The Congress government’s decision to invite award-winning Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq to inaugurate this year’s Dasara celebrations in Mysuru has become the subject of controversy.
On the one hand, BJP leaders and right-wing personalities are demanding that a ‘Hindu person inaugurate a Hindu festival’; and on the other, an old speech of Banu Mushtaq is being circulated online, in which she talks about how the depiction of the Kannada language as goddess Bhuvaneshwari is exclusionary.
These developments have once again brought to the fore two thorny issues on which writers in the state have varied opinions—whether the Dasara festival is a secular or a religious occasion, and whether or not depicting the Kannada language as a goddess is acceptable.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced on August 22 that Banu Mushtaq had been invited to inaugurate the Dasara celebrations this year. The celebrations of the Dasara festival in Mysuru is a grand affair that begins with the offering of a pooja to goddess Chamundeshwari and comprises cultural events that go on for days. Also called ‘Naada Habba’ (festival of the land), it sees participation from people across Karnataka and even from other states. The government spends crores of rupees organising it.
Banu Mushtaq, who is based in Hassan and won the Booker Prize in May for Heart Lamp, has said that she is honoured to inaugurate the festival.
“Dasara is everyone’s festival, it is the Nada Habba. It is our duty to respect and take joy in the land and its language, and work for its prosperity. Nada Habba is a very grand celebration for our state and our country. I am very happy that I have been invited to play such an important role in this celebration,” she has said.
She later said “Calling Chamundeshwari mother, calling it Naada Habba is all a part of our culture. So, it is dear to me too. I used to go to see the jambu savari (elephant parade) along with my parents as a child. I am happy that I have been invited to inaugurate it.”
The controversy
Almost immediately after the announcement was made, several people began to object to Banu being asked to inaugurate the festival on account of her Muslim identity.
Expelled BJP leader and Vijayapura MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, who is known for his crude language and Islamophobia, was at his civilised best. While acknowledging her calibre as a writer, he said it did not appear appropriate for her to inaugurate the festival.
“I personally hold respect for Bhanu Mushtaq madam as a writer and activist. However, her inaugurating Dasara by offering flowers and lighting the lamp to Goddess Chamundeshwari seems to be in conflict with her own religious beliefs. Madam needs to clarify whether she continues to follow Islam, which emphasises belief in only one God and one holy book, or whether she now believes that all paths ultimately lead to the same moksha,” he said on X.
He added that she “may certainly” inaugurate the cultural or literary events but should “refrain from” the religious inauguration.
Other BJP leaders too objected to Banu inaugurating the festival. BJP state president BY Vijayendra demanded to know why translator Deepa Bhasthi was not invited.
MP Shobha Karandlaje said that the invitation to Banu should be revoked as she did not believe in the Hindu faith and also did not accept the yellow and red colours of the Kannada flag and the representation of the Kannada language as Bhuvaneshwari.
Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya and former MP Prathap Simha too made similar statements.
Mysuru-Kodagu MP and member of the former Mysuru royal family Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar has said that Dasara was a religious festival and that he would have no objections to Banu Mushtaq as long as she respected Chamundeshwari and Bhuvaneshwari deities.
Banu Mushtaq would not be the first Muslim person who was invited to inaugurate the Dasara festival. In 2017, the writer KS Nisar Ahmed had inaugurated the festivities by showering flower petals on the idol of goddess Chamundeshwari. Siddaramaiah was Chief Minister at the time.
Nisar Ahmed had said at the time that it was an honour. The right-wing had objected to him inaugurating the festivities too.
“If Nisar Ahmed could inaugurate it, why is Banu not acceptable? I think this is a step towards making the Naada Habba more secular and I think it will include more people,” writer Pratibha Nandakumar told The News Minute.
Bandaya writer Banjagere Jayaprakash pointed out that Banu Mushtaq was more vulnerable than Nisar Ahmed even though both are Muslim.
“Nisar Ahmed was a man. He was given some leeway because he was very popular because of a song Jogada Belakinalli which was about Karnataka’s glory. Banu on the other hand is a Bandaya (anti-establishment) writer, a Muslim and a woman. When Nisar was given exemption, shouldn’t she get it too?”
Responding to Tejasvi Surya’s post on X, Editor of Nyayapatha Weekly Guruprasad DN said, “Dasara festival is not the personal festival of any particular oppressed group, nor is it a festival of the Sangh Parivar. Dasara Habba is Naada Habba, but more importantly, it is a festival organised by the state government which has been elected by the people. Therefore, the most important pre-condition to inaugurate this festival is an acceptance of and a belief in the Constitution, not in any god. Please develop constitutional ideals before talking about who can or cannot inaugurate Dasara festivities.”
In 2013 the Bandaya writer Baragur Ramachandrappa had inaugurated the festivities, but he had reportedly refused to participate in the religious festivities. Ramachandrappa could not be reached for comment.
Kannada Bhuvaneshwari
On social media, things took a different turn. An old video of Banu Mushtaq critiquing the depiction of the Kannada language as the goddess Bhuvaneshwari has been doing the rounds, with many people criticising her for ‘not accepting the Kannada language itself’.
In the video, Banu can be heard saying, “I would like to present my understanding of Kannada as a woman from a minority. I don’t know whether you will like it or not. You have not given Banu Mushtaq or her family a chance to even speak the language. You made the Kannada language Kannada Bhuvaneshwari. You gave the Kannada flag the colours of arishina (turmeric yellow) and kumkuma (vermillion red) and made her sit on a pedestal. Where does that leave me? What should I look at? How should I get involved? My exclusion started a long time ago and is only getting completed now. You must all think about it.”
