For over 400 years, Mysuru has seen a grand celebration of the Dasara festival.
The city glows with music, dance, elephants, and colour, carrying forward a tradition that blends devotion, royalty, and cultural pride.
But this year, the spotlight isn’t only on the festivities.
It’s on the Karnataka govt’s choice of Kannada writer and Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq to inaugurate the celebrations
For weeks now, Kannada news channels have been debating whether Banu is the “right person” for the job.
For her critics, mostly from the right wing, her faith and her past statements make her “unsuitable”
Politics apart, the controversy has raised questions that are at the core of what Karnataka stands for.
Is Mysuru Dasara a cultural festival that belongs to everyone, or a strictly Hindu religious celebration?
Should Kannada be imagined as goddess Bhuvaneshwari?
Is there an inherent contradiction in Banu Mushtaq inaugurating the Mysuru Dasara?
But most importantly,
What’s playing out is also a one upmanship between two young BJP leaders
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Now, back to the controversy.
Banu Mushtaq wouldn’t be the first Muslim writer to open Dasara.
In 2017, poet KS Nisar Ahmed had done it too.
And he too faced opposition on similar grounds, that a Muslim cannot inaugurate a festival tied to goddess worship.
Supporters of Banu’s selection say it’s a step towards making the Nada Habba - or the state festival- more inclusive, reflecting Karnataka’s linguistic and cultural diversity.
After all, Mysuru’s Dasara festivities are funded by the state and projected to the world as Karnataka’s cultural showcase.
But opponents insist that her identity and her past statements make her unfit to perform the inaugural rituals.
This clash takes us deep into Karnataka’s cultural politics.
Writers like Banu, Banjagere Jayaprakash, Devanooru Mahadeva, KS Bhagwan, and others have long argued that turning Kannada into a goddess excludes minority communities.
They point out that Buddhists, Jains, and Muslims don’t worship goddesses — so why should a language be deified?
They also warn that tying Kannada identity to Hindu symbols risks alienating non-Hindus from a shared linguistic identity.
The tradition of linking Kannada to Bhuvaneshwari is not new.
In the 1930s, Kannada activists adopted the imagery of “Mother Kannada,” inspired by the nationalist idea of “Mother India.”
The colours of the Kannada flag — turmeric yellow and vermilion red — drew directly from Hindu ritual symbolism.
These choices created a powerful emotional iconography, but also tied language identity to Hindu forms of worship.
For decades, nobody really questioned it.
Until the 1970s. That’s when the Bandaya movement — a wave of radical Dalit and progressive writers — began asking whether Kannada as Bhuvaneshwari could ever truly represent everyone.
To understand why this debate is so charged, we also need to look at the history of Mysuru Dasara itself.
The Wodeyar dynasty adopted the festival from the Vijayanagara kings in the 17th century.
The Vijayanagara rulers worshipped Bhuvaneshwari and Chamundeshwari as clan deities, and the Wodeyars brought these rituals into Mysuru’s royal court.
Over time, Dasara became both a religious celebration and a political display
But even in the royal period, Dasara wasn’t free of tensions.
Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar once faced protests for seating his Muslim Dewan.
Nalwadi had appointed his friend and classmate Sir Mirza Ismail as the Dewan of Mysore, and he included him in the planning of the Dasara celebrations.
On Vijayadashami, as the parade began, Nalwadi made Mirza Ismail sit with him in the Jambo Savari, the elephant procession — a gesture that offended conservatives of his time.
Some argue that the only strictly religious part of Dasara is the Chamundeshwari puje.
Everything else — from sports events to the grand Vijayadashami procession — is culture, public, and largely funded by the state government.
Lakhs of people take part regardless of religion.
Yet the symbolism of Chamundeshwari and Bhuvaneshwari continues to define the meaning of Dasara.
The royal family still stresses this religious connection.
For instance, Pramoda Devi Wadiyar, member of the erstwhile royal family of Mysore has not explicitly objected to Banu Mushtaq inaugurating the Dasara.
What bothered her was how Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar defended it, by saying, “Chamundi Hills is not the property of Hindus alone.”
