Bhanu Mushtaqs’ life has been a constant fight against religious fanaticism
Bhanu Mushtaq, Kannada writer, says that throughout her life, she had to fight against religious fanaticism, be it of Islam, Hinduism or Christianity.
Bhanu, one of the prominent writers of contemporary Kannada literature, was speaking at a meet-the-press programme organised by the Calicut Press Club here on Thursday. She had been a journalist, working for the Kannada weekly Lankesh Pa trike for a decade from 1981.
Bhanu said though all religions had been liberal in the beginning, they got entrenched with patriarchy subsequently. This, in religions such as Hinduism and Islam, denied women the rights that the faiths had granted.
“Wasn’t there Gargi and Maitreyi, woman scholars, during the Vedic period. But during Manu’s period, women were not supposed to study the Vedas. Before the time of Prophet Mohammed, the girl child was buried as soon as she was born in Arabia. It was the Prophet who gave the right to the girl child to take birth,” she said.
As a writer, she had to face opposition from her own community. It was thought that women writers, including she, would bring out its “inside stories” to win acclamation of others. So, it thought that they were traitors. During my high school days, my cousin taught me how to ride a bicycle. Since Muslim girls were not allowed to ride those days, boys of the community pulled her down from the cycle and beat her cousin, she said.
She recalled her campaign to thwart an attempt by the Sangh Parivar to convert the Bababudangiri shrine in Chikmagalur in Karnataka into a Hindu temple.
One of Bhanu’s short stories was adapted for the Kannada film Haseena, which won three national awards.
The film, directed by Girish Kasaravalli, is based on the story Kari Nagaragalu in her anthology Benki Male.
Replying to a question, she said the focus on writers of Indian writing in English was indeed a denial of opportunity to vernacular writers, who had more readers than the former in the country. Recalling her association with the Bandaya Sahitya Sanghadana in Karnataka, she said that this literary organisation rebelled against literary norms and social injustice.
. They represented the voice of the Dalits, women and backward classes. Dalits were encouraged to write in their own language, own idiom and own similes.
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