Silence as a Form of Resistance: The Feminine in Banu Mushtaqʼs short story collection Heart Lamp

Abstract

Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, a collection of short stories translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasti, presents a profound investigation of Muslim women’s lives in Karnataka, India. Heart Lamp is a translated work; it also belongs to the field of literature and translation studies. Translation allows these stories, rooted in local culture and idioms, to reach a broader audience, while also raising questions of voice, representation, and cultural transmission. Within translation studies, translated texts are not only reproductions but recreations that settle between the source culture and the target readership. This context makes Mushtaq’s stories doubly significant: they reflect women’s silences within patriarchal society and together highlight the translator’s role in carrying these silences across languages. Thus, the paper positions its retelling of the stories at the intersection of feminist literary study and translation studies. This research paper investigates silence as a deliberate form of resistance, analyzing how Mushtaq’s female characters employ it to challenge patriarchal, religious & socio-economic oppression. Using a feminist framework, including Judith Butler’s Performativity. The study employs qualitative methods, close textual analysis & thematic coding to interpret the narratives. By redefining silence as empowerment, Mushtaq challenges stereotypes of Muslim women, offering a nuanced critique of gendered power dynamics. This study emphasizes the life changing capacity of silence in marginalized communities, supporting its recognition in global feminist discourse & regional literary traditions.