Activist and author Banu Mushtaq inaugurates Mysuru Dasara festivities

The renowned Mysuru Dasara festival begins today, 22 September, Monday, blending tradition and vibrant cultural celebrations as it does every year. International Booker Prize-winning writer Banu Mushtaq was invited to inaugurate the festivities — and was joined on stage by Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and other leaders representing the state government, here to felicitate her for the recent award and recognition as well.

The commencement of the festival, at the sacred vrushchika lagna [in the zodiac sign of Scorpio] at the Chamundeshwari temple atop Chamundi Hills, was marked by Mushtaq showering flowers on the idol of the goddess — regarded as the patron deity and spiritual guardian of Mysuru — as Vedic hymns echoed through the temple.

This auspicious inauguration has, however, surmounted considerable controversy and a legal proceeding, with some Hindutva and fundamentalist groups opposing the presence of Mushtaq as chief guest because she is a Muslim woman. Some referenced an old video where she questioned the exclusive worship of Goddess Bhuvaneshwari, which some interpret as exclusionary to minorities. Critics thus raised both religious and identity-based objections, fuelling social media debates and petitions against her role.

However, the Supreme Court rejected these challenges, reaffirming the Karnataka High Court’s view and asking, “How can the state distinguish between A, B and C?” — a clear reference to the secular ethos enshrined in the Indian Constitution and upholding the right of the government as a secular entity to treat all citizens equally.

Mushtaq herself responded that her words had been misrepresented and reaffirmed the festival’s inclusive spirit: “Dasara is everyone’s festival, it is the Naada Habba. It is our duty to respect and take joy in the land and its language. Calling Chamundeshwari ‘mother’, calling it Naada Habba is part of our culture, ” she said — though there were equally critics for that statement as well, arguing no true Muslim would actually acknowledge a 'kafir' deity thus.

Mushtaq, who won the Booker for a translated collection of her short stories set in southern Indian Muslim society, titled Heart Lamp — with particular focus on the operation of patriarchal mores in especially the socio-economically disadvantaged sections within it — has been a social activist and lawyer before she had a claim to fame as an author, writing originally in Kannada.

The Mysuru Dasara, celebrated with great pomp in this region and drawing travellers from afar for over four centuries — first initiated by the Vijayanagara rulers, then adopted and enriched by the Wadiyar dynasty — has always showcased Karnataka’s syncretic heritage.

The state festival draws millions of visitors each year, featuring folk arts, poet gatherings, food melas, vibrant processions like the famous jamboo savaari and elaborate deepalankaara (illuminated ornaments around the old gold-topped palace and the city). Alongside the state-sponsored celebrations, the former royal family still continues its own parallel customs inside the palace, including the private khasagi durbar. Overall, the celebrations have long reflected to and still continue to reflect the layered, coexisting traditions typical of Indian society.

The debate around Banu Mushtaq’s highlights, however, the changing attitudes and increased contestations of secularism and shared, pluralistic identities in India, especially since the resurgence of right-wing Hindutva that sees all but Hinduism as ‘outsider’ to this land — and that it spreads a shadow and finds a loud voice even in a city like Mysuru, which has long exemplified the celebration of Hindu, Muslim and Christian festivals together, has been reason for concern to many. But the Congress-led state government has held firm in this — just as the BJP’s prominence in the debate has underscored that the objections are as much political as they are cultural, playing to a certain vote bank.

Chief minister Siddaramaiah has explained personally that under state patronage since 1975, Dasara has been as much a cultural and inclusive celebration as a religious Hindu ritual. The pooja at the Chamundi temple remains the spiritual heart of it, sure, but the rest of the festival unites people through cultural pride.

Against a backdrop of the usual elaborate security and excited crowds, this year’s Mysuru Dasara again upholds not just the city’s grand legacy, but also the historically pluralistic spirit of Indian festivals — rooted in tradition, yet open to reinterpretation and participation by citizens of all faiths and backgrounds.

And yes, even when it was a festival of royal Hindu patronage, when Mysore was a kingdom in fact, even then the presence of prominent Muslim figures at the festivities remains on record — visual and verbal. The palace itself still holds Wadiyar era paintings bearing testimony to as much.

Not just Mysuru’s legacy, the whole of India has long seen processions and communal celebrations not only of Dasara and Deepavali, but also Eid, Christmas, Nowruz, Buddha Purnima, Guru Nanak Jayanti, and more in the same community spaces in many cities, towns and even small villages.

This syncretic fabric is woven through public life all over India: from Eid melas and Christmas star-making in Mumbai, to jathas for Nowruz, community feasts for Buddha Purnima, langars for Guru Nanak Jayanti and the floral carpets of Onam that invite participation from all.

The more secular citizens and also pluralistic Hindus point to India’s centuries-long tradition of syncretic celebrations that are not just culturally embraced by thousands beyond the specific religion’s adherents but where participation of the ‘Other’ is almost a mandatory feature — be it the pause of the Lalbaugcha Raja Ganapati procession at the local mosque to receive homage from Muslim residents; be it an Urdu poet’s tributes to Ganesha; be it Chimbai, Mumbai’s Mother Mary draped regularly in a fresh saree by Hindu women; be it the Hindus and Muslims who together set up a Durga Puja shrine in No Man's Land on the Bangladesh border for ages; be it the Hindus of Bihar’s Mari who hired a muezzin to revive an azaan that fell silent in their local mosque; be it the Jewish bakery in Kolkata that hires Muslim bakers to sell Christmas cake to Hindus and Christians and Jews and Leftist atheists alike queued up clear around the block like Mary Poppins’ rivals each year... or be it the upcoming Durga Puja celebrations of Bengal, where the zari ornaments and jute wigs of the divine family have traditionally come from the hands of Muslim artisans, men and women, and where the Hindus’ pandal hopping will include at least one stop at a Muslim-manned kathi roll stall.

Indeed, a day after the Supreme Court dismissed the petition against Mushtaq’s presence and prominence in the state festivities, a poem on the goddess of the Chamundi Hills appeared in the southern daily Deccan Herald. The narrator, the Goddess herself, says: “Anyone can come here whether Hindu Muslim or Christian if they believe in me and my purpose, to rid the world of evil.../ Dasara is... my living temple...”

And so, for this fortnight, Mysuru celebrates its Dasara with the Devi Chamundeswari first feted this year by flowers from a Muslim woman’s hands. For as many Hindu women (and Christian and other adherents) reading her book Heart Lamp readily acknowledged, some feelings and experiences are readily read as universal — even when they are rooted in a given cultural and religious context. Who knows, perhaps the Goddess too was pleased to recognise just an Indian mother-daughter-warrior peer in the lawyer-activist-author who stood before her, as we readers did.