Mahasweta Devi

MAHASWETA DEVI
Mahasweta Devi occupies a singular position in the history of modern Indian

literature and world literature. This book engages with Devi’s works as a writer-
activist who critically explored subaltern subjectivities, the limits of history, and the
harsh social realities of post-independence India.
The volume showcases Devi’s oeuvre and versatility through samples of her writing –
in translation from the original Bengali – including Jhansir Rani, Hajar Churashir
Ma, and Bayen, among others. It also looks at the use of language, symbolism, mythic
elements, and heteroglossia in Devi’s exploration of heterogeneous themes such
as exploitation, violence, women’s subjectivities, depredation of the environment,
and failures of the nation state. The book analyses translations and adaptations
of her work, debates surrounding her activism, politics, and critical reception to
give readers an overview of the writer’s life, influences, achievements, and legacy. It
highlights the multiple concerns in her writings and argues that the aesthetic aspects
of Mahasweta Devi’s work form an essential part of her politics.
Part of the Writer in Context series, this book will be useful to scholars and
researchers of Indian literature, Bengali literature, English literature, postcolonial
studies, cultural studies, global south studies, and translation studies.
Radha Chakravarty is a writer, critic, and translator. She has co-edited The Essential
Tagore, nominated Book of the Year 2011 by Martha Nussbaum. She is the author
of Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers and Novelist Tagore: Gender
and Modernity in Selected Texts. Her Tagore translations include Gora, Chokher
Bali, Boyhood Days, Farewell Song: Shesher Kabita, Four Chapters, and The Land
of Cards: Stories, Poems and Plays for Children. Other works in translation are
Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Kapalkundala, Mahasweta Devi’s Our Santiniketan
and In the Name of the Mother (nominated for the Crossword Translation Award,
2004), Vermillion Clouds: Stories by Bengali Women, and Crossings: Stories from
Bangladesh and India. She has edited Shades of Difference: Selected Writings of
Rabindranath Tagore and Bodymaps: Stories by South Asian Women and co-edited
Writing Feminism: South Asian Voices and Writing Freedom: South Asian Voices.
Her poems have appeared in numerous books and journals. She has contributed to
Pandemic: A Worldwide Community Poem, nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2020.
Her forthcoming books include The Tagore Phenomenon and translations of Kazi
Nazrul Islam’s essays. She was Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation
Studies at Dr B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi, India.
WRITER IN CONTEXT
Series Editor: Sukrita Paul Kumar, critic, poet, and academic;
Chandana Dutta, academic, translator, and editor
The Writer in Context Series has been conceptualised to facilitate a

comprehensive understanding of Indian writers from different languages.
This is in light of the fact that Indian literature in English translation is
being read and even taught extensively across the world with more and
more scholars engaging in research. Each volume of the Series presents an
author from the post-Independence, multilingual, Indian literature from
within her/his socio-literary tradition. Every volume has been designed to
showcase the writer’s oeuvre along with her/his cultural context, literary
tradition, critical reception, and contemporary resonance. The Series, it is
hoped, will serve as a significant creative and critical resource to address
a glaring gap in knowledge regarding the context and tradition of Indian
writing in different languages.
Sukrita Paul Kumar and Chandana Dutta are steering the project as Series
Editors with Vandana R. Singh as the Managing Editor.
So far, twelve volumes have been planned covering writers from different
parts and traditions of India. The intent is to facilitate a better understanding
of Indian writers and their writings for the serious academic, the curious
researcher as well as the keen lay reader.
INDIRA GOSWAMI
Margins and Beyond
Edited by Namrata Pathak and Dibyajyoti Sarma
AMRITA PRITAM
The Writer Provocateur
Edited by Hina Nandrajog and Prem Kumari Srivastava
MAHASWETA DEVI
Writer, Activist, Visionary
Edited by Radha Chakravarty
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Writer-In-Context/book-series/WIC
MAHASWETA DEVI
Writer, Activist, Visionary
Edited by Radha Chakravarty

First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Radha Chakravarty; indi-
vidual chapters, the contributors
The right of Radha Chakravarty to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-367-69776-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-70274-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-14536-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To my grandmother Protima Mullik, whose love for books
I inherited
Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016).
Source: Raghu Rai.
From the manuscript of Ek Jibonei.
Source: Ajoy Gupta.
CONTENTS
List of Photographsxiv
Preface to the Seriesxv
Prefacexvii
Acknowledgementsxviii
Introduction: The Searing Vision of Mahasweta Devi 1

RADHA CHAKRAVARTY
SECTION 1
Spectrum: The Writer’s Oeuvre 19
1 Fictionalised Biography: The Queen of Jhansi21

MAHASWETA DEVI
TRANSLATED BY SAGAREE AND MANDIRA SENGUPTA
2 Novel: Mother of 108424

MAHASWETA DEVI
TRANSLATED BY SAMIK BANDYOPADHYAY
3 Short Story: Giribala 27

MAHASWETA DEVI
TRANSLATED BY RADHA CHAKRAVARTY
4 Drama: Bayen33
MAHASWETA DEVI
TRANSLATED BY SAMIK BANDYOPADHYAY
ix
C ontents
5 Children’s Literature: Nyadosh, the Incredible Cow 43

MAHASWETA DEVI
TRANSLATED BY PARAMITA BANERJEE
6 Literary Criticism: Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay47

MAHASWETA DEVI
SECTION 2
Kaleidoscope: Critical Reception 55
7 Novelist Mahasweta Devi: The Critical Tradition 57

ARUP KUMAR DAS
TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA
8 Mahasweta Devi: In Search of a Rare Uniqueness 67

DIPENDU CHAKRABARTI
9 Hajar Churashir Ma, Mahasweta, and the Next Phase

of the Bangla Novel 75
DILIP KUMAR BASU
10 Mahasweta Devi: Forests and Nature 80

PARTHA PRATIM BANDYOPADHYAY
11 Mahasweta Devi’s Writings: An Evaluation 85

SUJIT MUKHERJEE
12 Reading “Pterodactyl” 91
GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK
13 Douloti as a National Allegory 103

JAIDEV
14 Re-ordering the Maternal: Histories of Violence in

Mahasweta Devi, Toni Morrison, and Amrita Pritam 110
SHREEREKHA SUBRAMANIAN
x
C ontents
15 The Politics of Positionality: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

and Samik Bandyopadhyay as Translators of Mahasweta Devi 120
SHREYA CHAKRAVORTY
16 Reconsidering ‘Fictionalised Biographies’: Mahasweta

Devi’s Queen of Jhansi and Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s
The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar129
ARUNABH KONWAR
17 Writing for the Stage: The Plays of Mahasweta Devi 137

ANJUM KATYAL
18 Sahitya as Kinesis: Performative Potential in Stage and

Screen Adaptations of Mahasweta Devi’s Works 146
BENIL BISWAS
SECTION 3
Ablaze With Rage: The Writer as Activist 157
19 Tribal Language and Literature: The Need for Recognition 159

MAHASWETA DEVI
TRANSLATED BY MAITREYA GHATAK
20 Eucalyptus: Why? 164

MAHASWETA DEVI
21 ‘Palamau Is a Mirror of India’ 168

MAHASWETA DEVI
TRANSLATED BY IPSHITA CHANDA
22 The Adivasi Mahasweta 170

GANESH N. DEVY
23 Haunted Landscapes: Mahasweta Devi and the Anthropocene 177

MARY LOUISA CAPPELLI
xi
C ontents
SECTION 4
Personal Glimpses: A Life in Words 185
24 Our Santiniketan 187

MAHASWETA DEVI
25 Talking Writing: Conversations With Mahasweta Devi 189

NAVEEN KISHORE
26 ‘To Find Me, Read My Work’: Dialogues With

Mahasweta Devi 196
RADHA CHAKRAVARTY
27 Family Reminiscences 202

I I Am Truly Amazed 202
SOMA MUKHOPADHYAY
II Baba, Ma, Our Home 206
SOMA MUKHOPADHYAY
III The Didi I Have Known 209
SARI LAHIRI
IV My Mother 211
NABARUN BHATTACHARYA
V Mahasweta Devi: The ‘Mashi’ Who Wrote Fearlessly
About Caste, Class, and Patriarchy 214
INA PURI
28 Shobor Mother Mahasweta Devi 217

RANJIT KUMAR DAS (LODHA)
29 Small Big Things 220

ANAND (P. SACHIDANANDAN)
xii
C ontents
30 Mahasweta Devi: A Legend Who Lived on Her Own Terms 224

ANITA AGNIHOTRI
31 ‘Every Dream Has the Right to Live’ 229

DAKXIN BAJRANGE
Mahasweta Devi: A Bio-Chronology 233

Mahasweta Devi: Selected Bibliography 241
List of Contributors 247
Index 252
xiii
PHOTOGRAPHS
Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016) vi

From the manuscript of Ek Jiboneivii
1.1 The Queen of Jhansi book cover 20
1.2 Five Plays book cover 42
2.1 Mahasweta Devi 55
2.2 In the Name of the Mother book cover 119
2.3 Scene from the play “1084 ki Maa,” directed by Santanu
Bose, NSD 156
3.1 Mahasweta Devi: The activist 157
3.2 Mahasweta Devi and the tribal universe 162
3.3 Mahasweta Devi with Ganesh N. Devy 176
3.4 Mahasweta Devi: In tune with the landscape 184
4.1 Mahasweta Devi with her sisters 185
4.2 Mahasweta Devi with Radha Chakravarty in Dhaka,
Bangladesh200
4.3 Mahasweta Devi as a child with her parents and sister Mitul 208
4.4 From the Bengali film “Mahananda,” inspired by
Mahasweta Devi’s life and work 232
5.1 Mahasweta (extreme L) with her father Manish Ghatak
and sisters (L to R) Sari, Konchi, and Soma 234
xiv
PREFACE TO THE SERIES
The conceptualisation and making of the Writer in Context series must in

itself be seen in the context of a historical evolution of literary studies in
English in India. It was as late as the mid-1980s of the 20th century, dec-
ades after the independence of India, that the angst to redefine English lit-
erary studies in the universities manifested itself in thoughtful discussions
amongst scholars. In 1986 the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o published
his well-known book Decolonizing the Mind that had a widespread appeal
among the academia and people in general who were struggling to shed
their deep-set colonial hangover. Soon after, English departments of the
Indian universities and the Centres of South Asian Studies abroad began to
incorporate Indian literatures in translation into their syllabi. This encour-
aged more translations of Indian literatures into English, even though trans-
lation studies never picked up as a popular academic discipline. Other than
the translations of a few critical texts from Indian languages, the creation
of appropriate critical material for an understanding of the comprehensive
context of the writers remained minimal. There still remains an impend-
ing need to place Indian writers within the context of their own literary
as well as sociocultural linguistic traditions. Each language in India has a
well-developed tradition of creative writing, and the writings of each writer
require to be understood from within that tradition even if she/he may be
writing against the tide. Readers, translators, editors, and publishers ought
to be able to acknowledge and identify these writings from within their
own intimate contexts. Familiarity with the oeuvre of the writers, with their
times as well as the knowledge of their critical reception by the discerning
readers of their own language, facilitate an understanding of certain other-
wise inaccessible nuances of their creative writings. Apart from getting an
insight into the distinctive nature of the specific writer, this would also add
to the sense of the fascinating diversity in Indian literatures.
Each volume in this series is designed to provide a few extracts from
the creative and other prose writings by the author in focus, followed by
the English translations of selected critical essays on the author’s works.
For better insights into the writer’s art and craft, self-reflexive essays and
xv
P reface to the S eries
articles by the author about the creative process and her/his comments on
the writerly environment are also included. Much of this material may be
available as scattered correspondence, conversations, notes, and essays that
lie untranslated and locked – as it were – in different bhashas. A discreet
selection of such material has also been included in each of the volumes in
this series.
In the making of this series, there has been an ongoing exchange of ideas
amongst the editors of different volumes. It is indeed intriguing that while
the writers selected belong to more or less the same times, the contexts vary;
and, even when literary conventions maybe similar in some languages, the
author stands out as unique. At times the context itself creates the writer
but many a time the writer creates her/his own context. The enquiry into the
dialectic between the writer and the context lends a significant dimension to
the volume. While the distinctive nature of each volume is dictated by the
uniqueness of the author, all the volumes in the series conform to the shared
concept of presenting an author from within the literary context of her/his
language and culture.
It is hoped that the Writer in Context series will make it easier for the
scholar to, first, examine the creative interventions of the writer in her/
his own language and then help study the author in relation to the others,
thus mapping the literary currents and cross-currents in the subcontinent.
The series presents fiction writers from different Indian languages of the
post-Independence era in their specific contexts, through critical material
in translation and in the English original. This generation of ‘modern’ writ-
ers, whether in Malayalam or Urdu, Assamese or Hindi, or for that matter
in any other Indian language, evolved with a heightened consciousness of
change and resurgence fanned by modernism, postmodernism, progressiv-
ism, and other literary trends and fashions, while rooted in tradition. Highly
protective of their autonomy as writers, they were freely experimental in
form, content, and even the use of language. The volumes as a whole offer a
vision of the strands of divergence as well as confluence in Indian literature.
The Writer in Context series would be a substantial intervention, we
believe, in making the Indian writers more critically accessible and the
scholarship on Indian literature more meaningful. While the series would
be a creative attempt at contextualising Indian writers, these volumes will
facilitate the study of the diverse and multilingual Indian literature. The
intent is to present Indian writers and their writings from within their socio-
literary context to the serious academic, the curious researcher as well as the
keen lay reader.
Sukrita Paul Kumar and Chandana Dutta
Series Editors
xvi
PREFACE
This was a book waiting to be born. For almost three decades, as I read,
taught, researched, translated, and wrote about Mahasweta Devi, I felt a
nagging dissatisfaction with the way her works are received in institutional
academia. My own translations, critical writings, and pedagogical engage-
ments with her oeuvre attempted to counter the common stereotypical
perceptions of Mahasweta Devi, but in public discourse, some troubling
disjunctions between local, national, and international responses to her
work continued to persist. Then, in the midst of the pandemic, during a
casual conversation with Sukrita Paul Kumar, it emerged that the Writer in
Context Series was in the making. The concept was exciting, and I accepted
the invitation to take up the volume on Mahasweta Devi, delighted at this
opportunity to work with my friends of many years Sukrita and Chandana
Dutta (who is also my former publisher).
That was the beginning of an exciting collective journey involving the
series editors, other volume editors, critics, translators, publishers, cultural
personalities, activists, and the author’s family and close associates, among
others. Working on the book, I realised afresh how important it is for the
world to re-read Mahasweta Devi’s works today. The process brought me
into contact with Mahasweta enthusiasts from Bengal, the rest of India, and
beyond. I was bowled over by people’s generosity when it came to gathering
information, materials, and ideas. The profusion of sources was overwhelm-
ing, given her prolific output, as well as the fact that so many people had
engaged with her work in different languages and fields of activity. Choos-
ing what to include in the volume was therefore very difficult and left me
feeling that prospective readers of this book will get to see only the tip of the
iceberg. One hopes that highlighting Mahasweta’s versatility and bringing
the Bengali and pan-Indian critical reception of her works into the domain
of English academia will inspire new insights and open up fresh avenues for
scholarly research and pedagogy.
I remain grateful to Sukrita, Chandana, and all my fellow travellers who
have made this journey worthwhile.
Radha Chakravarty
xvii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Sukrita Paul Kumar and Chandana Dutta for drawing me
into the Writer in Context Series, and for their guidance, encouragement,
and support throughout the process. I also thank Routledge and Shoma
Choudhury for providing me the opportunity to work on a project so close
to my heart.
I am deeply grateful to Samik Bandyopadhyay, Nirmal Kanti Bhattachar-
jee, Ganesh N. Devy, Ajoy Gupta, and Sandip Dutta for all the information,
material, advice, and suggestions that they shared so generously.
My sincerest thanks to all the contributors for their valuable new essays:
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak for “Reading ‘Pterodactyl’,” Anita Agnihotri
for “A Legend Who Lived on Her Own Terms,” Anjum Katyal for “Writing
for the Stage,” Arunabh Konwar for “Reconsidering ‘Fictionalised Biogra-
phies’,” Benil Biswas for “Sahitya as Kinesis,” Shreerekha Subramanian for
“Re-ordering the Maternal,” Mary Louisa Cappelli for “Haunted Land-
scapes,” and Dakxin Bajrange for “ ‘Every Dream Has the Right to Live’.”
I am indebted to Raghu Rai, Naveen Kishore, Seagull Books, National
School of Drama, Ina Puri, Ajoy Gupta, Arindam Sil, and Bhasha Research
and Publications Centre, Vadodara, for permission to use the images in this
volume.
I am grateful to the following for granting permission to reprint previ-
ously published material in English: Naveen Kishore and Seagull Books for
extracts from The Queen of Jhansi, Mother of 1084, “Giribala,” “Bayen,”
“Nyadosh the Incredible Cow,” “Tribal Language and Literature,”
“Palamau Is a Mirror of India,” “Eucalyptus: Why?” and Our Santiniketan;
Sahitya Akademi for extracts from Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay by Mahas-
weta Devi, and “Small Big Things” by Anand; Ganesh N. Devy and Seminar
for “The Adivasi Mahasweta”; Samik Bandyopadhyay for extracts from his
translation of Bayen; The Book Review and Chandra Chari for “Mahas-
weta Devi’s Writings: An Evaluation” by Sujit Mukherjee; Anupama Jaidev
and Manohar Publishers and Distributors for “Douloti as National Alle-
gory” by the late Jaidev; Anand (P. Sachidanandan) for “Small Big Things”;
Shreya Chakravorty and Avenel Press for “The Politics of Positionality:
xviii
A cknowledgements
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Samik Bandyopadhyay as Translators of

