E-Paper
Nitish Kumar pulling down woman’s hijab ‘deplorable’: Booker winner Banu Mushtaq
She was speaking at a session titled ‘Voices Behind the Heart Lamp: Stories of Muslim Women, Resilience and Resistance’ at the Pune Lit Fest, held at the amphitheatre of Fergusson College as part of the Pune Book Festival.
Pune: International Booker Prize 2025 winner Banu Mushtaq on Friday described Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s act of pulling down the hijab of a woman AYUSH practitioner during a government function as “deplorable”, while reiterating her opposition to practices that compel women to cover their faces.
Mushtaq was speaking at a session titled ‘Voices Behind the Heart Lamp: Stories of Muslim Women, Resilience and Resistance’ at the Pune Lit Fest, held at the amphitheatre of Fergusson College as part of the Pune Book Festival. Young writer Vedant Agarwal was in conversation with her.
Referring to the recent incident in Bihar during the distribution of appointment letters, Mushtaq said she condemned both the practice of forcing women to cover their faces and the chief minister’s action.
“While researching the Quran and Hadith, I did not come across any religious injunction mandating that a woman must cover her face. In some regions, cultural practices have evolved where women cover everything except the eyes. The question is whether such practices should be described as Islamic or cultural,” she said.
From a feminist perspective, Mushtaq said personal faith should never conflict with democratic values. “Living in a secular state, as a Muslim woman, I believe my personal beliefs should not undermine democratic principles. One must exercise that much care,” she said.
She added that covering the face can also create apprehension. “The face is a person’s identity. There is no religious mandate to cover it, yet it is enforced in many contexts,” Mushtaq said.
At the same time, she said that while Kumar may have wanted to verify the identity of the person receiving the appointment letter, his action was unjustified. “He may have had the right to ensure the letter was handed over to the correct person. However, pulling down her hijab cannot be justified. It is not the conduct expected of an elected public representative holding the office of the chief minister. He failed to uphold dignity, democratic values and his constitutional duty,” she said.
During the interaction, Mushtaq also spoke more broadly about patriarchy, saying it survives by silencing women and begins to weaken when women start questioning it.
“In a patriarchal social order, women are given no value and their labour is not acknowledged. This system expects women to remain silent because once women begin to question it, the very foundation of patriarchy starts shaking,” she said.
Mushtaq received international recognition for her short story collection Heart Lamp, which portrays the everyday struggles of South Indian Muslim women against entrenched patriarchy. She traced her literary and personal journey, recalling the encouragement she received from her father to pursue education, her efforts to master Kannada—the language of her literary expression—and the challenges she faced after marriage.
She also spoke about resisting the compulsory wearing of the burqa and her participation in the progressive Kannada writers’ Bandaya movement, which campaigned for the rights of farmers, Dalits and women, saying these experiences played a key role in shaping her worldview and writing.
