Latest news with #BandayaSahitya
The Hindu
4 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
DDUWJ to present annual awards tomorrow
Senior journalist, writer and columnist Sanathkumar Belagali has been chosen for the Lifetime Achievement Award instituted by Dharwad District Union of Working Journalist (DDUWJ). According to a press release issued by DDUWJ, the award will be presented during the Media Day programme to be held in Hubballi on Sunday. Similarly, journalists Sunitha Kulkarni and Nirmala Kudari have been chosen for the annual Avva Award, the release said. The Lifetime Achievement award carries a purse of ₹11,000 and citation, while the Avva Award carries a purse of ₹5,000. Along with these, DDUWJ has also been honouring 14 journalists and photographers with annual awards. Mr. Belagali is a native of Savalagi village in Jamkhandi taluk of Bagalkot district, known for his progressive thinking. He was actively involved in the Bandaya Sahitya movement in the State. Having served the Kannada daily Samyukta Karnataka for 30 years, he also served in senior positions in Janavahini, Suryodaya and Varthabharati. He is a recipient of several awards, including Rajyotsava Award, TSR Award and Khadri Shamanna Award. The other winners of DDUWJ awards are Maridev Hugar, Azeez Ahmed Balaganur, Sushma Savasuddi, Kalavati Baichbal, Prakash Lamani, Vijayakumar Bellerimath, Pralhadgouda Gollagoudar, Subhashchandra N.S., Harsha Kulkarni, Govind Javali, Sairam Pawar, Anand Bhajantri, Shanu Yaligar and Neelamma Kotturshettar.
New Indian Express
20-07-2025
- General
- New Indian Express
Publishing house with a mission
VIJAYAPURA : Ladai Prakashana, a publishing house in Gadag, has been bringing to light works of new writers, especially those associated with 'Bandaya Sahitya' (rebel literature), since its inception in 2002. Established by writer and activist Basavaraj Sulebhavi, 60, of Vijayapura, this publishing house has been named after Ladai, his weekly newspaper, which folded up due to logistical issues. Ladai, colloquially means struggle. After obtaining a Master's degree from Dharwad University, Sulebhavi not only worked as a part-time lecturer, but also as a reporter of a Kannada daily for nearly a decade in Gadag district. As a journalist, Sulebhavi focussed on inequality in society and highlighted the issues faced by marginalised sections. However, it was his passion for writing and social change that led him to publication of books. As the state convener of 'Bandaya Sahitya', Sulebhavi organised several literary conventions across Karnataka to amplify the voices of the oppressed and marginalised sections of society. 'We wanted to give voice to the voiceless and create a platform for new writers committed to the struggle against injustice and inequality in society through the pen,' Sulebhavi told TNSE. 'Ladai Prakashana is committed to publishing works that attempt to address social discrimination, communalism, caste injustice, and highlight the struggle by marginalised communities. Such works must be factual and people-oriented,' he said. Ladai Prakashana has published 302 books so far, with the number growing from a modest four to nearly 20 titles a year. Its publications have received many awards and recognition from the state government for best design. Prominent among them are from the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and Kendra Sahitya Parishat. It has published many books of progressive Tamil and Telugu writers in Kannada, ensuring that literature promoting social equality transcends linguistic barriers. 'Our first book, Bayarike (Thirst), a poetry anthology on women's issues by first-time writers, received overwhelming appreciation. Its author, Dr Vinaya, is one of the debutant writers encouraged by Ladai,' he said. Ladai doesn't collect any fee from writers for publishing their works. They are funded by a network of like-minded individuals to keep the mission going. The books are affordably priced, reflecting the modest backgrounds of their authors.
