Exide Kolkata Literary Meet: Feminism, the Banu Mushtaq Way

Banu Mushtaq talks as straight as she writes. Or, is it the other way round: she writes as straight as she talks? 

“Patriarchy rules us, not governments,” she says. “Wherever you go—from laws to the parliament to courts and offices—patriarchy has already reached there before us and taken its seat.” Loud claps confirm the audience’s approval. 

The venue at Alipore Jail Museum campus in Kolkata is packed. At the inaugural evening of the 14th edition of the Exide Kolkata Literary Meet (Kalam), Mushtaq is conversing with Outlook editor Chinki Sinha.  

Asked how different is women’s writing on women than women’s portrayals by men, Mushtaq says men have portrayed women as jealous and prone to ‘bitching’ and backstabbing each other, but she has found sisterhood more prevalent among women. Female voices from the audience cheer in chorus—an instant display of sisterhood. 

It’s only some women who have been delegated patriarchal roles who create havoc, Mushtaq argues. The vocal audience makes its agreement felt. 

 When Sinha points out that despite being a rebel against patriarchy, her writings reveal her sympathies for men, Mushtaq quickly responds: “I don’t hate men. My women also don’t hate men… because, who are they? They are our own kith and kin.” 

There is patriarchy that must be fought, but the carriers and care providers of the system are all members of our own family. How do women act in such a world? By fighting for their rights, but not revenge. To her, feminism in one sentence is “equal treatment and equal opportunity.” 

Listening to Mushtaq speaking on these lines makes for an interesting experience. In the 2014 edition of the event in Kolkata, US-based feminist Gloria Steinem had, rather similarly, advocated for a brand of feminism that did not hate men, but looked at them with sympathy, as “victims of social restrictions in terms of what defines their masculinity.” 

Mushtaq says she does not generalise men as violent or altogether bad. Being a lawyer coming from a background of participating in and organising social movements for the marginalised people, she has come across a wide range of men—from those who respect women and seek their advice to brutal torturers.  

Nevertheless, they all strictly want to follow the patriarchal rules. “That’s where my difference with them starts. That’s where any woman’s differences with them starts,” she says.  

 And that’s where Mushtaq, and her characters draw the line. Female characters in her stories often challenge the standards that men have set for women, from their dressing to behaviour. 

 “I need not follow your diktats only. I have my own body and thought process and I’m absolutely right in using all those rights in a perfect manner, whether you like it or not. But do not request or expect absolute obedience from women,” Mushtaq says. Loud clapping. 

Perhaps, proverbs express complex yet universal scenarios most succinctly. And that’s what she frequently resorts to, in her texts, as well as conversations. 

In her stories, men tell women, “If you who squats to pee have this much arrogance, how much arrogance should I, who stands to piss, have?” Older men advise younger men about wives, “The rider must be right first. If he is alright, he can tame any horse at all.” A wife’s death gets equated with an elbow injury, which hurts instantly, but vanishes quickly. 

 Women often do not have instant, fitting replies. They tolerate. Wait. hope. They also plot against others. Life, or gender roles and traits, are not in black and white. And women in Mushtaq’s stories are not preparing for a revolution. They are ordinary, marginal people demanding what is justly theirs. 

They rebel, but only when they are pushed to the corner, such as Mehrun in the ‘Heart Lamp’, when she tells her maternal family about her adulterer husband: 

 'I fell at your feet, saying that I didn't want to get married. Did you listen? I said, I will wear a burkha and go to college. I begged you not to make me stop studying. None of you listened to me. Many of my classmates aren't even married, and yet I have become an old woman. I have the burden of five children on me. Their father is roaming around, and I don't have a life. When a man is doing such a haram thing, are none of you able to ask him why he is doing this?'

Enough, Meher, enough. Her mother shut her eyes and shook her head.

 "Yes, Amma. I have also had enough.”

Her writings criticise the practice of triple talaq prevalent among Muslims. At the Kolkata event, when a man from the audience asks for her response to the Hindu nationalist BJP championing a law banning triple talaq—evidently to interfere with Muslim societies—Mushtaq reasons with clarity: it’s a wrong, unjust and un-Islamic practice that should have been prohibited much before by the Islamic religious leaders themselves; by not doing so, they let the space open for the BJP to utilise. 

 The tag of ‘Muslim woman writer’ haunts her, she tells Sinha. Why couldn’t she be considered simply as a writer, she asks. But she also knows, under the current socio-political scenario, there is no way she could find herself beyond branded identities. 

As she recalls the harrowing response after the publication of her story, ‘Be A Woman Once, Oh Lord’, she gets evidently emotional. “I was condemned, attacked, humiliated, trolled, thrown out of the community.” Her voice slightly chokes as she speaks. She was abused to such extent that she felt like being “orally raped—from head to toe—by every person on the street” who knew neither anything about literature nor theories she was talking about in her writings. 

 The psychological stress had led to physical manifestations in the form of rashes on skin, which no dermatologist could remove for a year, but a psychologist manages to remove through counselling, she recalls. 

 “But I’m not bitter,” she says. And heaves a sigh of relief. 

 As a seasoned fighter, a steeled rebel, she must be well aware of the weight of carrying collected bits of bitterness.