The Politics of 'Heart Lamp' Is Profound, Urgent and Reflects the Lived Reality of Millions
The arrival of Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp into the Anglophone literary sphere, garlanded no less by the International Booker Prize, presents an occasion not merely for polite applause, but for a somewhat more astringent contemplation of the realities it so unflinchingly depicts.
It is a truth, perhaps inconvenient to the neatly categorising academic mind but readily apparent to any keen observer of human affairs, that fiction, in its most potent form, often serves as a more reliable conduit to societal truths than the self-serving pronouncements of those in power or the anaesthetised narratives of officialdom.
Mushtaq, through Deepa Bhasthi’s evidently skilled and, one notes with a certain grim satisfaction, un-italicising translation, lays bare the insidious, often brutal, mechanics of power as they operate within the ostensibly private domain of the family and the community, specifically, within certain Muslim milieus of Karnataka.
The political, let us be clear, is not confined to the grand theatre of statecraft or the clamour of mass movements; it resides, subtly, in the quotidian interactions, the unspoken codes, the normalised injustices that structure individual lives and circumscribe human agency. Mushtaq’s stories are a veritable compendium of this intimate politics, where the personal is not merely political, but is the very crucible in which political consciousness – or its tragic suppression – is forged.
Consider Zeenat in 'Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal.' Her opening disquisition on the nomenclature of a husband – rejecting 'yajamana' (owner) for its implication of servitude, finding 'ganda' too burdensome, and 'pati' too bookish and prone to deification – is not mere semantic quibbling. It is a profound, albeit internally articulated, rebellion against the patriarchal lexicon that seeks to define and diminish her. Her clear-sighted observation of the religious sanction accorded to wifely subservience ("other than Allah above, our pati is God on earth...the wife is the husband’s most obedient servant, his bonded labourer") is a stark indictment.
Also read: Banu Mushtaq's ‘Heart Lamp’ Spotlights Lives of Muslim Women: International Booker Prize Judges
Yet, this critical consciousness, sharp as it is, exists alongside a life navigated within the very structures it interrogates. The tragedy of Shaista, the eponymous recipient of stone slabs rather than a living, breathing acknowledgement of her being, underscores the brutal disposability of women once their primary utility – child-bearing, companionship on the male’s terms – is deemed exhausted or inconvenient. Iftikhar’s performative affection, his grandiloquent promise of a "Shaista Mahal" (a tomb, as Mujahid ironically points out, for a dead wife), is a masterful depiction of patriarchal sentimentality masking a profound instrumentalism.
The new, young replacement, veiled and silent, serves as a chilling testament to the cyclical nature of this erasure. One is reminded of the ease with which established structures absorb and neutralise individual lives, particularly those of women whose value is contingent upon their relationship to men.
This theme of male entitlement, cloaked in religious or social sanction, explodes with a ferocious clang in 'Fire Rain.' The Mutawalli Usman Saheb, a figure of supposed piety and communal authority, embodies the hypocrisy that often undergirds such power. His fury at his sister Jameela’s audacity in demanding her rightful share of ancestral property – a share, mind you, sanctioned by the Shariat he ostensibly upholds – is revealing. His internal calculus, weighing the material loss against the affront to his authority, is a study in the conflation of personal interest with divine or communal will. Property, that great arbiter of social relations, becomes the site of a moral and political struggle.
The narrative skilfully juxtaposes his performative religiosity (his journey to the masjid, his ablutions) with his seething resentment and his manipulative deflection of Jameela’s claim by manufacturing a communal crisis around Nisar’s improper burial. This latter episode is particularly telling – a man of dubious character in life, Nisar, in death, becomes a convenient symbol, a tool for the Mutawalli to reassert his leadership, galvanise the community, and, crucially, deflect from the legitimate claims made upon him.
Also read: Why Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi's International Booker Is a Seminal Moment
The ease with which Jameela’s husband is co-opted, sacrificing his wife's legitimate claim for the "greater good" of a manufactured religious cause, speaks volumes about the solidarity of male interests. And Arifa, Usman’s wife, her quiet recognition of Jameela’s just demand, her whispered pleas for fairness, her memory of the saying, ‘Hakhdaar tarse toh angaar ka nuuh barse (If the one who has rights is displeased, a rain of fire will fall),' represents that suppressed consciousness, that moral counterpoint that is invariably overridden by the bluster of patriarchal power and its cynical deployment of communal sentiment. The final "rain of fire" is not literal, but metaphorical — the searing consequence of injustice manifesting in his own son's illness.