The Wire
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Wire
International Booker Prize Winner 2025 Banu Mushtaq x The Wire
As part of a series of events and discussions to celebrate its tenth anniversary, The Wire is hosting Banu Mushtaq in New Delhi over the weekend. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty New Delhi: The International Booker Prize winner for 2025, Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq, will be hosted by The Wire in New Delhi on July 19, Saturday for a discussion on the many worlds that our words encapsulate. Titled Namma India, which means Our India in Kannada, The Wire 's senior editor, Arfa Khanum Sherwani will be in conversation with Mushtaq on her work, pursuits and life. Mushtaq's award, won along with her translator Deepa Bhasthi, was only the second given to a South Asian language. The first was given to Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell, for the Hindi novel Ret Samadhi, translated to English as Tomb of Sand. Mushtaq was introduced to the contemporary non-Kannada world through her stunning prose in Heart Lamp, a collection of stories written in Kannada and translated by Bhasthi. The book comprises a candid take on the inner lives of women, reflecting ordinary people living not-so-ordinary lives. She captures their struggles with empathy and understanding, and also provides the reader with a view of what is going on in the minds of those anxious to uphold the social order. As she said while accepting the International Booker prize, "This is more than a personal achievement – it is an affirmation that we, as individuals and as a global community, can thrive when we embrace diversity, celebrate our differences, and uplift one another. Together, we create a world where every voice is heard, every story matters, and every person belongs." Mushtaq's work is an important milestone in the journey of literary Kannada figures leaving a global imprint. Mushtaq has a varied career and life; she was an activist, lawyer and of course a writer. She began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in the 1970s and 1980s. The Bandaya Sahitya movement that she was associated with made a passionate case for social reform and progress. She has won the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards. The discussion at New Delhi's Jawahar Bhawan will start at 5.30 pm tomorrow. Entry is free. The closest metro station is Central Secretariat. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
Scroll.in
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Why Heart Lamp's booker win breaks many barriers
When Heart Lamp, Deepa Bhasthi's English translation of a collection of Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq's short stories, was declared the winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize on Tuesday, literary history was made in more ways than one. The second winner of the prize from India – after Tomb of Sand (2022) – Daisy Rockwell's translation of Geetanjali Shree's Hindi novel Ret Samadhi – the book actually did not exist as a single volume in the original Kannada. Bhasthi, the first Indian translator to win the International Booker, chose the stories from over 30 years of Mushtaq's work to curate Heart Lamp, which was the first short story collection to win the prize. With two winners in 10 years of the International Booker, India now tops the country list. Of course, we have an unfair advantage in having vibrant literatures in more than two dozen distinct non-English languages, compared to one for most other countries. But what this conceals is how few books from India are published in global Anglophone markets. The numbers in any given year amount to less than 10% of the 100-plus titles published in English translation in India. So the real achievement of a Heart Lamp and a Tomb of Sand is breaking through the resistance of the Western publishing ecosystem to being published in the United Kingdom and/or the United States in the first place. As in 2022, the question is being asked again in 2025 by wide-eyed journalists: will this open the floodgates to translated books from India in the West? The short answer is no. Books from India do not have the two tailwinds that have seen a flood of translated works from Japan or South Korea – to name two other Asian countries – being published in the West by both large and independent publishers. These tailwinds come in the form of funding support from the respective countries for publishing their books, and certain country-specific literary trends that have become popular in the West – for instance, 'healing literature' from Japan and South Korea. What such awards open up, actually, are huge sales for the winning titles back home in India, easily 10 to 20 times the normal sales of translated books that have not won the International Booker Prize (all but two). Significantly, both the winning titles were accepted and then edited by UK-based publishers first, with the Indian publisher using the same edited version (and saving themselves the work involved). But we would be shortsighted to examine this win for Heart Lamp from the perspective of publishing alone. What is especially significant is that it has come to a writer who has not really been part of the canon in her own language, although she has a large number of readers. An activist and a lawyer, Mushtaq writes from an intersectional space of marginalisation on the basis of caste, religion and gender. She is a rebel writer, whose works, operating within the Bandaya Sahitya literary movement in Kannada – narrating dissent and rebellion against injustice through fiction and poetry – have been met with protests and threats from her own community. It needed not only a translation into English but also a respected international prize to draw attention to this literature outside its immediate circles. Also of vital importance is translator Bhasthi's decision to use ' an accent ' – what the jury chair Max Porter termed a 'radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes'. This is a powerful riposte to colonisation, where the coloniser's language is owned and then transformed by those from a former colony to then win the world's top award for translated books in the heart of that very colonising power. If only for these reasons, the significance of Mushtaq's and Bhasthi's win cannot be overstated. Here is a summary of the week's top stories. The Maoist conflict. Nambala Keshav Rao, the leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), was among the 27 suspected Maoists killed in a gunfight with security forces in Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur. Union Home Minister Amit Shah described CPI (Maoist) General Secretary Rao, who is also known as Basavaraju, as the 'backbone of the Naxal movement'. This was the first time that a general secretary-ranked Maoist leader had been killed by the security forces, Shah added. A District Reserve Guard team member was also killed in the gunfight, according to the police. The Union government has repeatedly vowed to eradicate 'Left Wing Extremism' in the country by March 31, 2026. , writes Malini Subramaniam. Bail for Ashoka professor. The Supreme Court granted interim bail to Ashoka University Associate Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad for his comments about the press briefings on Operation Sindoor. The court also instructed the Haryana Police to form a special investigation team to look into the meaning of the words used by Mahmudabad. He was arrested on May 18 after being booked in two cases for his social media posts highlighting the apparent irony of Hindutva commentators praising Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, who represented the Army during the media briefings about the Indian military operation. Mahmudabad suggested that they should also call for justice for victims of mob lynching and 'others who are victims of the Bharatiya Janata Party's hate mongering'. The top court has barred him from posting or publishing any content related to the social media posts under scrutiny. Defamation case. After being reprimanded by the Delhi High Court, commentator Abhijit Iyer-Mitra said that he would delete social media posts in which he made purportedly sexually abusive remarks about women employees of digital news outlet Newslaundry. The court warned that it would order a first information report against Iyer-Mitra if he failed to remove the posts. The women employees of Newslaundry have filed a defamation suit against Iyer-Mitra. They have sought a public apology and Rs 2 crore in damages, alleging that Iyer-Mitra had 'falsely and maliciously' targeted the news outlet's women employees using derogatory language and slurs through a series of social media posts between February and April. Follow the Scroll channel on WhatsApp for a curated selection of the news that matters throughout the day, and a round-up of major developments in India and around the world every evening. What you won't get: spam.