She recited a Sanskrit verse about the gods being pleased when women are placed on a pedestal and worshipped. “You have placed Kannada on the pedestal and are committing atrocities on her just like atrocities are committed on women. You are answerable to me… Give me an answer… After turning Kannada into Bhuvaneshwari, dragging the Kannada chariot, turning Kannada into a jathre (temple fair), turning Kannada into a fair, what did you do? Did you need so many pretexts to exclude me?”
Banu Mushtaq made these comments at the Jana Sahitya Sammelana in January 2023 and released the whole 15-minute speech on social media. The literature festival was held in Bengaluru to protest against the 86th Akhila Bharata Sahitya Sammelana in Haveri which excluded Muslim writers.
Banu is by no means the first or the only writer to object to the representation of the Kannada language as a goddess. Many Bandaya writers, Dalits writers and progressive writers share Banu’s views expressed in the video, says Banjagere Jayaprakash. He said that a similar debate had cropped up last year when the state government had called a meeting to discuss the Karnataka Sambhrama-50, a commemoration to mark 50 years of the renaming of Mysore state to Karnataka.
“At the time, other writers and I had objected to plans for a statue of Bhuvaneshwari Devi. We suggested to the government that the map of Karnataka could be a symbol for the Kannada language,” he told TNM.
Asked why he objected to representing a language as a goddess, Jayaprakash said, “It will lead to fissures among people because it is exclusionary. For example, Buddhists don’t worship idols, they consider the Buddha a guru. Jains too do not worship such gods. When a language is deified and given the form of a goddess, things will take unexpected turns. It will lend itself to communalism. When a government uses religious symbols for a language, it gets a stamp of official approval.”
A 25-feet tall bronze statue of goddess Bhuvaneshwari seated in front of a map of Karnataka stands at the western gate of the Vidhana Soudha today.
Mother India and Mother Kannada
The linking of goddess Bhuvaneshwari to the Kannada language occurred in the 1930s against the backdrop of a Kannada movement that sought to unify Kannada-speaking areas.
Kannada language activists of the early 20th century were inspired by the Marathi nationalism espoused by the likes of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. This set the tone for a Hinduised Kannada nationalism that continued because it was unchallenged, says Bengaluru-based political observer Shivasundar.
“Any movement needs icons. Early 20th century Kannada activists and writers drew inspiration from Marathi literature which valorised Shivaji who fought against the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb,” Shivasundar said. Writers such as Galaganatha sought to create such parallels in Kannada-speaking areas with novels such as Kannadigara Karma Kathe (The Fate of Kannadigas) in 1916 with the ‘Hindu’ Vijayanagara empire as the protagonist which battled the ‘Muslim’ Bahamani kings.
Vokkaligas, Lingayats and Brahmins who later entered the language movement continued in this vein. They saw Kannada nationalism in terms of Indian nationalism—just as there was a Bharatambe (mother India), they saw a Kannadambe (mother Kannada). Jnanapith awardee Kuvempu’s poem ‘Jai Bharatha Jananiya Thanujathe’, which is the state’s official anthem also contains this idea in the opening lines, Shivasundar says.
“In the 1930s, arishina (turmeric) and kumkuma (vermillion) were adopted as auspicious symbols and as the colours of the Kannada flag. But who was it auspicious for? It was a Brahminical ritual. There was no ill intention at the time. It was just that this Hinduisation was considered normal and that normalisation was never challenged by anybody until the Bandaya movement of the 1970s,” Shivasundar said.
Bhuvaneshwari and a ‘Kannada’ empire
Bhuvaneshwari was the kula devi (clan goddess) of the Vijayanagara kings who celebrated Dasara in a grand manner at the Navarathri Mantapa. According to Jayaprakash, there are only two Bhuvaneshwawri temples in the state—one in Hampi in Vijayanagara district and another in Siddapura in Uttara Kannada district.
“Alur Venkatarao’s generation needed to claim a glorious past for Kannada. Vijayanagara was projected as a Kannada and Hindu empire which fought the Bahamani sultans. The Mysore kingdom became the successor of the myth of the ‘Hindu kingdom’. The Wodeyars adopted the Dasara tradition of the Vijayanagar kings but with their own kula devi and mane devi (house god) Chamundeshwari. Chamundeshwari was also a popular goddess in Mysuru,” Jayaprakash said.
Alur Venkatara Rao is considered one of the pioneers of the Kannada language movement in the early 20th century.
Over the years, the Dasara festival became popular and acquired a public character. Pre-independence, during Nalwadi Krishnadevaraya’s time, when his Dewan, Mirza Ismail, was invited to sit beside the king for Dasara rituals, people objected to the participation of a Muslim.
“Krishnadevaraya dismissed that by saying that he had not invited a Muslim, he had invited his Dewan, the second-highest officer of the Mysore kingdom, for the celebrations,” Jayaprakash said.
Today, the Chamundeshwari pooja atop Chamundi hill is the only religious aspect of the festival. Everything else includes cultural events that have no religious character, Jayaprakash says.
Ministers defend government move
Several ministers in the Congress government have defended the government’s decision to invite Banu Mushtaq.
Speaking to reporters in Sandur, Ballari district, Labour Minister Santhosh Lad dismissed former Mysuru-Kodagu MP Prathap Simha’s objections that the Mysuru Dasara was a religious festival.
“Is there any provision in the Constitution which says Banu Mushtaq should not be called to inaugurate Dasara? If we start objecting to everything on communal lines, where will it end?”
Ministers HC Mahadevappa, B Ramalinga Reddy and others have also criticised the BJP for its stance.
Holenarsipura MLA of the JD(S) HD Revanna backed Banu Mushtaq, saying that she was a woman and activist from Hassan. “It’s not right to differentiate between Hindus and Muslims. We are all Indians. We must all work together.”