Mahasweta Devi”; and Ina Puri and Outlook for “Mahasweta Devi: The
‘Mashi’ Who Wrote Fearlessly About Caste, Class, and Patriarchy.”
I thank Naveen Kishore and Seagull for granting permission to use
extracts from the screenplay of the documentary “Talking Writing: Four
Conversations with Mahasweta Devi.”
My sincerest thanks to Nandini Guha for all her wonderful English trans-
lations from Bengali.
For permission to carry English translations of Bengali sources, I am
indebted to the following: Tathagata Bhattacharya and Sangbad Pratidin for
“Amar Ma” by the late Nabarun Bhattacharya; the late Soma Mukhopad-
hyay, Aksharekha, and Samakaler Jiyankathi for “Baba, Ma, Our Home”
and “I Am Truly Amazed”; Sari Lahiri and Aksharekha for “The Didi I have
Known”; Arup Kumar Das and Abhibhab for “Novelist Mahasweta Devi:
The Critical Tradition”; Dilip K. Basu and Digangan for “Hajar Churashir
Ma, Mahasweta and the Next Phase of the Bangla Novel”; the late Dipendu
Chakrabarti and Jalarko for “Mahasweta Devi: In Search of a Rare Unique-
ness”; Sabita Bandyopadhyay and Korak for “Mahasweta Devi: Forests and
Nature” by the late Partha Pratim Bandyopadhyay; Aksharekha for “Sho-
bor Mother Mahasweta Devi” and Anita Agnihotri for “A Legend Who
Lived on Her Own Terms.”
Despite all our efforts, certain permissions could not be formalised as the
individuals concerned either could not be contacted or did not respond in
time. Ranjit Kumar Das (Lodha) was unreachable.
It was a pleasure to work on the manuscript with Nabeela Hamid. I deeply
appreciate her patience, meticulousness, and unfailing good humour, even at
the most stressful times. It was also wonderful to collaborate with the Rout-
ledge team, especially Shoma Choudhury and Shloka Chauhan, once again.
Last but not the least, I wish to thank my family, without whose support
and encouragement this book would not have seen the light of day.
xix
INTRODUCTION
The Searing Vision of Mahasweta Devi
Radha Chakravarty
Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016) is best known to the English-speaking world

at large as a fiery writer-activist who dedicated her life to the struggle for
the rights of the downtrodden, particularly the indigenous people of India.
In her own words, a ‘luminous anger’ impels her writing, which she regards
as inseparable from her activism. Her representations of the marginalised
figure of the ‘subaltern,’ especially as mediated through the translations and
critical writings of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, have become legendary.
While there is a degree of truth in the perception of Mahasweta Devi as
the voice of the silenced subaltern, a deeper and more wide-ranging study
indicates that this widely held view is true only up to a point. It is the aim of
the present volume, in consonance with the overall objectives of the Writer
in Context Series, to present a more rounded, multidimensional image of
Mahasweta Devi.
Unpacking the partial truths that underlie the stereotypical image of
Mahasweta Devi, we find that her representations of different forms of mar-
ginality bring together the aesthetic and the political in ways that demand
a more nuanced reading, recognising that her creative writings need to be
read as literature, and not only as forms of social documentation or ‘wit-
nessing’. This interrogation of the stereotype opens up the possibility of
re-reading Mahasweta Devi’s life and work in newer, more unsettling ways.
Her creative writings in particular emerge as ambivalent texts, simultane-
ously imbued with radical potential and a continued reliance on traditional
forms of signification. Mahasweta herself insists on the historical basis for
her creative writings, but in her literary works, social realism is offset by a
visionary quality that enables the imagining of transformative possibilities.
The contents of this volume testify to the different, sometimes contradictory
dimensions of her multifaceted genius.
Readers outside Bengal tend to have a limited, formulaic view of Mahas-
weta Devi, on the basis of the tiny fraction of her work available in English
translation. She was actually an extraordinarily prolific and versatile writer
who wrote in many genres, including fiction, biography, drama, children’s
literature, memoirs, travel writing, and literary criticism. She also edited a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-11
R adha C hakravarty
journal, translated from English to Bengali, published criticism in English,

wrote letters and prefaces, created textbooks for children, edited several
anthologies, and produced a considerable corpus of journalistic and activ-
ist writings. The total extent of her output is still not fully documented. It
is time for readers outside Bengal to recognise Mahasweta’s extraordinary
versatility, enabling a reappraisal of her achievement and legacy.
A wide gulf separates the Bengali reception of Mahasweta Devi’s work
and her image in the world outside.1 While scholars in English departments
in India and abroad access the translations and criticism available in Eng-
lish, they remain largely unaware of Mahasweta’s tangled relationship with
the literary establishment in Bengal. The debates, controversies, adulation,
and antagonism that she has inspired in Bengal over the decades of her long
career go largely unnoticed by academics across India and in the interna-
tional literary sphere. Hence, there are multiple stereotypes of Mahasweta
Devi, conjured up by her different audiences and separated by differ-
ent geographies, histories, and literary contexts. This book aims to look
beyond these local, national, and global stereotypes to capture something
of the extraordinary versatility and complexity of this literary phenomenon.
The public Mahasweta is a contested figure, claimed by varied discourses.
Behind the blazing public persona, though, lurks a private Mahasweta, as
strong as she is vulnerable, intimately known to some, but unknown to the
vast majority of her readers. This volume will also uncover some significant
discrepancies and contradictions between Mahasweta’s public image and
private personality.
Born on 14 January 1926 into a distinguished family in the erstwhile East
Bengal (now Bangladesh), Mahasweta Devi spent her early years surrounded
by illustrious personalities like her father, poet Manish Ghatak; her mother,
the writer and social worker Dharitri Devi; and her uncles, the sculptor
Sankho Chowdhury and renowned film-maker Ritwik Ghatak. Reading
came naturally to her, as she was surrounded by women who loved books.
At the age of 10, she was sent to boarding school at Santiniketan, where her
encounter with Tagore and his world became a shaping influence in her life.
After completing her schooling in Kolkata, she returned to Santiniketan for
her Bachelor’s degree in English Honours. Subsequently, she would do her
Masters in English Literature from Calcutta University. This was a period
of great political turmoil, marked by the Second World War, the Quit India
Movement (1942), the Great Bengal Famine (1942–44), and the Calcutta
riots of 1946. In 1947 came Independence and, with it, the Partition of India
and the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Mahasweta vividly remembers
the turbulence of the times and assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. These
upheavals drew her out of her cocooned middle-class existence. As a college
student, she took up relief work, distributing food and collecting dead bod-
ies from the street.
2
I ntroduction
Mahasweta’s marriage in 1946 to Bijon Bhattacharya, the renowned

dramatist associated with the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA),
aroused her political consciousness, and she became a committed Marxist.
Their son Nabarun Bhattacharya would grow up to be a famous writer him-
self. During their marriage, they faced financial hardships, especially as their
Communist leanings made it difficult to find employment. Mahasweta had
to augment the family income by doing odd jobs. At one point, she even sold
soap and powdered dyes. She also started writing, under the pseudonym
Sumitra Devi. Most of these early writings were unremarkable, written in
a conventional romantic vein. In 1954, Mahasweta travelled to Jhansi and
Bundelkhand to collect material for her path-breaking work Jhansir Rani
(The Queen of Jhansi) published in 1956, which brilliantly combined his-
torical research with elements of myth and folklore. The book drew instant
critical acclaim. The writer Mahasweta Devi was born.
After the break-up of her first marriage in 1962, Mahasweta left her
teenaged son Nabarun with his father. Later, she married Asit Gupta, but
that marriage, too, did not last and ended in 1975. She suffered from
bouts of depression. Twice, she tried to take her own life. In 1963, she
received her master’s degree in English from Calcutta University and
joined Bijoygarh Jyotish Roy College as a lecturer from 1964 to 1984. It
was also in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Mahasweta Devi shot to
fame with works like “Bayen,” Hajar Churashir Ma, Aranyer Adhikar,
Agnigarbha, and Operation? Bashai Tudu, shaking up the literary estab-
lishment with the radical force of her writings. She wrote in a variety of
literary genres, translated texts into Bengali, and published biographies
of her father and Lu Xhun, as well as stories and textbooks for children.
By the 1980s, translations of her works into Indian languages had estab-
lished her as a major Indian writer, beyond the local context in Bengal.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s English translations also brought her an
international audience. As her fame spread, a plethora of awards came
her way, including the Jnanpith Award, the Ramon Magsaysay Award,
and the Sahitya Akademi Award. The Bengali critical circle, with whom
she always had a troubled relationship, now lauded her achievements.
She was awarded the French Legion of Honour, shortlisted for the Booker
Prize, and nominated for the Nobel Prize.
All this while, she was also campaigning tirelessly for the cause of the
marginalised people, especially the tribal communities. A turning point had
come in 1965, when she visited Palamau and realised the plight of the land-
less and dispossessed, under the yoke of bonded labour and discriminatory
laws. What followed was a lifetime of commitment to the struggle for the
rights of the dispossessed, which took her to far corners of the country and
made her a voice to be reckoned with. To the tribal people, she became
‘Marangdai,’ a sort of mother figure.
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Her intensely political consciousness notwithstanding, Devi’s worldview

did not remain confined to the tenets of any single party or ideology. Despite
her avowed faith in Marxism, she did not formally join the Communist
Party and was outspoken in her critique of what she saw as the shortcom-
ings of the Left government in Bengal. She changed her allegiance to the Tri-
namool Congress (TMC) for their promise of change during the Nandigram
protests, but later she faulted their leadership too, for failing to tolerate
criticism from civil society. Rather than any formal affiliation to parties, her
political consciousness manifested itself through her activism, impelled by
an innate urge to intervene against diverse forms of injustice.
In her later years, Mahasweta Devi’s memory began to falter, and her
health declined. She died on 28 July 2016 in Kolkata and was accorded a
state funeral. A sea of people accompanied her hearse to the cremation site,
and tributes poured in from all over the world. Today, Mahasweta Devi is
remembered as a distinctive voice in Bengali literature and a writer of inter-
national repute. Her writings have been translated into many languages,
adapted for stage and screen, and included in university syllabuses in India
and abroad. Yet in many respects, to most readers, she still remains – to use
her own phrase about the tribals she supported – an undiscovered ‘conti-
nent’ (Devi 1995: xxi).
Ablaze With Rage: The Writer as Activist

Mahasweta Devi is as renowned for her activism as for her literary achieve-
ment. She regards these as twin aspects of the same vocation, because writ-
ing itself becomes a form of resistance. Her life and circumstances explain
her passionate radical spirit. Her family included several unconventional
cultural personalities, and her education at Santiniketan sensitised her to
values of inclusiveness, self-reliance, freedom of thought and expression,
social responsibility, and environmental issues. There, she also caught some-
thing of the spirit of the freedom struggle. Through her marriage to Bijon
Bhattacharya, she grew familiar with IPTA and the ideology of Left. Later,
she was associated with different radical movements in Bengal, Manipur,
Jharkhand, Bihar, and Rajasthan.
While Mahasweta’s crusade for the rights of the marginalised marks her
out as an extraordinarily committed writer, it has also raised questions
about the politics of voice and silencing. Spivak’s iconic essay “Can the
Subaltern Speak?”(1988) has aroused heated debates about the question of
representation: does speaking for the silenced empower the dispossessed, or
indirectly amount to a continued silencing, by not giving them a voice of
their own? When considering this question, it is important not to compart-
mentalise Mahasweta’s activism and creative writing. Her literary works
represent the subaltern through fictional characters, but as an activist she
engages directly with the problems of the dispossessed, and as editor of the
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journal Bortika, she also enables the indigenous people to speak and write
in their own voices.
The multiple axes of radicalism in Mahasweta Devi’s practice intersect
in layered, complex, and sometimes conflicting ways. In fact, it is reductive
to categorise her activism under any single ideological label. The aim of the
entire section on activism in this book is to enable a nuanced appraisal of
the intricacies of her social vision to highlight the interconnectedness of her
multiple concerns.
Perhaps the best-known aspect of Mahasweta Devi’s activism is her cam-
paign for the rights of the indigenous people, especially the denotified tribes.
She emerged as a figure of inspiration for the indigenous communities, who
named her ‘Marangdai,’ claiming her as their own. She fought for separate
statehood for Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, so that the tribal communities
there could gain autonomy. She worked with Ganesh N. Devy at the Bhasha
Research and Publication Centre at Vadodara, campaigning for the recogni-
tion of tribal languages. Sometimes, she walked long distances on foot to
meet the people from remote villages. With Dakxin Bajrange, she set up the
Budhan theatre in Ahmedabad, to assist the Chhara community, labelled a
‘criminal tribe’ since 1871, to use performance as a form of self-expression,
and to deal with the stigma. In 1980, she formed the Palamau Zila Band-
hua Samiti, India’s first bonded labour liberation organisation. In 1986, she
founded the Adim Jaati Aikya Parishad (Ancient Tribes Union) to foster
cooperation among 38 West Bengali tribal groups.
In her fiction, plays, essays, and articles, Mahasweta describes tribal life as
an ‘undiscovered continent’ that needs to be explored and understood. Her
activist writings, many of which are collected in Dust on the Road edited
by Maitreya Ghatak (1997), include multiple expressions of her concern for
the tribal communities. Operation? Bashai Tudu, Chotti Munda and His
Arrow, “The Hunt,” and “Draupadi” are iconic works of fiction dealing
with the plight of the indigenous people. She also edited the journal Bortika,
where people from deprived communities could write their own stories.
Mahasweta Devi also attacks the inequalities caused by class hierarchies,
exposing the forces of exploitation that oppress the rural and urban poor.
She describes herself as a Marxist, and despite her own privileged back-
ground, castigates the complacency and elitism of bourgeois society. Mother
of 1084, “The Hunt,” and “Jamunaboti’s Mother” are examples of such
writing. Her writings also expose the links between local and nationwide
power structures and the broader transnational forces that continue to sub-
jugate and exploit the Global South.
Although she disavows any link with the feminist movement, Mahas-
weta Devi’s writings show a powerful concern for the plight of women in a
patriarchal society. In narratives such as “Draupadi,” “Giribala,” “Breast
Giver,” “Bayen,” “Rudali,” and “The Hunt,” multiple forms of oppres-
sion are shown to intersect in the constructions of female subjectivity. “The
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R adha C hakravarty
Story of Chuni Kotal,” an activist essay, highlights the multiple forms of

marginalisation suffered by the tribal woman, who emerges as the ultimate
figure of subalternity.
Caste prejudices and inequalities also feature prominently in many of
Mahasweta Devi’s writings. Activist writings like the essay “The Chains
of Untouchability” condemn caste-based discrimination. Kobi Bandyo-
ghoti Gayener Jibon o Mrityu (1967) presents the struggle of a young man
from a low caste to achieve acceptance as a poet in 15th-century Bengal. In
texts such as The Glory of Sri Ganesh, “Kunti and the Nishadin,” “Saanjh
Sakaler Ma,” and “Bayen,” caste issues intersect with gender in a sharp
critique of discriminatory social practices.
Devi’s writings strike an urgent cautionary note about the destruction
of the environment in the name of ‘development.’ In “Arjun,” “Salt,”
“A Countryside Slowly Dying,” and “Eucalyptus: Why?” we see her pas-
sionate desire for harmony between nature and the human world, an ideal
she had first imbibed in her early days at Santiniketan. Today, critics such
as Spivak, Jennifer Wenzel, and Mary Louisa Cappelli connect her writings
with the contemporary discourse of planetarity and the Anthropocene.
Mahasweta also remains a vocal critic of the ways in which she feels the
emergent nation state has failed to live up to the people’s dream of inde-
pendent India.
After thirty-one years of Independence, I find my people still groaning

under hunger, landlessness, indebtedness, and bonded labour. . . . All
the parties . . . have failed to keep their commitment to the common
people. . . . Hence, I go on writing . . . about the people.2
She writes against communalism, caste prejudice, and superstition.