The Mutawalli figure reappears, if anything, in an even more damning light in 'Black Cobras.' Abdul Khader Saheb, another custodian of communal morality, is approached by Aashraf, a woman abandoned by her husband Yakub after bearing him three daughters. The Mutawalli’s response to Aashraf’s plight, his casual dismissal, his invocation of "Allah’s will" to justify Yakub’s cruelty and his own inaction, is a chilling exposé of how religious authority can become a bulwark for patriarchal oppression.
Yakub’s brutal logic – "Lei! If you who squats to pee has this much arrogance, how much arrogance should I, who stands to piss, have?" – is the raw, unvarnished expression of male supremacy, a sentiment the Mutawalli, for all his pious trappings, implicitly endorses through his inaction and later, his flight from responsibility. The death of Munni, Aashraf’s sickly child, at the steps of the mosque, a place of supposed sanctuary, is devastating. It is a political death, a death caused by systemic neglect, by the refusal of those in power (both domestic and communal) to acknowledge her humanity and her mother's rights.
The subsequent, subtle rebellion of the women of the mohalla – their symbolic acts of contempt towards the Mutawalli – is a poignant, if ultimately contained, expression of dissent. It suggests a simmering resentment, an understanding of the injustice, even if it lacks the power to overtly challenge the established order. Amina, the Mutawalli’s wife, deciding to get an operation, is her own quiet, definitive act of reclaiming her body and future.
'Heart Lamp' itself, the story giving the collection its title, plumbs the depths of female despair when familial and communal structures of support prove illusory. Mehrun, facing her husband Inayat’s infidelity and abandonment, turns to her natal family, only to be met with platitudes, victim-blaming, and an overriding concern for "family honour" — an honour, as always, that seems to reside disproportionately in the comportment and endurance of its women.
Her brothers, the "sher-e-babbar" (lions) she once boasted of, prove to be paper tigers when confronted with the inconvenient reality of a woman seeking genuine redress rather than a patch-up. Their solution is to return her to the abusive situation, to preserve the facade of a functioning marriage, irrespective of the human cost.
Mehrun’s final, tragic act, thwarted by her daughter Salma, is a testament to the extreme psychological pressures faced by women in such situations. The "heart lamp," one presumes, is the faint flicker of hope, of maternal love, of a desire for a life of dignity, so easily extinguished by the cold winds of patriarchal expectation and familial betrayal.
One must also note the translator's brief but significant note, 'Against Italics.' This seemingly minor technical point about translation practice is, in fact, deeply political. The refusal to exoticise, to mark certain words as "foreign" and therefore "other," is an act of asserting the equality of linguistic and cultural experience. It is a quiet insistence that the realities depicted, the languages spoken, are not curiosities for an Anglophone audience but are valid, self-contained worlds of meaning.
What emerges from Mushtaq’s collection is a searing political anatomy of a community, or perhaps, communities, where the lives of women are circumscribed by a deeply entrenched patriarchy that draws its sustenance from religious misinterpretation, economic dependency, and the ever-present threat of social sanction or outright violence.
The men – Iftikhar, Usman Saheb, Abdul Khader Saheb, Yakub, Inayat, even Zeenat's Mujahid with his casual pronouncements about the replaceability of wives – are not necessarily monolithic villains, but rather products and perpetrators of a system that grants them immense power and little accountability. Their cruelties are often banal, their justifications self-serving, their piety a convenient cloak.
The women, for their part, exhibit a spectrum of responses – Zeenat’s sharp internal critique, Arifa’s pained silence, Aashraf’s desperate, tragic struggle, Mehrun’s ultimate despair, Shaista’s vivacity ultimately extinguished. Their agency is severely constrained, yet their consciousness, their awareness of the injustices they face, is often painfully acute. Mushtaq does not offer easy solutions or celebratory narratives of resistance. Instead, she presents the nuanced, often heartbreaking, reality of women’s lives lived under the shadow of an overbearing patriarchal order.
The award of a major literary prize to such a work is, of course, to be noted. It may bring these uncomfortable truths to a wider, perhaps more complacent, audience. But the real value of Heart Lamp lies not in the accolades it garners, but in its unflinching honesty, its courageous exploration of the hidden injuries of class, gender, and communal power.
It is literature that demands not just to be read, but to be reckoned with, for the politics it lays bare is not confined to the pages of a book; it is, in myriad forms, the lived reality of millions. And that, one must submit, is a political statement of the most profound and urgent kind.
The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
