as mom Bhuvaneshwari, objected to the Hindu cultural symbolism related to the Kannada flag – inaugurated the sacred Dasara Chamundeshwari Pooja – all these are usually not remoted strikes.”
“They’re a part of a single, well-orchestrated sport plan scripted by city naxals and Marxists, executed with the complete enthusiasm of Siddaramaiah and the Congress state authorities. We should see by means of this design and resist it with all our energy,” he wrote on Monday.
The so-called Anti-Communal Activity Power, the Hate Speech Invoice, the Rohith Vemula Invoice pushed at Rahul Gandhi’s insistence, the doubtful Dharmasthala SIT, and now the Congress authorities’s resolution to have Smt. Banu Mustaq – who has overtly expressed her opposition to the worship of… pic.twitter.com/W8BqIWmfCa
— Tejasvi Surya (@Tejasvi_Surya) August 25, 2025
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Surya later instructed PTI that although he was not against anybody inaugurating Dasara, it was an necessary spiritual pageant of Karnataka. “We solely anticipate that whoever is named to inaugurate and supply first prayers to Chamundeshwari on Vijayadashami day, (should) make their perception in Chamundeshwari public and clear,” he mentioned.
Someone who holds the devotion, religion and similar reverence to the goddess ought to supply the primary prayers, the MP mentioned. Mushtaq ought to “declare her reverence, devotion and religion in Mom Chamundeshwari,” he mentioned.
Thought-about to be a rationalist, Mushtaq was a part of varied actions combating in opposition to spiritual orthodoxy amongst Muslims and different communities. She is the second Muslim to inaugurate Dasara in recent times. In 2017, author and poet Nisar Ahmed had inaugurated the festivities in Mysuru.
Others who highlighted Mushtaq’s video included right-wing activist Chakravarthy Sulibele, who sought to know the way Mushtaq might inaugurate the pageant when she couldn’t “tolerate Kannada Bhuvaneshwari”.
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It was MLA and firebrand Hindu chief Basanagouda Patil Yatnal who was amongst those that first triggered a debate on the problem. In a put up on X, he mentioned, “I personally maintain respect for Banu Mushtaq madam as a author and activist. Nonetheless, her inaugurating Dasara by providing flowers and lighting the lamp to Goddess Chamundeshwari appears to be in battle together with her personal spiritual beliefs.”
“Madam must make clear whether or not she continues to observe Islam, which emphasises perception in just one God and one holy guide, or whether or not she now believes that each one paths finally result in the identical moksha. With out such readability, it doesn’t seem applicable…to inaugurate Dasara. She might definitely inaugurate cultural or literary occasions inside Dasara festivities, however the spiritual inauguration of Dasara itself ought to be avoided,” he mentioned.
Artists and writers have historically been chief visitors for the inauguration of the Dasara celebrations organised by the Karnataka Authorities at Mysuru. The ten-day pageant attracts almost 5 million individuals to Karnataka’s heritage capital.