According to Alaknanda Bagchi, Mahasweta’s writings
pry open the closures of the national discourse, compelling the

forces in power to ‘remember’ what they would rather ‘forget.’ As
the disparate discourses of nationalism(s) collide with and inter-
rupt each other, interstitial spaces are formed in which the nation is
(re)inscribed in a way that disrupts the essentialist discourse of the
nation-state.
(Bagchi 1996: 48)
The Writer in Action

Mahasweta Devi’s unconventional, experimental approach to language and
writing signals a remarkable aesthetic awareness that goes hand in hand
with her powerful political consciousness. In “Ami/Amar Lekha” (“Me/My
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Writing”), published in Desh Sahitya Sankhya, she speaks of the writing

process:
I don’t use apparent/visible experience directly in literature. To

write, I have to delve into maps, documents, archives and history.
Experience, subject matter, message, language, prose style, all these
have to undergo constant processing. Only then do they become
aestheticised. Then I write.
(Devi 1983; 91. Translation mine)
She insists:
Because every text requires this aesthetic process, words, language

and style also demand constant effort and analysis. My interest in
vocabulary, syntax and its evolution through usage, and such other
matters, goes back a long way . . . In our times, in our urban lives,
local words are daily becoming more and more scarce. Hence I find
words even from the dictionary, and use them. The words that
attract me, I note down somewhere, to use when required.
(ibid)
Local vocabularies become central to the style and subject of Mahasweta’s

writing: ‘Since I remain immersed in indigenous myths, oral legends, local
beliefs and religious convictions, I find purely indigenous words very potent
and expressive’ (ibid).
Oral traditions fascinate her. She campaigned for the recognition of tribal
languages and also translated and edited volumes on Indian folklore. In
her own writings, she includes elements from the oral traditions, as in the
snatches of local lore in Jhansir Rani (The Queen of Jhansi) or the lines from
an untranslated Santhal song in “Draupadi.”
Heteroglossia, the use of language as an indicator of social hierarchies in
multivocal, polyphonic texts, functions as a potent literary feature in her
writings. Alongside, many of her texts incorporate multilingual elements,
as if to indicate the heterogeneities inherent in the cultures of South Asia.3
About her own unorthodox, eclectic approach to writing, Mahasweta says:
I borrow from everywhere – from oral traditions, proverbs, folk

customs, rituals, whatever. I watch Shah Rukh Khan films and all
my major books have been written with a transistor playing Vividh
Bharati. A tree you put in good soil will thrive, but you’ll also find
some which feed on absolute rubbish and survive somehow. I’m like
that. I take from the nitty gritty of life. I believe in documentation –
facts, statistics and data talk much more than what you think about
events. I incorporate all this in my fiction.4
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Mahasweta’s relationship with modernism remains a fraught question.

She had scathing things to say about the quietism of her Bengali literary
contemporaries who were immersed in aesthetic experiments while turn-
ing a blind eye to social realities. All the same, her writings deploy special
linguistic, textual, and aesthetic strategies that can be compared to the prac-
tices of other writers who were experimenting with new approaches. In fact,
with her exposure to a wide, eclectic selection of Bengali and English books
in childhood and her subsequent evolution into a student and teacher of
English literature, Mahasweta Devi was conversant with multiple modern-
ist literary histories. Although she rarely speaks of her engagement with
Western literatures, it is not improbable that her reading influenced her own
writing practices, even if she was not consciously drawing on such sources.
Modern writers from Western Anglophone traditions, such as Kafka and
Beckett, use ‘irrealism’ to go beyond the limits of realist conventions, even
within a sequential, rational narrative (Löwy 2007). Sourit Bhattacharya
detects a version of such ‘critical irrealism’ in Mahasweta Devi’s texts, such
as Mother of 1084 and Operation? Bashai Tudu, where the quest narra-
tive deploys non-linear time, dreams, dialogues, memory, and supernatural
elements, destabilising the normative realism, in order to offer a powerful
critique of the repression of dissent and the marginalisation of the rural and
urban underclasses by the postcolonial Indian state. Here, he argues, the
interventionist potential of irrealism can be extended to postcolonial rural
scenarios, rather than the Western metropolitan context, to assert the exist-
ence of heterogeneous modernities (Bhattacharya 2020: 98). This paradigm
is described by Benita Parry as ‘peripheral realism,’ which juxtaposes ‘the
mundane and the fantastic, the recognizable and the improbable’ (Parry
2009: 39). Minoli Salgado argues that the ‘surface realism’ of Mahasweta’s
texts is ‘destabilized by mythic and satiric configurations’ (2000: 131). We
see this in Mahasweta’s use of myth in her constructions of contemporary
history in texts like “Draupadi,” “Breast Giver,” and “Kunti and the Nisha-
din” (see also Partha Pratim Bandyopadhyay, in this volume). “Draupadi,”
for instance, rewrites the disrobing scene in Mahabharata, signalling ‘simul-
taneously a deliberate refusal of a shared sign-system (the meanings assigned
to nakedness, and rape: shame, fear, loss) and an ironic deployment of the
same semiotics to create disconcerting counter-effects of shame, confusion
and terror in the enemy’ (Sunder Rajan 1999: 352–353).
These aspects of Mahasweta’s aesthetic can be read in relation to
modernist tendencies in the works of writers in other Indian languages dur-
ing the second half of the 20th century. The struggle for independence and
the Partition affected the literary scene in modern India, forcing writers
to look beyond social realism for other forms of expression commensu-
rate with altered realities. The socio-historical context produced ruptured
sensibilities, a loneliness produced perhaps by the breakdown of the tradi-
tional nuclear family, and a certain philosophical angst about existence and
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identity. The encounters with Western culture during the colonial period
also created a tension between indigenous tradition and transcultural influ-
ences. Such factors led to the emergence of new modes of writing, marked
by heterogeneous instances of formal innovation and linguistic experiment
(Kumar 2020).
Although her fiction abounds in strong women characters and expresses
a sharp awareness of the oppression of women under patriarchy, Mahas-
weta strongly resists being categorised as a woman writer. ‘I write about
class, not the gender problem,’ she insists. In “Ami/Amar Lekha” (1976),
she emphatically rejects the label of woman writer. This disavowal notwith-
standing, it remains difficult to ignore the special emphasis on women’s
double marginalisation in Mahasweta’s narratives of subaltern resistance
such as “Draupadi,” “Giribala,” and “The Hunt.” There exists an entire
body of work on Mahasweta’s focus on women’s issues. As I have argued
elsewhere, her representations of motherhood, as in Hajar Churashir Ma,
“Stanadayini,” “Jamunaboti’s Mother,” and “Bayen” provide striking cri-
tiques of patriarchy, and the body functions as a powerful but ambivalent
signifier in some of these texts, as a site for women’s exploitation that can
also act as a source of resistance.5 According to Spivak, Mahasweta’s fiction
locates the tribal woman as the ultimate instance of subalternity. Judith
Butler and Sanatan Bhowal also emphasise the role of gender in Mahasweta
Devi’s writings on the tribal as subaltern. Harveen Sachdeva Mann com-
pares Mahasweta to Saadat Hasan Manto to analyse the politics of rape
in their works, within a postcolonial frame. These critical interpretations
alert us to the fact that Mahasweta’s own statements may be an instance of
conscious self-fashioning. Her writings demand to be read against the grain,
without necessarily taking her assertions at face value.
Translation as a window to Mahasweta’s writings remains a contested
terrain. Up until the 1970s, she had a primarily Bengali readership. Her
growing reputation as a writer and activist of national significance had
begun to draw a broader public interest by the 1980s, and translations of
her work into Indian languages and also into English were now available.
Subsequently, through Spivak’s mediation, Mahasweta’s works in transla-
tion began to circulate in the international domain, bringing her a different
audience. Today, Mahasweta Devi’s works circulate in multiple languages,
across South Asia and the rest of the world.
Spivak’s translations have earned her the name of Mahasweta’s dwarpa-
lika to the Western world (Sujit Mukherjee 1991: 31). They have proved to
be not only immensely influential but also controversial. Multiple transla-
tions of the same texts also exist, inviting a comparative approach. Dis-
tinguishing between translations for the international market and those
intended for a national readership, Minoli Salgado insists that ‘in the light
of this need to examine the range and diversity of translations against one
another, a truly pluralistic and culturally open reading would, in future,
9
R adha C hakravarty
require a comparative analysis’ (2000: 143). In this volume, we encoun-

ter this approach in Shreya Chakravorty’s essay, which argues that both
Spivak and Samik Bandyopadhyay, translating Mahasweta for different
audiences, have their own respective agendas that influence their practice
as translators. I have argued elsewhere that changing trends in Mahas-
weta translations can be traced back to broader paradigm shifts in criti-
cal responses to her work, spanning local, national, and global frames of
reference (Chakravarty 2004: 65). Beyond the English translations familiar
to scholars in India and the Anglo-American academy, there exist a wide
range of translations of Mahasweta Devi’s works, in multiple Indian and
foreign languages. Anand (P. Sachidanandan), who translated her text into
Malayalam, recalls the experience in his memory piece, in Section 4 of this
book.
Speaking of Mahasweta as a writer in translation, it is worth noting a
neglected fact: Mahasweta Devi was herself a translator. She translated sev-
eral texts into Bengali, including A. K. Ramanujan’s Folktales from India
(1991). She also involved herself seriously in the process of vetting transla-
tions of her own writings. Sometimes, she would provide her own English
translations to publishers to be used as a reference when editing the work
of her translators.
Through the Kaleidoscope: Critical Reception

The critical reception of Mahasweta Devi’s work has been as variegated
as the narrative of her life and career. It has evolved in divergent and
often discontinuous ways, not only over time but also across languages
and regions, at local, national, and international levels. Her works have
been interpreted according to a wide range of approaches, such as Marx-
ism, feminism, postcolonialism, ecocriticism, human rights, Dalit studies,
ethnography, folkloristics, subaltern studies, deconstruction, performance
studies, film studies, translation studies, comparative literature, and
intersectionality.
This wide spectrum of opinions is fascinating, but it also alerts us to the
danger of trying to pigeonhole Mahasweta Devi by using easy labels and
categories, for no single critical approach adequately captures her multi-
dimensional achievement in its full complexity. K. Satchidanandan argues,
with reference to “Stanadayini,” that in the case of Mahasweta Devi, even
an apparently ‘realistic’ text . . . is far too complex to be studied from a
single perspective. Perhaps this also points to the need to decolonize our
methodologies and discover tools that are indigenous and at the same time
modern enough to grasp the contradictions of the text through a sympto-
matic reading (2019: 317). That is also the purpose of this book.
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Bengali Critical Reception

To the Bengali literary establishment, Mahasweta Devi was an anomaly,
sometimes a thorn in the flesh. She flouted literary and linguistic conven-
tions, broke social barriers, explored subaltern worlds beyond the bhad-
ralok Bengali sphere, and used her pen as a weapon. Yet she became a force
to contend with, because of her extraordinary talent, radical vision, and
worldwide fame, earning acclaim even as she continued to court contro-
versy. Her work sparked debates, some of which continue even today. While
mainstream critics faulted her work for being too political and not aesthetic
enough, hardcore members of the Left criticised her for not making the
workers’ struggle the central concern of her writings. Her own claims of
not being a feminist writer were contested by numerous readers, especially
women critics. Translations of her work, especially Spivak’s internationalis-
ing strategies, were critiqued as a sell-out to the global market at the cost
of diluting the local specificities of her writings. Her activism won her the
devotion of the marginalised groups she supported, but aroused the hostil-
ity of official authorities because of her outspoken resistance to measures
she found oppressive or discriminatory. Half a decade after her death, the
debates refuse to die down.
The corpus of Bengali critical writings on Mahasweta Devi is vast, includ-
ing journal articles and special issues, book-length studies, forewords,
reviews, and interviews. Her Rachanasamagra (complete works), compiled
in multiple large volumes, are currently being published by Dey’s Publica-
tions, Kolkata. So far, 24 volumes have appeared, with several more in the
pipeline. There are several documentary films about her life and work, and
a feature film based on her writings is in the making.
The Bengali critical reception of Mahasweta’s work evolved in three
broad phases:
(i) 1950s to the late 1960s

(ii) Late 1960s to 1996
(iii) 1997 and thereafter
In the 1950s, when Bengali literature was trying to emerge from the shadow
of Bankimchandra, Tagore, Saratchandra, Bibhutibhushan, and their succes-
sors, the appearance of Devi’s Queen of Jhansi in 1956 struck a distinc-
tive chord, for the narrative, set outside the social world of Bengal, offers a
remarkable blend of history, biography, fiction, and myth. Soon after, she
published her first novel, Nati. Though most of her early works, written under
the pseudonym Sumitra Devi, are conventional romances, unremarkable in
quality, Achyut Goswami (1958) notes, even at this stage, that despite their
many flaws, her writings display a power that exceeds their shortcomings.
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From the late 1960s, Mahasweta Devi reinvented herself as a writer with
a social mission, with “Bayen” (1969), Hajar Churashir Ma (Mother of
1084), Aranyer Adhikar, Bashai Tudu, and Mastersaab. Her works now
investigated, with an unsparing eye, the truth about the social structures of
independent India. She turned her sympathies towards the predicament of
those disowned by the establishment, such as the adivasis, political rebels,
and others relegated to the margins of society. In Mother of 1084, Aranyer
Adhikar, Bashai Tudu, and Mastersaab, she wrote about oppressed groups.
Her defiant, radical approach invited controversy.
In the 1980s, critics who shared her social perspective, such as Jyotsnamoy
Ghosh and Sharmila Basu, lauded her inspirational role, noting that her
works captured the experimental spirit of the 1970s, when old norms broke
down and writers struggled to find new forms to suit an altered reality. Basu
also observes that Mahasweta’s writings go beyond the ‘feminine’ world of
earlier Bengali women writers from Swarnakumari Devi to Ashapurna Devi.
Arun Kumar Mukhopadhyay (1982) highlights her ability to combine aes-
thetics with social responsibility. Dilip Kumar Basu (1985) writes of Mother
of 1084 as a pathbreaking Bengali novel.
However, Mahasweta Devi also aroused the ire of detractors from the Left
such as Sureshchandra Mitra, because despite her declared commitment to
Marxism, she did not always treat class struggle as her fundamental theme.
Partho Mukhopadhyay (1991) argues that Mother of 1084 is not really a
radical novel because it cannot escape the author’s bourgeois perspective.
Anunoy Chattopadhyay (1988) finds her portrayal of adivasis naïve and
romanticised.
The early 1990s saw a mixed bag of critical responses, sweet, sour, and
sometimes bitter. Sumita Chakraborty (1991) describes Mahasweta as a
writer who constantly unmade and reinvented herself, not from external
pressures, but from the dictates of her own heart, writing with courage,
purpose, and a will to spread her message. Arun Kumar Mukhopadhyay
(1993) describes her as a radical figure, towering above her contemporaries.
Shakuntala Bhattacharya (1996) observes that Mahasweta’s fiction, though
intensely political, cannot be read as propaganda, because of its exquisite
artistry.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award (1997) came as a turning point, establish-
ing Devi’s international stature. Bengali critics now applauded her unique
achievement. Her complete works began to appear in a multivolume series,
the Rachanasamagra, edited by Ajoy Gupta. Ranjan Bandyopadhyay cel-
ebrates Mahasweta Devi for placing the lives of the marginalised at the
centre of her writings. In 1997, Sankho Ghose praises her for overturning
conventional literary standards and expanding the boundaries of Bengali
literature. Sunil Gangopadhyay remarks on the elasticity of her language,
suited for both historical and contemporary themes.
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This broad trend of adulation continues, even today. Mahasweta Devi’s

death in 2016 brought a shower of tributes and critical revaluations, all
acknowledging her unique position in Bengali literary history. However,
debates about Mahasweta also continue to resonate, concerning transla-
tion, her political leanings, and the challenges of writing for an international
audience without compromising on local nuances.
Critical Reception Across India

Mahasweta Devi is known across India through translations, adaptations,
critical discourses, and her reputation as an activist. Mulk Raj Anand,
Sujit Mukherjee, Ganesh N. Devy, Shiv Visvanathan, Anjum Katyal, Tutun
Mukherjee, E. Sathyanarayana, M. Asaduddin, Jaidev, Nivedita Sen, Sourit
Bhattacharya, Sanatan Bhowal, and Nandini Sen are among the numerous
critics who address her work. These readings recognise Mahasweta’s place
in the broader Indian and South Asian literary domains, beyond the local
Bengali frame. She has been compared with writers such as Manto, Prem-
chand, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Her writings have been translated into many
Indian languages (including Hindi, Assamese, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu,
Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Gujarati, and Ho) and also into English. Edi-
tors and publishers such as Samik Bandyopadhyay, Nirmal Kanti Bhat-
tacharjee, and Naveen Kishore have played a key role in making her work
visible in English translation.
International Critical Reception

