Unity in diversity: This is what Banu Mushtaq’s presence at Mysuru Dasara upholds

The inauguration of the historic Mysuru Dasara festival by Banu Mushtaq, this year’s International Booker Prize-winning Kannada writer and activist, carried more than ceremonial heft. Last month, the Congress government’s invitation to Mushtaq to open the festival had provoked legal petitions and political backlash from the BJP and right-wing groups on the ground that putting a Muslim figure at the heart of a Hindu religious ceremony was violative of Articles 25 and 26, which guarantee freedom of religion. The controversy underscored a growing anxiety in India’s public sphere, where diversity is increasingly cast as dilution and secularism as appeasement. In that light, Mushtaq’s participation in the ceremony, including in the prayers at the Chamundeshwari temple, was both a substantive gesture and an assertion of constitutional values.

In her International Booker acceptance speech in May, Mushtaq had spoken of how “in a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other’s minds…” If art offers a shared space, festivals in India have long been a melting pot of faiths, cultures, and pluralistic values. In Karnataka, Dasara has been more than a Hindu religious observance; it is a nada habba — a festival of the land — a celebration of spirituality, cultural identity, and democratic inclusion. As the Supreme Court pointed out while dismissing the petition against Mushtaq’s invitation: “This is a state event and not a private programme… The state cannot distinguish between A, B or C religion”. Secularism, the bench affirmed, is a core constitutional value, upheld in landmark rulings from Kesavananda Bharati to S R Bommai and R C Poudyal, which recognised secularism as both implicit in the original Constitution and later enshrined in the Preamble.

The outrage over Mushtaq’s participation, however, is not unprecedented. In 2017, an invitation to poet K S Nisar Ahmed to open the festival had evoked a similar response. Such instances reveal how fragile the secular promise can be when left to the whims of majoritarian sentiment. The government’s firm stance — Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has repeatedly asserted that the festival is not the preserve of any one religion — sends a message that deserves attention: That when there is political will, the state can act as a bulwark against majoritarianism. What is required is consistent, principled governance that safeguards the rights of minorities and affirms their place at the heart of the national story. The Mysuru Dasara, inaugurated by Mushtaq, was not a deviation from tradition — it was a return to the best of it — a reminder that India, at its most authentic, has always been greater than the sum of its parts.