She said that the Chamundeshwari temple is very much a Hindu shrine, and if it weren’t, it wouldn’t even be under the Muzrai Department.
But she made an important distinction.
The government’s Dasara, she said, is a cultural celebration.
It cannot and does not carry religious sanctity.
Navaratri’s religious rituals are still carried out by the royal family, both inside the palace and outside — just as they’ve been doing for centuries.
The political fight over Banu Mushtaq has moved into the courts.
Former Mysuru MP Pratap Simha has filed a petition claiming that inviting her violates centuries-old traditions
He says it infringes constitutional rights under Articles 25 and 26, which protect religious freedom.
Simha argues that a non-Hindu cannot genuinely perform rituals tied to Chamundeshwari worship, and that Banu’s past remarks make her a divisive choice.
In the 2024 election, BJP did not give the Mysuru ticket to Pratap Simha and instead made Yaduveer Wodeyar, the scion of the Wodeyar family their candidate.
Initially he supported the government’s decision and said Dasara is not restricted to a religion.
When Pratap Simha protested against Banu, it became politically important for Yaduveer to also react. Many BJP insiders say it has almost become a fight for one upmanship between these two young leaders. Which is why Yaduveer is now on almost every channel questioning Banu.
Now, while the right-wing’s objections to Banu Mushtaq are deeply polarising, the decision itself carries a distinct irony.
Banu Mushtaq’s writing is deeply rooted in questioning exclusion.
She has long explored the struggles and resilience of women — especially Muslim women.
Her award-winning work, Heart Lamp, also delves into class-based oppression, faith, and societal pressures.
In 2023, Mushtaq openly criticised the very idea of personifying Kannada as a goddess “dressed in the red and yellow of vermillion and turmeric.”
She said this symbolism has historically left out minorities, Dalits, and women from fully belonging to Kannada’s cultural identity.
She voiced these concerns at the Jana Sahitya Sammelana, a festival organised by progressive and Dalit writers in protest against the official Kannada Sahitya Sammelana, which had been accused of sidelining Muslim and women writers.
And here lies the paradox.
This writer who challenges exclusionary traditions is now being asked to open celebrations that are deeply ritualistic, and steeped in Vedic practices.
Seen through the lens of literary and cultural history, the irony becomes sharper.
Mushtaq is part of Bandaya Sahitya, or rebellious literature — a movement that rose in the 1970s to critique caste oppression, patriarchy, and Brahminical norms, and to give voice to marginalised communities.
Her work places her squarely in that tradition of challenging dominant narratives.
And yet, she is now at the heart of a festival that has often been criticised as feudal and exclusionary.
As a counterpoint, progressive groups have established an alternative Dasara in Mysuru, celebrated a week earlier and called Mahisha Dasara.
Here, the focus shifts to Mahisha. Not as the demon who goddess Chamundeshwari is said to have slain, but as a cultural and political figure.
Mahisha Dasara organisers argue that Mahisha was actually a Buddhist king remembered for justice and inclusivity — someone whose legacy was later discredited in dominant-caste versions of history.
The first Mahisha Dasara was held in 2015
It was stopped under the BJP government, but revived in 2023 when Siddaramaiah returned to power
At the foot of Chamundi Hills, near Mahisha’s statue, people gather to talk about social justice, to challenge history as it’s been told.
In the end, the debate isn’t just about one person or one festival.
Over the years, battles over symbols — whether it be the Kannada flag, the image of Bhuvaneshwari, or even the way language movements are framed — have shaped Karnataka’s politics.
On one hand, there’s the powerful impulse to protect tradition, ritual, and history.
On the other, there’s a growing demand to ensure that language and culture remain inclusive
This year, Mysuru’s Dasara runs from September 22 to October 2, ending with the grand Vijayadashami procession.
For lakhs of people, it will remain what it always has been — a time of music, elephants, and spectacle.
But at its core, some questions linger.
And it is a debate that will not end with this year’s festivities.
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Produced by Megha Mukundan, script by Lakshmi Priya and Pooja Prasanna, camera by Ajay R, edited by Nikhil Sekhar ET, graphics by Dharini Prabharan.