Devi entered the stage of world literature through the mediation of transla-
tors and scholars like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Kalpana Bardhan.
She has been translated into English, French, German, Italian, and Swed-
ish and has also won numerous international awards. Judith Butler, Mar-
tha Nussbaum, Gabriella Collu, Jennifer Wenzel, Mary Louisa Cappelli,
Minoli Salgado, Dinithy Karunanayake, Filippo Menozzi, Sun Hee Yook,
David Farrier, Alessandra Marino, and Henry Schwartz are among the
international critics who acknowledge her importance. Her work has drawn
comparisons with Buchi Emecheta, Assia Djebar, and Grimms’ fairy tales
(Hamam 2014; Kailasam 2011; Wenzel 2000).
Martha Nussbaum begins her essay “Love, Care and Dignity: The Fam-
ily as a Privileged Community” (2002) with an epigraph from Mahasweta
Devi’s “Giribala,” the well-known story of a girl married off at 14 to a man
who sells off their daughters into the flesh trade to fund his dream of build-
ing a house. Nussbaum sees Giribala’s plight as paradigmatic of the way the
family, conventionally romanticised as a ‘haven in a heartless world,’ can
also foster asymmetries of power and gender inequality (211). Devi’s story
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becomes the springboard for Nussbaum’s larger reflections on asymmetries

of power and the values associated with the family.
In Undoing Gender (2004), Judith Butler speaks of Mahasweta’s involve-
ment with the tribal cause, seen in a global frame: ‘If we read Devi closely,
we see that she is making connections, living connections, between the tribal
and the global, and that she is herself, as an author, a medium of transit
between them’ (251). Butler notes a rupture in this transit, though: because
Mahasweta’s texts come to her through Spivak’s translation and analysis,
‘authorship is itself riven’ (251).
Jennifer Wenzel and Mary Louisa Cappelli pay attention to the environ-
mental concerns in Mahasweta Devi’s work. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s
important new essay in this volume connects such issues with questions of
ethics, intervention, and the reader’s responsibility. Mahasweta’s continued
presence on the global literary scene unsettles dominant discourses about
Comparative Literature and demands a reconsideration of what ‘World
Literature’ can be taken to signify.
Writer in Context: Resituating Mahasweta Devi

Clearly, a comprehensive reappraisal of Mahasweta Devi’s life, context, and
achievement has become necessary. This book is a step in that direction. To
counter the prevalent two-dimensional image of Mahasweta’s achievement
based on a handful of translated texts, Section 1 of the book (“Spectrum:
The Writer’s Oeuvre”) aims to offer the reader in English an overview of the
full range of her oeuvre through brief samples of her literary writings across
diverse genres to highlight her versatility.
The extract from her first important book Jhansir Rani (1956), a fiction-
alised biography of Rani Lakshmibai, Queen of Jhansi, presents a remark-
able blend of disparate elements, including historical sources, folklore, and
creative characterisation, to show up the contradictions in different ver-
sions of the Rani’s life. Hajar Churashir Ma (The Mother of 1084), her
powerful novel about the political awakening of a mother after her son is
killed by the police during the Naxalite movement of the 1970s, altered the
trajectory of the Bengali novel. The extract from the final pages captures,
in a style resembling stream-of-consciousness, the dramatic political power
struggles in the outer world and the inner drama of the mother’s psyche.
The short story “Giribala” narrates the plight of a girl married off at 14
to a man who sells their own daughters into the flesh trade to pay for the
construction of his dream house. The play Bayen uses modern experimental
techniques to present the story of a woman from the caste of Doms (cre-
mation attendants), who becomes the victim of collective superstition and
scapegoating and yet, in a final act of heroic self-sacrifice, saves the very
community that has ostracised her. In a complete change of tone and style,
14
I ntroduction
“Nyadosh the Incredible Cow,” a delightful piece of writing for children,

offers a witty anecdotal account of the devastating exploits of a cow in the
author’s home. The extract from Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Mahasweta
Devi’s English monograph on the iconic Bengali writer, reveals her incisive-
ness as a literary historian and critic and also provides a window to her own
literary values.
Given the vast body of critical readings on Mahasweta’s writings, a
comprehensive compilation is beyond the scope of this book. Instead, the
selected essays in Section 2 (“Kaleidoscope: Critical Reception”) offer
the reader a sense of the paradigm shifts that mark Devi’s critical recep-
tion in Bengal, the rest of India, and in the international domain. Ten-
sions, debates, and contradictions are highlighted, and new directions
signposted.
The translated Bengali essays in this section include Arup Kumar Das’
detailed overview of Mahasweta’s reception in Bengal from 1957 to 1997
and, later, Dipendu Chakrabarti’s sharp analysis of the debates and contro-
versies around her work, Dilip K. Basu’s account of Hajar Churashir Ma as
a pathbreaking text that transformed the course of the Bengali novel in the
1970s, and Partha Pratim Bandyopadhyay’s reading of myth and history in
some iconic texts.
The essays in English by other Indian critics include Sujit Mukherjee’s
classic piece on Mahasweta and Spivak, Jaidev’s account of national alle-
gory in Douloti, Arunabh Konwar’s comparative analysis of the creative
use of fictionalised biography by Mahasweta and Indira Goswami, Shreya
Chakravorty’s study of the politics of translation in the work of Spivak and
Samik Bandyopadhyay, Anjum Katyal’s account of Mahasweta as a drama-
tist, and Benil Biswas’ reading of the transmutations of Mahasweta’s texts
via stage and screen adaptations.
International contributions include an important new essay on Pterodactyl
by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who interprets the rhetorical pointers in the
text to speak of it as an activist mediation for the reader to learn about earn-
ing the right to intervene. Shreerekha Subramanian’s essay offers a compara-
tive study of the discourse on motherhood in novels by three women writers
across different languages, locations, and literary traditions: Mahasweta
Devi, Toni Morrison, and Amrita Pritam.
Section 3 (“Ablaze With Rage: The Writer as Activist”) includes some
of Mahasweta’s activist writings, such as “Tribal Language and Literature:
The Need for Recognition,” a passionate demand for the inclusion of tribal
languages in official discourse; “Palamau is a Mirror of India,” where she
critiques what she perceives the failures of the state to address the plight of
the oppressed people in post-Independence India; and “Eucalyptus: Why?,”
a scathing critique of the nexus between local powers and global market
forces that have led to the replacement of natural forests in Bengal with
15
R adha C hakravarty
eucalyptus plantations that have destroyed the local ecology that sustained
human and animal life there. Alongside, in “The Adivasi Mahasweta,”
Ganesh N. Devy reminiscences about his first encounter with Mahasweta
Devi and their subsequent collaborations in activist campaigns and projects.
“Haunted Landscapes: Mahasweta Devi and the Anthropocene,” by Mary
Louisa Cappelli, connects Mahasweta’s activist writings and fiction on the
subject of the Anthropocene to indicate the need to take a composite view of
her writing and activism as twin manifestations of the same vision.
Section 4, “Personal Glimpses: A Life in Words,” includes extracts from
Mahasweta’s memoir Our Santiniketan (2022), along with interviews (with
Naveen Kishore and Radha Chakravarty) and reminiscences by her family
members (Nabarun Bhattacharya, Soma Mukhopadhyay, Sari Lahiri, Ina
Puri), friends (writers “Anand” and Anita Agnihotri), and associates (Ranjit
Kumar Das “Lodha,” Dakxin Bajrange), which highlight different facets
of Mahasweta’s life and personality, bringing to life the woman behind the
public image.
Into the Future: The Legend Lives On

New trends in Mahasweta studies continue to evolve, including emphasis
on her environmental concerns, ethics, planetarity and the Anthropocene,
intersectionality, the use of incommensurate realities and registers of writ-
ing, comparative readings, and an emerging focus on her life. A full biog-
raphy of Mahasweta is waiting to be written. Nor does a full bibliography
exist, encompassing the entire corpus of her work, including letters and
other unpublished material.
Mahasweta is no more with us, but the long-term impact of her work
continues to reverberate. Through the actions of the people she inspired –
the women of Manipur whose public protest imitated her fiction, to the per-
formances of the Budhan theatre, and the rise to fame of the Dalit B engali
writer Manoranjan Byapari—Mahasweta’s influence can be felt in tangi-
ble ways. Alongside the scholarly practices around her work, Mahasweta’s
vision lives on at the grassroots level and through the activism and cultural
productions that she inspired. Mahasweta Devi survives through the people
she struggled to support all her life.
The afterlife of her reputation has not been smooth, however, for she
continues to be dogged by controversy, the latest being the move to drop
her texts from the syllabus of a major university in India. The reverbera-
tions felt after this move indicate that the discourse around Mahasweta has
only grown more vibrant as a result. Like those memorable figures from
her own writings, such as the Rani of Jhansi and Bashai Tudu, the memory
of Mahasweta Devi survives each renewed onslaught, only to emerge with
renewed vitality. The legend lives on.
16
I ntroduction
Notes
1 The extent of this divided reception can be gauged from the fact that international
critics refer to her as ‘Devi,’ while to Bengali readers she is ‘Mahasweta’. In the
present volume, both names have been used to underscore the multidimensional
facets of this extraordinary writer who meant so many different things to so many
people.
2 Quoted in Samik Bandyopadhyay, “Introduction,” Five Plays, 1997: ix.
3 For an elaboration of this aspect of Mahasweta’s writings, see my essay “Mutant
Worlds, Migrant Words: Rabindranath Tagore, Mahasweta Devi and Amitav
Ghosh” (2021).
4 Quoted in Saraf and Oddera 2016.
5 I have explored the feminist potential in Devi’s work in Feminism and Contempo-
rary Women Writers: Rethinking Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2008).
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in Mahasweta Devi’s Bashai Tudu,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 15(1):
141–150.
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Basu, Dilip Kumar. 1985. “Hajar Churashir Ma, Mahasweta O Bangla Upanyasher
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———. 1997. Dust on the Road: The Activist Writings of Mahasweta Devi. Ed.
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———. 2022. Our Santiniketan. Trans. Radha Chakravarty. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
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Unreliable Translator,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 35(1): 131–145.
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Reception of Third World Women Writers, pp. 229–251. New York: Garland.
18
Section 1
SPECTRUM
The Writer’s Oeuvre
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-2
Photo 1.1 The Queen of Jhansi book cover.
Source: Seagull Books.
1
FICTIONALISED BIOGRAPHY
The Queen of Jhansi
Mahasweta Devi
Translated by Sagaree and Mandira Sengupta
There was no political flaw in Dalhousie’s reasoning. But public opinion of

the day did not support it because to do so would have meant support for
British rule in India. . . . Even historians who fully supported the British rule
in India could not accept the annexation of Jhansi as justified.
Dalhousie’s decision reached Malcolm who forwarded it to Ellis. He
wrote:
I have received orders for annexation. Please circulate my announce-

ment all over Jhansi. Discharge the old soldiers of the king after
paying them two months’ salary. Leave the king’s old officeholders
in their own posts as far as possible. Place three companies of the
army in Jhansi and two in Karhera. For the time being, keep the
Sixth Sindhia Contingent in Jhansi. For Karhera, Captain Hennessy
will bring 500 soldiers, two cannons and a cavalry troop over from
Sipri (Sivpuri-Gwalior) as soon as notified. The Sindhia soldiers will
return to Moran when the Twelfth Bengal Native Infantry arrives.
Along with the soldiers of Hennessy, a full regiment of Native Infan-
try and a corps of cavalry and cannon should be in Jhansi. Military
help can be obtained from any place in Bundelkhand if needed.
I have corresponded with the Governor General about the pen-
sion payable to the Queen. You will be informed in due time about
the decision taken.
Following is the notice for the public from Malcolm:
At the death of Gangadhar Rao on 21 November 1853, after his

sudden adoption of a son on 20 November 1853, I have received
the following orders from the governor –
The resolution of Jhansi’s adoption has not been approved. On the

grounds of Doctrine of Lapse, the British Government is joining
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-321
M ahasweta D evi
Jhansi with British India. For now, I have appointed Major Ellis as
the administrator of Jhansi. The general public is now under the
British rule and the taxes are payable to Major Ellis.
Signed: D.A. Malcolm 15–3–1854
Ellis received Malcolm’s letter on that very day, that is, 15 March 1854.
Despite Dalhousie’s long silence, Ellis may have failed to understand the
probable form of the decision taken. It is reasonable to assume that he had
reassured the Queen and she was hopeful. It may be useful to recall some-
thing here.
Ellis had created quite a stir among his English contemporaries with his
goodwill towards the Queen. His respect for the Queen was seen in a per-
verse light and the Queen’s character was deliberately vilified. An author
under the assumed name of Gillian, wrote a novel in the 19th century
using the names Gangadhar Rao, Lakshmibai and Shakespeare (Ellis). The
novel was named The Rane. Shakespeare, in this book, is, in fact, Ellis. The
Queen was represented as a wayward woman with a murderous and vile
character. The author’s goal was to show a depraved version of a perfectly
simple and natural relationship between an innocent, brave Englishman
and a widely respected Indian woman. He used extremely loose language
about the Queen’s attire. The mention of the Queen’s name was prohibited
under English rule until then. So the author could not have had any inten-
tion other than to create a wrong impression about the Queen. Happily,
Gillian’s The Rane and Meadows Taylor’s Seeta, never became popular
even in England.
Ellis decided to call on the Queen on the morning of 16 March 1854. The
news reached the palace.
There was no sleep for the Queen’s troubled eyes on the night of the fif-
teenth. Perhaps all her expectations would be met on the morrow.
Morning came. The palace servants had already scrubbed and washed
the courtyard of the durbar at dawn. There was the mild aroma of burning
incense. A maidservant had left white bel buds soaking in a silver dish. The
air was fragrant with their scent. The Queen sat at one end of the grand
hall behind a fine screen. She had put on a white choli and a gleaming white
chanderi saree after bathing. Her wet hair had been dried and braided in
Ambarha style. She had sandalwood marks from the morning prayers on
her brow, a pearl necklace around her neck, diamond bangles on her hands
and diamond rings on her fingers. Damodar Rao sat at her side.
Suddenly Major Ellis arrived and everyone at court was startled. A long
row of stairs led to the hall of the court and he started walking up them.
He drily greeted the Queen sitting behind the screen and then proceeded
to read aloud Dalhousie’s order and Malcolm’s notice. Everyone present
was taken aback, shocked. Ellis enunciated his words as surely as bolts
of lightning. As soon as he stopped reading, Lakshmibai, from behind the
22
F ictionalised B iography
screen, uttered four definitive words with controlled articulation. Her voice
was familiar to Ellis but completely unfamiliar in its strength tinged with
deep sadness –
‘Meri Jhansi dungi nahin’. ‘I will not give up my Jhansi’.
It was a historic utterance, because it was the first and only protest during
a time when rulers of Indian kingdoms, which were gradually disappearing
into the terrible, ever-widening maw of the English all over the subconti-
nent, never offered any resistance at all.
So much time has passed since then. Gone are those days, those people,
the durbar hall, and Ellis. So many have come and gone since, such big
battles have been fought by the banks of the Betwa near Jhansi, so many
have been slaughtered and new crops have grown again over the soil that
gathered around their bones. So many times huge cannon balls have been
dug up by the tips of ploughs when farmers work the ground. Wide-eyed
children have looked at them and exclaimed, ‘How big these balls are!’
The old grandfather had smiled, deep wrinkles over his emaciated face, and
answered, ‘What do you mean, balls? They’re the shots from the battle the
English waged against Tatia’.
Even the old fort may have forgotten where it was hit by cannon balls.
Moss has grown over the cracks made by shots in the fortress wall. The
foreigners have cleared out as well, lock, stock and barrel, far beyond ‘the
seven seas and thirteen rivers,’ after moving India’s goddess of fortune first
from Murshidabad to Calcutta, then from Calcutta to Delhi and putting
her on the throne there. Even with the end of the English Raj, the Queen’s
astonishing words kept echoing in the minds of Indians. Jhansi with 20 lakh
rupees of annual income in taxes looked so weak, so small compared to the
expanse of British India in the maps of those times that it really convinces
us of the importance of immortalizing her words, especially since the Queen
could speak up so fearlessly with so little power.
This is what we feel. But the old man who roasts corn over a charcoal fire
in winter in the outskirts of Jhansi does not know anything of all this. He
roasts the corn and his head shakes a little when he recites a rhyme to his
granddaughter –
That Queen, so very great was she,

Said she would never let go of Jhansi.
She fought for the sake of her soldiers,
And took bullets herself.
As long as water in India flows
The Queen of Jhansi will live. . . .
From The Queen of Jhansi,
Seagull, 2000.
23
2
NOVEL
Mother of 1084
Mahasweta Devi
Translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay
As the pain grew, it was less cold, it felt warm.

