CHENNAI: Calling literature a moral force that must unsettle power rather than entertain it, Booker Prize-winning writer Banu Mushtaq on Sunday said the Dravidian mindset has shaped a body of literature that writes from the margins and refuses silence in the face of cruelty.
Speaking at the Chennai International Book Fair, she said the Dravidian worldview was deeply cultural and ethical, grounded in education, rationality and self-respect.
“Literature that strengthens people also strengthens democracy. Literature that asks uncomfortable questions keeps society morally awake. In this sense, writers are not mere storytellers. They are ethical witnesses,” she said.
Referring to Kannada literature winning the Booker Prize in 2025 and Perumal Murugan’s work being shortlisted in 2023, she said these developments reflected growing global recognition of Dravidian literary strength. “Dravidian languages have never been ornamental. They are languages of debate, dissent, ethics and everyday life, carrying within them centuries of questioning of caste, patriarchy, power and injustice,” she said.
Describing it as literature that does not evade discomfort, flatter power or abandon people, Mushtaq said the increasing international attention to Indian-language writing is recognition of its moral seriousness rather than style and novelty. And at the heart of this seriousness lay the constitutional ideal of social justice.
“Dravidian states have been at the forefront of translating the Constitution’s vision of social justice into lived reality through policy, social reform and literature,” she said.
She lauded the government for working to institutionalise book culture as a public good, calling it a deeply ideological commitment. Noting that books travel to schools, villages, working-class neighbourhoods, women’s collectives and first-generation learners, she said this reflected a long Dravidian tradition that views knowledge as a shared resource rather than a privilege.