The Hindu
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Lady with the lamp
Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq has been lending expression to the voiceless for five decades, and when Deepa Bhasthi came on board as translator, her stories leapt across linguistic barriers and provincial borders. On Tuesday (May 20, 2025), Mushtaq's Heart Lamp, translated from Kannada to English by Bhasthi, won the International Booker Prize for 2025. This is the first honour for Kannada, a language Mushtaq says has 'cosmic wonder and earthly wisdom', on this stage. It's also the first time a collection of short stories has been feted, and the second time in three years an Indian writer has gotten the top prize. Geetanjali Shree had won for Tomb of Sand, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell in 2022. Heart Lamp (And Other Stories/Penguin) is a selection of 12 tales, written between 1990 and 2023. An array of characters have walk-on parts — maulvis, thuggish brothers who flex muscles on their whims, grandparents, uncles, broods of children — but the spotlight is firmly on Muslim girls and women on the margins, searching for a toehold in a claustrophobic patriarchal world. It was published originally in Kannada (Haseena Mattu Itara Kathegalu) by Abhiruchi Prakashana, Mysuru. One of the stories in Heart Lamp, 'Black Cobra', was made into a feature film, Hasina, by Girish Kasaravalli. A lawyer and activist based in Hassan, a town on the leeward side of the Western Ghats and a gateway to coastal Karnataka, Mushtaq, now 77, was inspired by the Bandaya Sahitya movement of the 1980s, which urged women to write about their lived experiences. An empathetic observer and listener, Mushtaq began documenting stories from unheard corners, jotting down every aspect of the women's lives, their drudgery, anxieties, as well as their joy. 'This book is my love letter to the idea that no story is local. [It] was born from the belief that no story is ever small, that in the tapestry of human experience every thread holds the weight of the whole,' she said in an impassioned acceptance speech high on grace and gratitude. Most of the women she writes about lack agency over their bodies. They are often powerless, financially dependent, and have little say over any other aspect too, particularly education. Girls are withdrawn from school at the drop of a hat. Dash of wry humour If they are married, like Mehrun in the title story, it means they can never return to their parents' home; whatever the husband's misdemeanours, Mehrun is asked to bear it or look away. When she can't take it anymore, it's her daughter Salma who pulls her from the brink. When this spirit of sisterhood works, women extend a hand to others; when it doesn't, there's misery and silent tears deep into the night. Her stories have wry humour too — in the last, a mother weary after giving birth, appeals to god: 'Be a woman once, Oh Lord!' Like Sara Aboobacker, who wrote about Muslim women in coastal Kerala and Karnataka and was critical of patriarchy and other issues, Mushtaq too has been outspoken about women's lack of choice in matters of faith and reproductive rights. Both writers faced the wrath of fundamentalists. For making Mushtaq's stories gain a global readership, Bhasthi's 'radical translation' has come in for praise. Bhasthi writes in the translator's note that between them they know more than six languages. Bhasthi retains the rhythms of the many Kannadas spoken in the region. For instance, Mushtaq speaks Dakhni at home, whose base is Urdu with loan words from Persian, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu — but her language at work and on the street is Kannada. Readers will break into a smile on hearing the words mothers often spit out in shock — 'thoo, thoo.' Booker Jury Chair Max Porter said the radical translation hits 'viscerally.' Both writer and translator harped on the richness of Kannada and hoped it would lead to more translations from other 'magical' languages of South Asia. Calling literature one of the 'last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other's minds, if only for a few pages,' Mushtaq hoped her win would 'light the way for more stories that defy borders.' The finest of literature offers an honest mirror, and surely Mushtaq holds a luminous one.