Sujata laid the shawl aside. She stepped out.
Cold. Winter. The North Wind. The dark garden. Darkness. If she could
get lost in this darkness? If she never had to enter that room again? The
black car stood on the street before the gate.
Black car. Black van. Steel net on the windows, over the rear door. Hel-
meted heads behind the net. Who sits in the front? Next to the driver? The
engine hummed, it was running.
Dressed in spotless white. Brass badge. DCDD26 Saroj Pal. A brave son
of Mother Bengal, Saroj Pal the lionhearted. The aluminium door bearing
the slogan – No Mercy for Saroj Pal – slammed shut with a clang. Brati
within. Lying cold and dead.
Saroj Pal.
Yes, I have a mother.
No, your son didn’t go to Digha.
No, we won’t let you keep these.
No, you won’t get the photographs.
You failed to teach your son properly.
Your son had ganged up with anti-socials.
Your son deserved no mercy.
You should have found out what your son was doing, and you should
have asked him to surrender to us.
No, you won’t get the body.
Sujata looked at him. Saroj Pal looked at her. Mother of 1084. Mother
of Brati Chatterjee. Because he knew he would have to face her, he hadn’t
wanted to come.
Bini came forward.
‘Won’t you get down?’
‘No’.
24 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-4

N ovel
‘Not even for a minute?’

‘No. I’m on duty. Give my best wishes to Tony and Tuli’.
‘Take the packet of sweets, please’.
‘Thanks. I’m in a rush. Goodbye’.
Start. The car roared and left.
Duty still? Still in uniform? The black car, the bulletproof chain armour
beneath the shirt, the pistol in the holster, the helmeted sentry in the rear
seat?
Where’s the unquiet? Where’s the duty? In Bhowanipur, in Ballygunge,
in Gariahat, in Garia, in Behala, in Barasat, in Baranagar, in Baghbazar?
Where’s the duty?
Where will the shop shutters slam shut, the house doors close, pedestri-
ans, cycles, street dogs and rickshaws scatter in panic?
Where will the sirens blare? The streets resound to the clamp clamp clamp
of boots, the roaring of vans, the rata-tat-tat of shots?
Where will Brati run to? Again? Where will Brati run to? To what land
that knew no killers, no shots, no vans, no jails?
This city – the Gangetic plains of Bengal – the forests and hills of north
Bengal – the snowy regions further up – the rocks, the dry beds and dams of
central Bengal – the salt water forests of the Sundarbans – the paddy fields,
the factories – the tea plantations, the coalfields – where will you run to,
Brati? Where will you lose yourself again? Don’t run away, Brati. Come to
me, Brati, come back. Don’t run any more.
Sujata had found him again after searching all day, he was in the midst
of everything, he was everywhere. But if the vans sped out again and the
threatening sirens pierced the sky, Brati would be lost again. Come back
home, Brati, come back home. Don’t run any more. Come back to your
mother, Brati. Don’t run like this, Brati. They won’t let you go, Brati, they’ll
drag you out from wherever you hide. Come to me, Brati.
‘Ma! You’re falling down!’
Sujata pushed Bini away. She came running back. She stood at the door
to the room.
Everything rocked and swayed and spun. As if someone was making the
cadavers dance. Putrefying cadavers, all of them – Dhiman, Amit, Diby-
anath, Mr Kapadia, Tuli, Tony, Jishu Mitter, Molly Mitter, Mrs Kapadia –
Did Brati die so that these corpses with their putrefied lives could enjoy all
the images of all the poetry of the world, the red rose, the green grass, the
neon lights, the smiles of mothers, the cries of children – for ever? Did he die
for this? To leave the world to these corpses? Never.
Brati . . .
Sujata’s long-drawn-out, heart-rending, poignant cry burst, exploded like
a massive question, spread through all the houses of the city, crept under-
neath the city, rose to the sky. The winds carried it from one end of the state
to the other, from one corner of the earth to another, to the dark piles and
25
M ahasweta D evi
pillars that stood witness to history, and beyond history into the founda-
tions of faith that underlie the scriptures. The cry set oblivion itself, the pre-
sent and the future atremble, reeling under its impact. All the contentment
in every happy existence cracked to pieces.
It was a cry that smelt of blood, protest, grief.
Then everything went dark. Sujata’s body fell to the ground.
Dibyanath screamed, ‘The appendix has burst!’
From Mother of 1084, Seagull, 1997
26
3
SHORT STORY
Giribala
Mahasweta Devi
Translated by Radha Chakravarty
Giri’s mother braids her daughter’s hair, dresses her. Then she says, weeping,
‘This man, my child, like the tree with a thousand roots. Growing right in
the heart of the house. Every time you uproot it, it grows back again. Every
word he speaks is a lie but oh, how cleverly he plays with those words!’
Giri says nothing. The groom is supposed to first pay bride-price to the
bride’s father. All this is true, no doubt. But still, she’s a girl. A girl’s by fate
discarded, lost if she’s dead, lost if she’s wed. Giri senses that hard times
lie ahead. She sobs silently, alone. Then she sniffs, wipes her eyes and says,
‘Bring me home when the deity is worshipped. You will, won’t you? Feed
the brown cow. I’ve chopped the straw. Don’t forget to water the hibiscus’.
And so, at the age of 14, Giri goes to keep house for her husband. Her
mother packs pots and pans for Giri’s new home. Aullchand says, ‘Just add
a bit of rice and dal, Ma. Got a job with the babus. Have to report for duty
as soon as I get back. Won’t have time to go to the market’.
Giri takes rice, dal and salt. Then leaves home. Aullchand walks at a rapid
pace. Says, ‘Now let’s see you move those legs of yours’.
Aullchand takes her to a hut made of brick, once they enter the village of
Talsana. Mango, jamun, guava, all kinds of trees in the babus’ orchard. In
one corner is a ramshackle hut meant for the keeper. Aullchand says, ‘I’ll
build us a place to live in, sure enough. Ever seen anything like this? There’s
the pond, over on that side. Let’s see you nip down to fetch some kindling,
and put some rice on the boil’.
...
A home, how they yearn for a home of their own. But their first daughter,
Belarani, is born right here, in this same hut. The girl is barely a month old
when Giri returns to the pond to wash the babus’ mosquito nets, sheets,
rugs. The mistress of the babu household can’t help commenting, ‘That
girl’s quite crazy about her work, I must say. Works well, too’.
Overcome by an immense magnanimity, she gives her boys’ old clothes
to Giri’s daughter. She tells Giri, ‘Let your work be. Let the child have your
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-527
M ahasweta D evi
milk. Or how will you cope?’ Belarani, Paribala, Rajiv, are born to Giri at
intervals of one-and-a-half to two years. And when the youngest daughter
Maruni is born, Giri has an operation to prevent future childbirths.
Meanwhile Aullchand has prodded and pleaded with the babus and
acquired two katha1 of land. Even built a hut of sorts. Now he wanders
from place to place, working as a day-labourer. He is enraged. ‘Had an
operation, did you? That’s a sin. Why did you do it? Go on, tell me?’
Giri remains silent. Aullchand grabs her by the hair, hits her a couple of
times with his fists. Giri suffers the beating silently. Then she says, ‘They said
for you to go to the panchayat. They’re building a road, men are needed.
They’ll give grain’.
‘Why don’t you go to your father, tell him to give us some bamboo’.
‘What for?’
‘Dying for a home weren’t you, and look at the mansion you live in! Some
bamboo would give us a house to speak of’.
‘We’ll work hard, make our home’.
‘How?’
‘We’ll have to try’.
‘The silver, if we were to pawn it, or sell . . ’.
Giribala stares, unblinking, at Aullchand. Aullchand lowers his head
before her gaze. Giri has placed her few bharis2 of silver in the hollow of a
bit of bamboo, entrusted it to the mistress of the house. Even now, she works
at that house. From the age of eight Belarani has been running a thousand
errands at that same house for a meal wage. Even she is 10 years old now.
Fed on the rice of the babus’ house, the girl grows rapidly, flourishing like a
weed in the rains. To get the girl married, that bit of silver will be required.
That bit of silver, and 22 rupees earned through hours of bone-wearying toil.
Giri says, ‘I won’t sell the silver to build a house. Baba gave all he could.
Provided a cartload of bamboo for the hut. The price of that bamboo, even in
Nishinda, was then a thousand rupees. One hundred and sixty-two bamboos’.
‘The same old story’.
‘Won’t you get our daughter married?’
‘A daughter means a female slave for someone else’s house, after all.
When he read my palm, Mohan had said that the fifth time onwards there’d
be only boys. You’ve gone and turned barren, you want to go astray’.
Giri had gripped the bonti3 tightly. She’d said, ‘Speak such evil and I’ll
slash the children’s throats and then my own’.
‘No, I didn’t . . . I won’t say such things . . ’. Aullchand had quelled his
tongue. He spent the next few days worried and anxious. Perhaps it was
then that Aullchand began hatching his plan. The root cause of this too was
Mohan.
Mohan appeared out of the blue one day. Lots of work in every village
with the bus route from Krishnachowk to Nishinda now to be an asphalt
road. Both Giri and Aullchand have been going to work. They earn grain,
28
S hort S tory
the mouths are fed. Mohan has also been working. Still the same vagabond,
hasn’t married, hasn’t settled down. He sells the wheat and buys rice, pump-
kin, fish. At night, he sprawls out on Giri’s verandah. Wandering through
cities, drifting through villages, a complete bohemian in speech and manner.
Looks at Aullchand and clucks sympathetically, ‘Stuck in the mud, are you,
pal? Clean forgotten the life you had?’
Giri says, ‘Stop your churlish nonsense’.
‘My friend had such a great singing voice’.
That he did. That brought money too. But that money never got home.
Wouldn’t buy food for the children.
It was Mohan who said one day, ‘No girls at all in the land of Bihar. Yet
the bride-price’s very high there. So, those folks are coming here, taking our
girls away. Paying so much! Sahadev Bauri got five hundred rupees for his
daughter’.
‘Where is that?’
‘Would you know if I told you, pal? Very far away, indeed. And they
don’t speak Bangla’.
Aullchand said, ‘They paid five hundred rupees?’
‘Sure’.
The conversation ends there for the moment because just then a fire
breaks out in the cowshed of Kali-babu of the panchayat, sparked off from
a pile of smouldering hay, the smoke from which acted as a mosquito repel-
lent. A huge uproar. Everybody rushes in that direction.
Giri forgets the conversation, Aullchand does not. Who knows what Giri
was thinking, for her husband’s words caused her no alarm. Because one
day, Aullchand said, ‘Who wants your jewellery? We’ll get Bela married,
then fix our house with brick and mortar. Fed and fattened in the babus’
house, how nice my daughter looks!’
Even then, no warning bells rang in Giri’s mind. She said, ‘Looked for a
boy?’
‘Just watch how it all takes care of itself’.
Giri said, ‘The hut’s sagging to one side. Need to prop it up a bit. How
else will it stay up?’
It was with this idea in mind that Giri went to visit her father for a few
days. Carrying Maruni in her arms. Holding the hands of Pari and Rajiv.
Bela had wept a lot. Because she was leaving her behind, Giri had pressed
eight annas into her hands. ‘Buy yourself some sweets, girl. You want to
visit your grandparents, you can go another time. Now work hard. We’re
gone four days at most’.
How could Giri know that she would never see Bela again? If so she’d
have taken her daughter along. If so she’d have clasped her, kept her so
close. Making the girl slog at the babus’ since she was seven, was that mere
fancy? Couldn’t feed her, couldn’t clothe her. A kiss on Bela’s forehead and
Giri left for her parents.’
29
M ahasweta D evi
A girl’s by fate discarded, lost if she’s dead, lost if she’s wed. Still, their
daughter, after all! The father has bought three bighas of land with his prof-
its from the bamboo trade, been apportioned another two bighas as his
share of property. The father says, ‘Couldn’t bring you home, khuki,4 but
stay a few days now that you’re here.’ The mother says, ‘Let me fry some
muri, pick some arum. What kind of a marriage is this, child? How your
skin used to glow. And now, turned soot black! Your lovely hair gone, your
bones sticking out! Spend a few days looking after yourself. Let your health
improve’. The brother says, ‘Why not stay, didi. Even for a month – I’ll
make sure there’s enough to eat’.
Lots of pampering, lots of care. The father says, ‘Bamboo? Of course.
You’re here for a bit, take some when you go. How can you have good in-
laws without a good home? They’ll see the house, know they’ve married
into a good family’.
Giri could have gotten more out of her father if she had wept and pleaded.
The mother said, ‘Girl, just ask for a maund of rice’. But Giri hadn’t asked.
Why should she? ‘Give, if you’ve a mind to. Why should I ask?’ Giri had
slowly walked over to the hibiscus bush. See, so many flowers. She had
planted that bush. How nice the courtyard looked, freshly plastered with
cow dung, the roof newly thatched. If her mother agreed, Giri would leave
Rajiv here so that he could go to school. She bathed her children, scrubbing
them with lots of soap. She bathed too, washed her hair clean. Then she’d
gone for a walk about the neighbourhood. This little respite, as though unim-
aginable bliss. The mother had sent her brother to the canal to catch fish.
A single irrigation canal had transformed the area. Raise two crops a year,
catch fish all the year round. Giri was content. Her mind at rest, at peace.
Bangshi Dhamali had come. ‘Poor, poor Giri! How you suffer at the
hands of that Aullchand! Doctor-babu’s built a house in Baharampur. The
sons study there, the wife lives there too. Had Aullchand been a man, he’d
look after his children. You could work there, kept your youngest with you.
A part-time job in the neighbourhood too, after your work at the babu’s.
Could have set up house with your children. All of them could’ve worked
for a meal-wage. Can city ways be village ways?’
Giri had smiled a little, ‘Dada, let those things be. Now tell me, all the
riff-raff are getting land, so can’t your Rajiv’s father get some too?’
‘Has he tried? Come to me? Said anything about it? I work for the gov-
ernment, I’m the doctor’s right-hand man, sure enough I could have done
something’.
‘I’ll send him to you’.
To Giri it all seemed like a dream, unreal. They’re to have a house, per-
haps some land as well. She knows only too well that her husband’s an
absolute vagabond. Yet her heart filled with pity as she thought of him. No
home, no land, how can such a man be a householder? How can he settle
down? ‘Tell me, dada, should I send him to you?’ . . .
30
S hort S tory
The two days rolled into six. As they depart from her father’s home, Giri
dressed in a new sari, the children clad in new clothes of the Bangladeshi
brand ‘Nilam! Nilam,’ stamped with the dead-sahib symbol, a bundle of rice
on Giri’s head. Bangshi Dhamali floats in like a straw in the wind, breaks
the bad news. ‘Disaster or blessing, call it what you will. Tremendous news,
oh Mama! Aullchand said, “Come Bela, let’s go to your Mama’s.” Took
her to Kandi on that pretext, with Mohan’s connivance. Married off that
mother’s pet, that timid 12-year-old girl there, to a stranger from another
land. They’re strange folks, live in Bihar. Five of them have married five such
Belaranis and gone back to their land. It’s all part of the girl-trafficking busi-
ness, oh Mama! All the addresses they’ve left are fake. It’s a common racket
nowadays. Aullchand’s got four crisp hundred rupee notes. Now Mohan
and he are sitting at home, getting drunk. Aullchand is weeping “Bela! Bela”
and Kali-babu from the panchayat is swearing at him, calling him names’.
Giri’s world falls apart. She bursts into wails of despair. Her father says,
‘Let’s go, I’ll take some men with me. We’ll find the girl, thrash that father
of hers. Cripple him for life. And we’ll fix that Mohan for good as well’.
Mohan is nowhere to be found. Aullchand boxes his own ears in remorse
and laments loudly, occasionally blustering, ‘It’s my daughter I’ve married
off, so what’s it to any of you?’
They search high and low. Giri goes crying to the babus with her silver
necklace. ‘Please speak to the police, oh Babu! Tell it on the radio. My Bela
knows nothing beyond Talsana. You also know that my man’s a monster.
Why did you leave my daughter to him?’
The babu explains to Giri’s father, ‘Thana-police is lots of trouble, very
expensive too. The damage is done. This is a new racket that’s begun. All
this talk of marriage is just a front for girl-trafficking. The racket’s in full
swing all over Murshidabad. They come, give a few hundred rupees. A few
crisp notes are enough to make the beggars lose their heads. The police
won’t touch a case that’s full of holes. They’ll tell you, if the father gets his
daughter married, what can the thana do? Poor Bela, curse her fate!’
Father, neighbours, the babu’s wife, everyone offers the same explanation
to Giri. Fate rules over everyone. What can you do? It would have been good
were you fated to keep her with you. She’s a girl, not a boy. A girl’s by fate dis-
carded, lost if she’s dead, lost if she’s wed. Her father sighs, says, ‘Your daugh-
ter’s sacrificed her own life, as if she’s given her father the money for the house’.
Crazed with grief, Giri sighs, ‘Don’t you send any more bamboo, Baba.
Let the devil do what he can’.
‘No use going to thana-police, child’.
Giri leans against the wall and sinks to the floor, silent. Shuts her eyes.
Amidst this numbing grief, the truth suddenly flashes across her mind.
Nobody is willing to give much thought to a girl-child. She, too, should not
worry. She, too, is female. Her father too had surrendered her to a monster
without making any enquiries first.
31
M ahasweta D evi
Aullchand senses the change in the air. So he says, ‘Your daughter’s not
all that innocent either. To hunt for the girl, the necklace is produced. If
she’d given her jewellery earlier, the house would have been built, daughters
would not have to be sold. And look, what a shameful thing to have done.
She has an operation, comes back barren. Says, “You can’t even feed us,
what would you do with a son?” Well, I’ve shown what I would do. Even
the daughters can yield so much profit, see how much money I got . . ’.
Giri beats her head against the wall overwhelmed with rage, with grief.
Everyone rushes to stop her.
Over time the uproar dies down. The babu’s aunt is a wise lady. She says,
‘An adolescent girl’s her father’s property. What use is it for you to shed
tears?’
Giri doesn’t sob any more. Grim-faced, she leaves Pari at the babus’
house. Says, ‘If your father comes to get you, I’ll chop you to pieces if you
go with him’.
And if Aullchand tries to speak to her, she doesn’t answer him at all. Just
stares unblinkingly at her husband. Aullchand gets scared. He says: ‘It’s a –
l – l for the house. So we can build a home, right?’
‘Right. Tell Mohan to find out where they eat human beings. Why not sell
off these three also? Enough money then for a cement house. Can’t Mohan
find out?’
Aullchand says, ‘Never met someone as heartless as you, wife. Asking
me to sell the children? No wonder you made yourself barren. Or else how
could you speak this way? And your father was willing, so why didn’t you
take the bamboo?’
Giri leaves the room, sleeps on the verandah. Aullchand whines for a bit,
then falls asleep. . . .
From In the Name of the Mother: Four Stories, Seagull, 2004
Notes
1 One-twentieth of an acre.
2 Unit of weight equal to 180 grains.
3 Curved blade fixed on a narrow wooden base; used by Bengalis to chop vegetables
or fish while squatting/sitting on the floor.
4 Affectionate pet name for a girl.
32
4
DRAMA
Bayen
Mahasweta Devi
Translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay
Scene 1
The curtain goes up on an empty stage, with a lullaby droning offstage,
till Bayen enters, singing. She looks utterly exhausted and despondent,
at the end of her tether, dragging her reluctant feet like some condemned
ghost debarred entry into human society. She draws in with her a string
with a canister tied to its end, rattling and clanging along the floor.
The whistle of a train from a distance is heard. She wears a filthy red
sari without the customary border, her hair dishevelled; she wears no
jewellery.
BAYEN: (sings, off). Come, sleep, come to my bed of rags,
My child god sleeps in my lap,
The elephants and horses at the palace gates,
The dog Jhumra in the ashheap.
(Enters singing) The dog Jhumra sleeps in the ashheap, in the ashheap.
(Places the canister on the ground, brings down the pitcher of water
from her head, stops for a while, before addressing an unseen dog.) Why
don’t you wait for a while, my dear, and let me fill the pitcher? Tch, tch,
tch, come dear, come, come, don’t run away, child, stay for a while, my
dear . . . (Dips the pitcher in the water, and sings) My child god sleeps in
my lap . . . in my lap . . . (Stops singing) I don’t have anybody anymore,
nobody. When I hadn’t become a bayen, I had everybody. (Puts down
the pitcher, and rocks an imaginary child in her arms) I used to rock him
like this, suckle him, all that milk, a real flood, the milk from the breast
spilt on the floor, and that’s why . . . (Puts a hand to her cheek, knits
her brow, broods for a while, then suddenly comes back to her senses.
Addressing the dog again –) Hungry, Jhumra? They give me my ration
on Saturday, with a little rice. Out of that I give you a little, the rest I eat
myself. (With a sad smile) A bayen shouldn’t eat too much. Yet hunger
gnaws. (Listens eagerly) There, there comes Gangaputta. Jhumra dear,
let’s move out of his path. (Sounds hurt) I’ll tell him everything today,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-633
M ahasweta D evi
everything, all the wrongs I suffer. Just a little rice, the salt all mixed
with dirt, worms in the lentil – why should I take it?
Moves to the side, turns her head away. Bhagirath and Malindar
enter, conversing intimately.
BHAGIRATH: I’m sure I’ll win the scholarship. But will you promise to send
me to high school? Teacher tells me, I’m sure to win the district scholar-
ship. Isn’t it a lot of money, Father?
MALINDAR: A lot. You think you’re going to get the scholarship?
BHAGIRATH: Yes, Father.
MALINDAR: You have to ride the train to get to high school. There’s no
other way to get there, and now there’s a spate of train robberies. This
place has grown evil. They pile up bamboos on the track to stop the
train, and then they raid it. Damn them!
BHAGIRATH: How does that matter? I’ll be going by the day train.
BAYEN: Gangaputta! Gangaputta! (She stands with her back to them.
Malindar stops in his tracks and instinctively covers his eyes. He covers
his son’s eyes too, and draws him closer to himself.) Gangaputta! I’m
not facing you. What’s there to get scared about?
MALINDAR: (in panic). O Holy Mother! You had to call me at this hour of
the day when the wind goes crazy?
BAYEN: (a tired voice, she is tired of the superstitious terror that she carries
with her). Tie knots in your hair and in what you’re wearing. (Malindar
ties knots in his hair and his dhoti.1) Spit on the head of the child. Tell
me when you’ve done it.
MALINDAR: (spits on Bhagirath’s head). I have now. (Bhagirath raises his
eyes to steal a glance at Bayen, but Malindar checks him in time.) Drop
your eyes, Bhagirath.
BAYEN: (turns around, in yearning disbelief). Bhagirath? My Bhagirath?
Bhagirath?
MALINDAR: (ferocious in his fear). Stop it, you bitch! Turn your face away.
(Bayen dutifully turns away.) You want to kill me? Is that why you’re
here? Eh?
BAYEN: (covers her eyes, shivers and cries). No. No. No.
MALINDAR: Why have you come then? Eh?
BAYEN: I’ve no oil for my hair, it’s all matted and I can’t comb it. There’s no
kerosene at home to light a lamp.
MALINDAR: You mean to say that the Bayen’s scared of the dark?
BAYEN: I’ve had no rice since Thursday, I’ve been living on water, I’m here
to draw water.
MALINDAR: Why? Don’t you get your ration on Saturday? Don’t they bring it
to you every Saturday – rice, salt, lentil and oil? Don’t they swear by the
Chhatim tree for witness and leave the hamper for you? Don’t I know?
34
D rama
BAYEN: What do they give me in their hamper? It’s only half a kilo of rice,
a fistful of lentil, fifty grams of oil and a pinch of salt. Is that enough
for a week?
MALINDAR: Those bastards . . . I’ll look into it.
BAYEN: I didn’t know when they left it; when I found it, the dog had toppled
it over.
MALINDAR: Will you take money? Money?
BAYEN: Who’ll sell me anything?
MALINDAR: I’ll buy for you, buy everything for you today, pick it up at the
foot of the tree. Be gone now.
BAYEN: (a dry, plaintive wail). I can’t bear it alone through the night.
MALINDAR: Then why did you have to become a bayen? Go away, go away,
at once. Otherwise I’ll strike you. (He picks up clods from the ground
and hurls them viciously at Bayen.)
BAYEN: Please, dear, don’t hit me, dear. (Raises the pitcher to her head, holds
the string with the canister in her hand, and starts moving.) I’m leaving,
I’m off, tch, tch, tch, tch, come along, doggie, come Jhumra, otherwise
they’ll strike you too.
MALINDAR: Where’s Jhumra? (Scared) Whom do you call?
BAYEN: He’s right there. Can’t you see him?
MALINDAR: Don’t you remember, Jhumra’s long dead?
BAYEN: (surprised). Is that so? (As she leaves) Then how do I see him hover-
ing about me all the time? Is it all illusion? Come dearie, come come!
(She leaves.)
MALINDAR: (covers his face with his hands, and cries bitterly). How could
I do it? I hurled stones at her body? It used to be a body soft as butter.
How could I be such a beast? (He cools down after a while, lights a ciga-
rette and speaks more calmly) Go home, Bhagirath. I’ll go to the mar-
ket, buy her the things that she needs and leave them at her house. She’s
been starving since Thursday. It’s Saturday today. (Bhagirath waits) Go
away. Don’t tell your stepmother anything about what you saw here
today, what you heard. Hey, why don’t you go?
BHAGIRATH: Father?
MALINDAR: Yes? (A faint strain of the lullaby – ‘Come sleep, come to my
bed of rags . . ’. – wafts in, receding into the distance at the same time.
Malindar sighs) She hasn’t forgotten a thing.
BHAGIRATH: Father, you . . . you spoke to the Bayen?
MALINDAR: (smiling mysteriously). So what, son?
BHAGIRATH: Isn’t the living man who speaks to the Bayen doomed to die?
My second mother tells me, Bhagirath, come back straight from school
and run whenever you hear the canister clanging. Otherwise she’ll suck
your life-blood. And you spoke to her? Won’t she kill you off?
35
M ahasweta D evi
MALINDAR: No, dear, she won’t kill me. (He strokes Bhagirath’s head, lov-
ingly, slowly) She’s a bayen now, but . . . but, Bhagirath . . . she’s your
mother.
BHAGIRATH: My mother? The Bayen’s my mother? What sort of a mother?
MALINDAR: You were born of her womb, my son. There was no one as
beautiful as she, no one with such grace.
BHAGIRATH: Then why did you tell me my mother died while I was a baby?
Why did you tell me that?
MALINDAR: (miserable). There’s the rub, my child, why I have to lie. She
held you in her womb, she showed you the world, she suckled you, and
then she became a bayen.
BHAGIRATH: But why did she become one?
MALINDAR: Our bad luck, hers, yours and mine. Once a bayen she’s no
longer human. So I tell you, you don’t have a mother. Couldn’t you see
she’s no longer human?
BHAGIRATH: My mother? Without clothes? Without food? Without oil in
her hair?
MALINDAR: She had everything. When she was your mother, my wife.
I gave her striped saris to wear, and silver-nickelled jewellery. I fed her,
I rubbed oil in her hair, her body. (Sighs) She came from a great family.
You’ve heard of Harishchandra? Who gave him shelter when he lost his
kingdom and became a beggar?
BHAGIRATH: Kalu Dom.
MALINDAR: When Harishchandra became king again, he had gifts for all
and sundry. Then it was Kalu Dom who shouted at him, Hey, King, you
have things to give to all those who never cared for you when you were
in misery. I gave you food then, I gave you clothes. What have you for
me? Eh? We are the Gangaputtas. What are you going to give to our
clan? This is how he shouted. (He comes to the centre of the stage, turns
his back to the audience, raises his face and shouts) What have you for
us? For my community?
A rich, sombre voice makes a formal announcement.
VOICE: All the cremation grounds of the world are yours. All the cremation
grounds of the world are yours. All the cremation grounds of the world
are yours, yours, yours.
MALINDAR: (smiles, as he explains to his son). Yes, that’s how it happened,
Bhagirath. Then Kalu Dom danced, like this. (He raises his arms, and
dances, screaming continuously) The brahmans, the sadhus, the sanya-
sis get cattle, land and gold, and we get all the cremation grounds of the
world. All the cremation grounds of the world for us, for us, for us, for
us only. (Stops, turns around, pauses, then in a different tone altogether)
Your mother was a descendant of Kalu Dom. Her name was Chandidasi
Gangadasi, she used to bury children.
36
D rama
BHAGIRATH: She buried children?

MALINDAR: You wouldn’t know, son. The rules have changed now, now
there are new laws laid down by the government, to burn all bodies. But
in those days, in the villages, children were buried. Your mother buried
them. I am a Gangaputta, a dom. It was my job to light the logs, and
keep the pyre burning. But I had learnt to write, and sign my name. So
they gave me a job in the morgue. It was then, on Holi2 day, that I saw
her first. (Pause. Pleadingly). Why don’t you slip out for a while, child?
Your father and mother will meet now, fall in love, get married, and
then you’ll be born. (Shoves him out) You shouldn’t be watching this.
(Bhagirath leaves the stage) Let me walk back to 12 years ago. (Walks.
As he walks, he uses his fingers to rearrange his hair, rearranges his dhoti
to a more youthful tightness.) Let me dance. The lights change to yel-
low, with Malindar dancing in drunken frenzy. Chandidasi, also drunk,
enters dancing.
CHANDI: (singing). It’s black I love!
Krishna’s black, the Tamal tree’s black,
that’s why it’s black I love.
It’s black I . . . (noticing Malindar.)
Who are you dear? My dark, dark lover? Haven’t you had your
booze? Aren’t you drunk enough?
MALINDAR: (singing). My Radha’s fair, the lotus is fair
It’s the fair I love.
CHANDI: Great, darling, great! (Sings –)
Krishna says, it’s time for Holi,
But where do I get my colours?
MALINDAR: (sings). I’ll steal the colours off your heart, dear,
And pour it all over you.
CHANDI: (sings). I won’t let you, I won’t.
MALINDAR: (sings). I won’t let you go, I won’t.
THE TWO TOGETHER: (singing and dancing). Drunk with colour,
Our bodies too are drunk.
The heart’s too full of colour,
Let the colour spill over the body
Let the colour flow all over.
(They stop, and stand facing each other. Chandidasi shuts her eyes,
staggers a little, then opens her eyes.)
CHANDIDASI: (in control of herself, her tone a bit remote now). Who are you?
MALINDAR: Who are you? Tell me that first.
CHANDIDASI: I’m Chandidasi Gangadasi. My father, the late Patitpaban
Gangadas. I bury dead children and guard the graves.
MALINDAR: I’m Malindar Gangadas, used to be at the cremation ground,
now an attendant at the morgue. (Beats his chest) It’s a government job,
37
M ahasweta D evi
and permanent. I do my duty and pocket my salary, ha! (Pause) Anyone

at home?
CHANDIDASI: It’s me for myself.
MALINDAR: No.
CHANDIDASI: What do you mean by ‘No’?
MALINDAR: You have me. I wasn’t there, now I am.
CHANDIDASI: What did you say?
MALINDAR: Didn’t you hear me?
CHANDIDASI: D’you know my forebears? Kalu Dom’s my forefather. I’m at
the top of the doms here. I danced with you, and you think you can talk
cheap? With me?
MALINDAR: I’m not one to talk cheap, wasn’t born a bastard. I’ll marry you.
CHANDIDASI: Marry me?
MALINDAR: I’ll marry you.
The curtain comes down on them staring at each other. . . .
Scene 4
The stage is suffused in an afternoon glow. The whistle of a train from the
distance is heard. Bhagirath stands in a corner, waiting. The lullaby and
the clanging canister approach. Bhagirath is all ears.
BHAGIRATH: (to himself). I’ll not look on her face, I’ll just see her face in the
water. There can be no harm if I don’t look on her face. I’ll look at the
reflection in the water. The other day I didn’t.
Bayen enters the stage, singing the lullaby. She puts the canister on
the ground, stops singing, fills the pitcher from the pool, lifts it, puts it
back on the ground. She cups her hands, dips them in the water, lifts her
hands to her face, then, with her hands covering her face, she turns, her
back on Bhagirath, aware of his presence.
BHAGIRATH: Don’t you have another sari? (Bayen does not reply.) Would
you like to have a whole sari, not in shreds? Want my dhoti?
BAYEN: (clearing her choking throat). Let the Gangaputta’s son go home . . .
BHAGIRATH: (his eyes riveted on the reflection of Bayen in the water).
I . . . I’m in school now. I’ll compete for the district scholarship . . . I’m
a good student.
BAYEN: It’s forbidden to talk to us . . . I’m a bayen.
BHAGIRATH: I’m talking to the reflection.
BAYEN: Hasn’t the Gangaputta told his son, there’s poison in the air into
which I breathe, there’s poison in my touch? And the schoolgoing son,
doesn’t he know it?
BHAGIRATH: I have no fear.
BAYEN: (to herself). The very words the Gangaputta had once spoken. His
son says the same thing once again, ‘I have no fear.’ He said it too.
But then he panicked, I gave him a fright, he didn’t dare provoke his
38
D rama
community . . . (To Bhagirath) Let the son go home. (Her voice cracks
with sobbing) It’s evening. No child should be straying so far from
home at this hour.
BHAGIRATH: You are scared to live alone, isn’t it so?
BAYEN: Me? (Tries to laugh it away) No, no. I know no fear. Why should a
bayen be afraid to live by herself?
BHAGIRATH: Then why do you cry every evening?
BAYEN: Who says so?
BHAGIRATH: I’ve heard you.
BAYEN: The Gangaputta’s son has heard me crying! (She is about to turn
around. Bhagirath notices the reflection in the water wavering. He
raises his face, and for one long second they stare into each other’s faces,
before Bayen turns her face away. Bhagirath stares on.
Bayen’s voice quivering with sobbing –) The Gangaputta’s son has
heard me crying?
BHAGIRATH: (bolder now). Yes, every day. But why? What’s there to be
afraid of? I stand there for a long while, every day. What’re you scared
of?
BAYEN: Oh, my God! What do I do now? (Her voice chokes with sobs)
What do I do? (She wipes her tears away, takes a deep breath, hardens
herself to speak with greater firmness) The Gangaputta’s son should
never again come to the tracks in the evening. I promise, I won’t cry
again. Let him go home at once. Let him go home and swear that he’ll
never, never come here again even to look upon the bayen’s shadow.
Never again. Has there ever been another boy here?
BHAGIRATH: Why should there be another boy?
BAYEN: No, no, he shouldn’t ever come here. I’ll tell the Gangaputta
otherwise.
Bayen almost runs away, snatching her pitcher and trailing her canis-
ter behind her. Bhagirath stares after her for a while, before leaving. A
long pause is broken by the whistle of a train from far away. The stage
lights turn to a grim red. Bayen enters the stage from the other end. Her
hovel in the corner. She puts down the pitcher and the canister.
BAYEN: Where’s the mirror gone? The mirror? (In a wondering whisper)
Lost? (Finds the mirror, holds it up before her face, and sighs) My
looks are gone for ever. (Puts down the mirror) Haven’t used a comb
for I don’t know how long. (Tries to untangle her matted hair with her
fingers, to no effect) No oil for such a long time, it’s all in a mess. There
was a time when the Gangaputta loved to stroke my hair. (Thought-
ful) But why did the boy ask me about a whole sari? He can’t be
remembering anything. A clean sari, good looks, silver-nickelled ban-
gles, a coloured spot between the eyebrows – he wouldn’t remember!
(In anger) The Gangaputta’s to blame. Father of a son, a government
servant, a permanent worker at the morgue, and you can’t keep an eye
39
M ahasweta D evi
on your son! The boy comes here in the evenings, stands there. What
if a snake bites him? Or if an evil wind’s blowing? If anything happens
to him, whose loss will it be? (Shudders with the realization that it
has been the mother in her that has spoken) God! What have I said!
(She spits on the ground) Have a long life, darling, live long! (Brood-
ingly) I’ll go to the railway line now, and tell the Gangaputta when he’s
returning from work.
She goes into the wings, to return with a lantern, lights it up and
leaves the stage with the lantern in her hand. Pause is broken by the
rumble of an approaching train. Engine flashlight on the backdrop, the
thundering wheels on the soundtrack. A few people enter the stage with
bamboo poles and spread them out over the stage. The lights suggest
that they have piled bamboo poles on the railway track to obstruct and
stop the train so that they can then attack and loot it. Bayen enters from
the other end as they wait for the train to come.
BAYEN: (comes to a halt). What’s going on here?
MOB: (petrified with fear). The Bayen!
BAYEN: (raises the lantern). Gourdas! Tushtu! Isn’t that Chhidhar? Banama-
li’s son?
MOB: The Bayen! (They run away in panic.)
BAYEN: So you’ve obstructed the railroad, you’d stop the train and rob it:
that’s the plan, isn’t it? And then you run away in fear of me? (Raises
her voice and calls out) Come back! Take away the bamboo poles fast,
there’ll be disaster else! (Shakes her head) No, it’s not in you. You can
bring the poles, pile them on the track, but you can’t move them away
and avert the disaster. You’ve remained the same forever (She gets more
and more restless as the train approaches closer, the thunderous rum-
ble louder.) But what can I do? I must do something. God, if I’m truly
a bayen, then all the creatures of the nether world should follow my
orders. Why don’t they? Why can’t I then stop the train? (Turns to the
audience, breaks into a heartrending cry) Why? Why can’t I stop that
train? (She raises the lantern, and waves it, as she stands before the pile
of bamboo poles, and screams) Stop the train, don’t come any nearer.
There’s a mountain of bamboo poles here. The train’ll jump the track,
and it’ll be disaster. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
She goes on screaming till the roar of the train drowns her voice and the
train’s lights swallow her up, followed by sudden darkness. Pause. The
flashlight of the engine comes up to reveal Chandidasi lying dead, with
the villagers all around, all talking together in a low hum, till the voice
of the Train Guard silences them.
GUARD: (flashing the torch). Who’s she? D’you know her?
MOB: She’s . . .
GUARD: What’s her name?
40
D rama
SHASHI: Chandidasi Gangadasi, Sir.

GUARD: (hands his torch over to a colleague, and begins taking notes). She’s
been brave. A brave woman. A brave deed. The Railways are sure to
award her a medal, posthumous of course and a cash reward too . . .
Who’s she?
SHASHI: (looks around at everyone, clears his throat). She’s a dom woman,
sir, one of us. (Bhagirath, in hurt wonder, looks at Shashi first, then at
his father.)
MALINDAR: (steps forward, humbled tone). May I cover her up, Sir? (His
voice chokes.)
GUARD: Who are you? Does she have any near of kin? The government
won’t hand the body over to just anyone, nor the award!
MALINDAR: Sir, I . . . I’m . . . (He breaks into weeping.)
BHAGIRATH: (steps forward). Let me tell you all. You can write down.
GUARD: Who are you, boy?
BHAGIRATH: (gathers courage). She’s my mother.
GUARD: Mother?
BHAGIRATH: Yes, Sir. (Guard takes it all down.) My name Bhagirath Gan-
gaputta . . . My father, the revered Malindar Gangaputta . . . residence,
Domtoli, village Daharhati . . . My mother (pauses for a while, then
very distinctly) . . . my mother, the late Chandidasi Gangadasi (suddenly
breaks into loud weeping) . . . my mother, the late Chandidasi Ganga-
dasi, Sir. Not a bayen. She was never a bayen, my mother.
Curtain.
From Five Plays, Seagull, 1997
Notes
1 A common form of male dress; a long length of cloth wrapped and gathered
elaborately at the waist.
2 Holi is a spring festival consecrated to Krishna as the divine lover and celebrated
with people smearing and spraying one another with coloured powder and col-
oured water.
41
M ahasweta D evi
Photo 1.2 Five Plays book cover.

42
5
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Nyadosh, the Incredible Cow
Mahasweta Devi
Translated by Paramita Banerjee
‘Naran? Isn’t it a good cow?’

‘Why not? was Naran’s non-committal reply.
Ma didn’t ask baba any questions.
While working at the income tax office, baba was the one who had,
through his window, watched Nyadosh grow from a calf into a full-grown
cow. He knew everything. But he didn’t say a word.
The cow came home. None of you could ever have seen such an ugly cow!
A bloated belly, all four legs thin, disjointed and splayed outwards, a stiff
tail. Her eyes had a fierce gleam.
Ma received the cow ceremonially and presented the younger chaprasi
with new clothes. He went to the pond next door for a bath, washed the
new dhoti and spread it out on the grass. At once Nyadosh chewed up half
the dhoti, tore the rest to shreds, and then shoved the young chaprasi back
into the pond as often as he tried to climb out.
Ma said, ‘Alas! Poor thing, she’s behaving like that because she’s upset!
Any child would feel terrible if her parents sold her off!’
Father looked apprehensive. He said to his office gardener, ‘What your
mistress has just done will have far-reaching consequences’.
But even baba hadn’t anticipated just how far-reaching! It’s not possible
to write a complete biography of Nyadosh. If Nyadosh herself had written
one, it might have sufficed, but although Nyadosh had eaten up the school
textbooks for every single class (since we’re nine brothers and sisters, and
I was the only one in college then, we had the textbooks for all the classes
at home), she had never eaten a pen or ink. You can’t write if you dislike or
are afraid of pen and ink. Nyadosh couldn’t write only because she hadn’t
managed to eat a pen.
Anyway, soon enough Nyadosh got into the habit of entering the rooms
whenever she pleased (it was a single-storeyed house) and chewing up
school books. Baba used to say, ‘This is the quickest way to study. Look!
With what determination she’s eating up the books!’
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Indeed, in her zeal to learn it all quickly, Nyadosh used to swallow every-
thing from grammar to English letter-writing guides. You realize, of course,
that in this phase of Nyadosh’s life, it was impossible to make cowdung
cakes from her dung! She liked Aneesh’s, Abu’s and Phalgu’s books, but she
had a real passion for our youngest brother Tantu’s books. My second sister
Mitul and fourth sister Buri were raving lunatics as kids. She was carefully
selective about their books. My youngest sister Shari and third sister Konchi
had both their books and frocks chewed up by Nyadosh. But she never ate
anything more than a singlet and a few neckties of baba’s. She had strong
opinions about colour (what did she not have strong opinions about!) and
would eat anything in blue that caught her eye. The custom of not using neel
to whiten my father’s singlets prevails to this day.
After eating all this, Nyadosh probably came to realise that good health
depended on a diet of fish and meat. Actually, ma and I are responsible
for her turning non-vegetarian. Once the maid who washed the dishes was
absent. So we would eat off banana leaves and throw them out afterwards.
Nyadosh developed her taste for non-vegetarian food from eating these
banana leaves coated with bits and pieces of hilsa fish. Ma tried to explain
to her that cows didn’t eat fish.
But Nyadosh paid no heed. One day, she kicked her earthen bowl – for
hay, husk and oil-cake – to pieces. She snorted furiously with anger. Then
she barged straight into the kitchen and ate up the few hilsa pieces which
had been fried for dinner. Ma started storing fish and meat up in the loft,
not for fear of cats, but because of Nyadosh. Before that, she ate up all the
big fish, small fish, lobsters, prawns, crabs, meat – everything. However, she
loved chicken and hilsa best. Naturally, along with fish and meat, she was
bound to crave onions and garlic too. Nyadosh raided the vegetable basket
for these items and ate them up.
Naran and baba would discuss how the cow’s behaviour was getting
worse day by day.
Nandan, the rickshaw puller, told baba that Nyadosh was possibly under
the spell of some evil spirit.
Eating fish and meat regularly made Nyadosh’s legs as strong as a tiger’s.
Eventually she had to be kept locked up in the cowshed. Ma’s cows always
needed plenty of fresh air and sunlight. So our cowshed had a low door with
an opening above it. Nyadosh leaped through that gap just like the cheetah
of Rudraprayag that Jim Corbett wrote about. She never missed or slipped.
As soon as she was out, she would stomp her way to the kitchen. If the menu
happened to be vegetarian that day, Nyadosh would be deeply offended. She
would glare at us with bloodshot eyes.
Some days later, Nyadosh took to a completely new routine. She would
go out early in the morning. Ma used to say that Nyadosh was enjoying the
early morning breeze. But none of us suspected that she had such a distaste
for policemen!
44
C hildren ’ s L iterature
Early in the morning, she would stand on the banks of the Ganga. Every
time the Bihari constables tried to climb out after their morning dip in the
river, she would push them back in. Fighting the British police was no joke!
Nyadosh is possibly the only cow in British-ruled India to have police cases
lodged against her. This phase continued for quite some time.
Once Nyadosh left home to take shelter in front of the Court. She also
delivered her calf in that field. We have no idea who could have drunk her
milk, for even the most experienced milkers failed to milk Nyadosh.
After three-quarters of a life lived in such a tempestuous manner, one sweet
morning Nyadosh stomped back home. Ma’s ecstasy knew no bounds! ‘My
Nyadosh has come home! She’s reformed! She has finally remembered that
she is a domestic cow!’
Her hay used to be stacked up on the terrace. One day we all heard a
loud stomping sound. Nyadosh was seen sedately climbing the stairs to the
terrace. She didn’t want the hay in the cowshed, she preferred the hay on
the terrace. Aneesh and Abu explained with the usual scientific approach
of boys, ‘Nyadosh is like a scientist, ma, she wants to get to the root of
everything. She doesn’t like the hay in her shed, she wants to get to its
source’.
It was winter then. A full moon day. Nyadosh went out in the morning.
She returned at dusk looking, strangely enough, inebriated.
Menoka informed us that the date-palm juice vendors had just gathered
their pitchers from the trees when Nyadosh arrived there. She drove them
away and spent the whole day drinking up all that juice. No wonder she was
rather high and walking with a noticeable swagger!
But there was no stopping Nyadosh. She went straight to the terrace.
She was peacefully chewing hay, when she suddenly noticed the full moon.
Immediately she planted herself at the absolute edge of the terrace.
Now that she was there, she wouldn’t move. We were all very worried.
Everybody was nervous about the gentleman next door. We knew that he
only opened his window one day in a month to gaze at the full moon. And
here was Nyadosh, blocking the moon from his sight! It happened just as
we feared. Next-door uncle opened his window and bellowed, ‘What’s this?
What’s this? I want to see the full moon, but all I can see is the silhouette of
a cow! The cow is even tottering a little. What the hell is this?’
It was baba who managed to get Nyadosh down that night.
Maybe it was this irregular and eventful lifestyle that caused Nyadosh to
fall sick. She wasn’t afraid of anything, save a ‘seat’ that Mitul used to show
her. Father would buy a lot of essential items on the counsel of his advisers.
It was just after the Second World War. The military jeeps used in the war
had khaki-covered seats. On somebody’s advice, baba had bought a number
of such seats in Calcutta and carried them all the way home. Every time
Mitul showed her one of these seats, Nyadosh would get terribly scared and
fall flat on the ground with her legs splayed out.
45
M ahasweta D evi
The local vet was called when Nyadosh fell sick. The moment he
approached her, asking sweetly, ‘What’s wrong with you, dear?,’ Nyadosh
chased him with her horns at the ready. The poor man scrambled up the
verandah pillar, clinging on for life and wailing aloud. Nyadosh kept goring
his backside. What a scandal! We ended up taking the vet to a doctor.
Nyadosh never recovered from that ailment, for no treatment was pos-
sible. No vet managed to go near her. Even now, I often think of Nyadosh.
It is impossible to forget her.
From Our Non-Veg Cow and Other Stories, Seagull, 1998
46
6
LITERARY CRITICISM
Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay
Mahasweta Devi
What is Tarasankar’s achievement as a novelist? What are his assets and

wherein lie his failures? For the last so many years, the critics have con-
tinued to press upon the readers, that the three Banerjees, Tarasankar,
Bibhutibhushan and Manik are the three milestones in the history of the
post-Tagore Bengali novel with the singular exception of Saratchandra, and
Tarasankar is the greatest amongst the three. It is time to assess the achieve-
ment of Tarasankar critically and objectively. Objectivity, today, is almost
absent from Bengali criticism. For the last twenty years we have been annu-
ally presented with a Bengali Romain Rolland or a Bengali Dostoevsky or a
Bengali Tolstoy. The different groups are busier than beavers to build up the
tallest pedestal for the writers of their own groups. . . .
It is not possible to make an assessment of Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay
comparing him to the other two writers. The three were pointedly different
from each other. There is not one point of consensus they share together.
Tarasankar is not an analyst of the inner sickness eating into the heart of
the social structure and a fatalist as Manik Banerjee is. . . . He has no point
of similarity with Bibhutibhushan either, but which writer has? It requires
a tremendous capacity of mind and sense to be as much in love with the
mystery of life and nature as Bibhutibhushan was. . . . Bibhutibhushan is a
singular writer notably uninfluenced by any other writer. Even Manik Baner-
jee’s major stories reflect some influence of Jagadish Gupta’s in their critical
analysis and probing exposure of the evil hidden in the subconscious. Oth-
erwise, Manik Banerjee too can be said to be a writer very much outside the
tradition of Bengali novel till his time.
But the same cannot be said of Tarasankar. In the selection of themes,
the adherence to old values, in going back to the epic and the mythology,
he was very much a man of tradition, while the other two were not, despite
Bibhutibhushan’s deep knowledge of the epics.
Why was Tarasankar so readily accepted by the readers? The answer lies
primarily in his selection of subjects. In the first place he proved, with the
success of his three epical novels, that it was easier to reach the maximum
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M ahasweta D evi
number of readers when one wrote not of a particular individual or family

but of an entire people. Secondly, he did not write anything, the accept-
ability of which was likely to be contradicted. Though he wrote continu-
ously of human progress, he was a lover of the tradition, so deeply rooted
in the mind of the nation. And lastly, he wrote of rural Bengal from direct
knowledge and experience and this won him the loyalty of the readers of
the thirties and the forties who had their roots in the villages. Orientation of
the intellectuals became increasingly urbanised later on. And, it may not be
out of place to mention here that only novels with rural themes are consid-
ered classics in Bengali literature. Strangely enough, almost all the notable
Bengali novels (with the exception of Tagore’s novels) are based on rural
themes. Even the modern writers try their hand at the rural theme when
they try to write something major. Perhaps our mind is still rooted in the
villages. It is not surprising to hear someone saying ‘Actually I come from
such and such a village’ though his family has resided in Calcutta for the
last four generations.
Tarasankar did not preconsider these aspects when he took to writing. An
emotive, compulsive writer, he could write only of the subject he knew at
first hand. If literally not the very first, yet he is the first successful writer to
write of human-geography or man-graph. His epical novels bear testimony
to this.
In writing of the villages and the village-people, he did not break any
fresh ground for Saratchandra Chatterjee and some less-known writers had
written about the village too. But Saratchandra did not have Tarasankar’s
knowledge and expansive vision. He lacked Tarasankar’s sense of history.
Tarasankar’s asset was the knowledge of his subject at first-hand. The
subject was of supreme importance to him. . . . A village-born man, he
understood that the economic structure of the village was undergoing a for-
cible change due to the burgeoning pressure of urban economy. He realised
that if any single factor was responsible for the ruination of the villages of
West Bengal, it was monstrous growth of Calcutta and the adjoining indus-
trial belts. Such one-sided growth was unhealthy and it was fast impov-
erishing the villages. He saw that the development of rural economy was
thoroughly neglected, a fatal mistake for an agricultural country. His nov-
els show how the poor field-labourers are systematically bled white by the
land-owners and the money lenders and how they are forced to leave the
villages in search of employment. This knowledge decided for himself what
his approach should be.
Then in approaching his subject, he fortified himself with a formidable
knowledge of the land system beginning from the early Mughal regime,
down to our own times. It was highly commendable of him to have acquired
such knowledge from the study of history and documents, for that is the
only way to write about the peasantry authoritatively and authentically.
He knew about land-assessment, land-distribution, Bargadari system,
48
L iterary C riticism
the land-taxation law and land survey. He knew when rope-survey was
dismissed with and chain-survey introduced. He knew when, in land-
measurement the term bigha (one-third of an acre) was adopted and kuda
or kudaba was discarded. He knew about each tax reform, levy and land-
ceiling. He knew how many practices of land tax-payment were current in
West Bengal. This surely gave him an added advantage over other writers.
Country is not something abstract. Country is people, soil, crop, cultivation,
taxation, revenue, agricultural-loan, canal-tax, crop-failure, famine, flood
and back-breaking labour by the landless field labourers.
His further advantage was his knowledge of the scripture, the myths, the
legends and the folk-lores on the one hand, and on the other, his knowl-
edge of the people about whom he wrote. His characters are real people.
He knows how a peasant like Mukunda Pal feels towards a field rich with
paddy he will never harvest. He knows how a village-queer like Nasubala
feels and reacts, how a village woman condemned as a witch sits entombed
in her exile waiting for death to come.
It will not be perhaps wrong to say that the secret of his artistic success
as a novelist lay in his knowledge of the subject-matter he handled. That he
thought such knowledge necessary for a writer is again proved in his post-
humously published novel Shatabdir Mrityu. In writing this book he has
left behind his well-known ground, a Birbhum village. This novel is about
a boy from a village near Calcutta who comes to the city to study. Here
again, Tarasankar has chosen an interesting period, that of the growth and
expansion of the city. He rightly deduces that it is not enough to harp upon
and sentimentalise the inside scandal stories of the feudal families alone,
as some other writers have done. The feudals have not made this city. The
jungle, that is Calcutta, has thrived on trade and commerce, and Tarasankar
has tried to show how people who grow rich out of trade and commerce,
try to imitate the zemindars and thus contribute rather to the decay, than
to the growth of the city. The subject-matter is doubly interesting to the
reader of today for, thanks to the research-scholars, we have come to know
that the Bengalees were keen industrialists and traders in the late 18th and
the 19th centuries. In fact, many merchant houses were founded by them.
When they refused to abide by their self-chosen roles of industrial capital-
ists and tried to imitate the feudal decadents, they lost the opportunity of
having a share in the economic structure of the state’s industry. Tarasankar
is right in pointing out that the 19th century renaissance was not created
by the decadents who spent fortunes after courtesans and oppressed their
women. Tarasankar knew he was treading upon alien soil this time and he
had tried to do justice to the subject matter after studying and reading about
the growth of the city.
This was the secret of his success and of his achievement as a novelist. He
was further assisted by the forthright manner he adopted for storytelling.
Fond of the dramatic, the macabre and the tortuous ways of the human
49
M ahasweta D evi
mind, he attracted the readers primarily with his compelling way of story-
telling. The readers read the stories for high readability, then, the thoughtful
among them discovered hidden depths and widened horizons. The readers
were impressed because they knew of the existence of the people described in
the stories and the novels but they did not know before reading Tarasankar,
that their knowledge was of the surface only and there was still much more
to know.
Tarasankar’s language was an asset too. His language lacked finesse,
sophistication and artistry, but was vigorous and rich. The way he mixed
the Sanskrit-based words with colloquial Bengali reminded one of the lan-
guage of the village-born poet of the 16th century, Kavikankan Mukunda-
ram Chakravarty. This very famous poet’s language too, bears the stamp of
his close acquaintance with Sanskrit and village-dialect. Our village people,
even the illiterate among them, use Sanskrit-originated words with ease in
their everyday conversation. The rich vocabulary used by them bears the
stamp of the rich heritage of the epics, the mythologies and the Puranas
with which they grow up. And lastly, as already explained, Tarasankar was
the first writer to have used successfully, the living language consisting of
terms and orders of speech used by the common people. This living lan-
guage, long debarred from entry into literature, used by Tarasankar, opened
a new horizon of possibility towards the resuscitation of Bengali language
from a condition of anaemic inanity. A writer does not have to be a peasant
or a fisherman in order to use the appropriate and virile terminology used
by a peasant or a fisherman. A writer from the middle class may not have
Tarasankar’s knowledge and experience of the village-life but then, when
writing about the common people, he can learn their language and write.
Our writers today, deny the necessity of knowledgeability and capitalise their
experience only, which is very limited, and scarcely identifiable with real life.
And, lastly, like the village story-teller, Tarasankar told the stories with
great objectivity and detachment, as in his three major novels, thus impart-
ing a sense of historicity. One feels, in reading the novels about the five vil-
lages and the Kahar people, that a historiographer is narrating the history
of the rise, fall, continuation, and resurrection of a people. This, for the type
of novels he wrote was an artistic accomplishment in itself.
These, then, were his assets. Wherein lay his failures? In the selection of
subject-matter, he failed to reach and stir his readers when he wandered
away from the experiences with which he grew up. True, later he wrote of
the subjects from his experience of the city-life around him. National events,
like the riot and the partition of India, India’s independence, stirred him as a
man and he felt compelled to write of those events. But he had not the same
grasp over these subjects, which he had over the subjects he selected from
the earlier experience of his life. He had come to live in Calcutta in 1933
when he was already 35. By this time, his mind had been formulated.
50
His failure, even in the major novels, lay in not understanding the role
of industry in the national life as well as he understood the role of agricul-
ture. Statistics and census reports show that Birbhum has never had any
major industry. There are only several rice-mills in the district. The railway-
stations have rail-yards. If this be the fact, then how can the characters of
his novels migrate to the industrial belts lying in the same district? That
industry lures away agriculture-labour is a fact, but not in Birbhum. There,
it is understood, according to official report and data, very few people leave
the home-district even when they starve. Might be Tarasankar saw the fact
of the migration of the agricultural people towards industrial zones as a
proved one and introduced it in his books, or, perhaps, he failed to under-
stand what was actually happening in his district.
Much has been said of his lack of style. It is true that he did not mas-
ter style as well as did Premendra Mitra in his short stories, or Manik
Banerjee in Putul Nacher Itikatha, but one does not read Tarasankar
for his style alone. Others give expression to their literary thoughts after
arranging the same stylistically. With Tarasankar, emotion dominates his
writing and he does not always care how he registers the surge of emo-
tion. His literary thoughts come to him arranged in a dramatic manner,
especially in his major short stories. But the pity is, his language and his
way of narration, excellently suited to the village-theme, fail to impress
the serious reader when he switches to other subject-matters. When one
writes of topical themes such as the famine, the war, the communal riot,
the partition of India and creates characters representing different walks
of life, one should understand that contemporary people talk in a con-
temporary language. It is not always sufficient to resort to the puranas
and the mythologies while describing something momentary. Perhaps a
different class of analogy and image would express a modern man’s or
woman’s dilemma better. Tarasankar’s language does not move with the
time though his thought does. It is a pity to see a writer of his calibre
writing in the same careless style and heavy language for so many years,
not caring to improve the first and to change the second, according to the
demand of the subject-matter.
Nor does he pay heed to the construction and the structure of his nov-
els. Structurally, Ganadevata, Panchagram and Dhatridevata are the best.
Other novels, including Hansuli Banker Upakatha, one of his very best, are
mostly of unwieldy structure. The bigger they are, the clumsier the structure
becomes. Apart from his major novels, almost all the big ones, such as Radha
(The name of the heroine), Manjari Opera (An opera-troupe named after
Manjari, the owner), Nagini Kanyar Kahini, Arogyaniketan, Yogabhrashta,
are loaded with too many plots. In these novels, he fails to tell a straight-
forward story, the central plot is submerged under subplots, and, this gives
rise to another habit of his, repetitiveness. Very often he repeats himself or
51
M ahasweta D evi
diverts to unnecessary verbosity thus making the book unnecessarily heavy

reading. But his major short stories are free from these short-falls.
These are his failures regarding the form of the novel. It is difficult
to point out the faults in the subject-matter of his novels. It would
be more like criticising Tarasankar, the man. For, what strikes the
modern reader as his drawback, is his increasing preoccupation
with morality and conservatism. Accepting the fact that he is con-
servative and respectful of Brahminical way, one still wonders at
the naivete with which he points out to all the social evils as the out-
come of the western way of life. Fired with the zeal of condemning
everything western, he makes the hero of the novel Saptapadi live
in a western manner when he is only a third munsiff at a district-
town. Had he been realistic, he would have realised that it would
be impossible for a third munsiff to live in such a manner at his
salary. Did Tarasankar really believe the introduction of English in
our education, and the modern ways of life really debased human
beings? He understood the modern man only on the surface and did
not know how a modern, sophisticated man talked and behaved.
His analyses tend to prove that modern man suffers because of
his Godlessness. But, the modern man today, suffers from various
causes such as unemployment, poverty, hunger and the soaring
prices unattributable to Godlessness. God, increasingly, is becom-
ing the luxury of the very rich, and the last resort of the very poor
even in a fatalistically God-abiding country like India. When do the
educated young in India find time to think of God? If Tarasankar
has in mind a rootless generation created by enormous wealth, it is
not very clear from his books dealing with such themes, and, the
harsh fact is, such a generation has no roots in the country.
These, then, are his failures. But his achievement will outlive his failures.
It will be a pity if the modern reader reads him on the surface only and does
not try to probe deeper into him. He will outlive other writers for his three
epical novels, for, in reading these novels, one will re-discover India, the
India that is basically the same, imprisoned in the poverty of her villages.
He will outlive others for he is one of the very few truly Indian writers Ben-
gali literature has produced to this day. Whether it will be possible to keep
up the way blazed by him is difficult to answer for such a task will require
his courage and manliness, his total involvement with and total loyalty to
his profession. Not an easy task, for the days of the giants are over for the
present and one can only hope that the tortured agony, that is West Bengal,
will again give birth to a new generation of writers, who, even if unknow-
ingly, will follow Tarasankar’s path each time they write of the agony of an
52
entire people and the misery and struggle of an entire country. When such
a generation of truly Indian writers emerges, Tarasankar’s achievement will
be fully complete, not before that.
From Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay (Makers of Indian
Literature Series), Sahitya Akademi, 1983
53
Section 2
KALEIDOSCOPE
Critical Reception
Photo 2.1 Mahasweta Devi.

Source: Naveen Kishore.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-9
7
NOVELIST MAHASWETA DEVI
The Critical Tradition
Arup Kumar Das

Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha
For the past 50 years, most ‘imparters’ of the curriculum in West Bengal
Colleges and Universities seem to have been dwelling on the effervescence
of ‘mysticism in Rabindranath,’ the ‘social awareness in Saratchandra,’ the
‘focus on nature’ in Bibhutibhushan, Manik Bandyopadhyay’s ‘slum-life,’
and Tarasankar’s ‘preservation of the Rarha region’. Meanwhile, authors
such as Asim Ray who had deeply researched and appreciated the intellec-
tual lives of the Bengali middle-class, Nani Bhowmick who won the award
for Dhulomati, Samaresh Basu, and others like Bimal Kar, Debes Ray, and
Subimal Misra, began to get typecast and got forgotten. Yet, in this same
period, Mahasweta Devi was a notable exception. After facing many hur-
dles, she performed the near-impossible task of surmounting the almost
inevitable neglect by critics, to gain their attention through multiple rebirths
of her literary form, finally achieving the highest acclaim.
In his 1958 review of Mahasweta’s novel Madhure Madhur, Achyut Gos-
wami wrote:
After reading the book, I felt that there is an excess of sentiment

in the author no doubt, yet along with it there is a robustness and
vigour, that is her saving grace. . . . The author’s depiction of the
story is full of flaws, though. Every connection is clearly weak. The
dramatic moments have not been convincingly developed and the
psychology of the heroes and heroines has also not been adequately
elaborated. The danger with romantic authors is that thanks to the
excess of emotions and passions in their stories, there remains a
lack of substance and fullness of experience. If the writer tries to
remove these shortcomings, I believe her sincerity and vigour will
help her to write very successful novels in the future.
(Goswami 1958: 197–199)
How indifferent Mahasweta’s novels were at this time is clear as soon as you
see the first page of her novel Busstope Barsha, published in a journal in 1966.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-1057
A rup K umar D as
There, before the name of the novel is printed its description: ‘A complete,
bittersweet romantic novel’ (Devi 1966: 249). In 1976, she herself wrote, ‘I
wrote many stories then which were not literary. Today, it would be best if
my literary critics forgot the perspective of those novels’ (Devi 1976: 90).
Mahasweta’s rebirth occurred at the end of the 1960s. At that time in
West Bengal, the dreams of refugees who had lost their homes and farm-
labourers who had lost everything were unlimited. ‘Communism,’ ‘social-
ism,’ and ‘democracy’ had all got so mixed up, that confrontations with the
rebels had rocked the entire state, affecting most of the people, leaving them
confused and bewildered. Possibly to Mahasweta, too, this was a danger.
So even if she merely wished to protect herself, she would have to write
Ghunpoka like Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, or, like Samaresh Basu, adopt
the new idiom of the contemporary youth. However, Mahasweta did none
of this. Instead, she herself went in search of oppressed humanity. She wrote
stories like “Bayen” (1969). The quest for true reality that began from there
was not a romanticised commentary on life in the raw but, rather, a post-
mortem of social processes in independent India.
Bhagirath had got to know that since the 1955 Untouchability Act,
none of them were untouchables any more. He had learnt that there
was something called the Indian Constitution, in which at the very
beginning one Fundamental Right was clearly written, that they
were all equal.
Bhagirath’s knowledge and the falsity of that knowledge were in vari-

ous ways being questioned in the India of those days. Mahasweta set foot
on that path which questioned this truth. It was the beginning of a tireless
search, an inquiry that gradually led her to become a champion of the Adi-
vasis, a Naxal sympathiser, who fought masterfully to win justice for them,
in spite of being maligned for her efforts.
From 1977 onward, in West Bengal, the 10-year-old Naxal movement
began to figure in stories and novels in a rather indecorous way. In 1978,
Mahasweta wrote a novel on this topic, called Hajar Churashir Ma. Then,
during the Emergency and the experience of Indian prisons, beginning with
the 1895–1900 legendary tribal revolt, came Aranyer Adhikar (1977–1978),
Operation? Bashai Tudu, Master Saab, and several other novels, all narra-
tivising the social relations and life struggles of these defamed tribes. The
favourable response of critics brought new encouragement and validation
of her hitherto neglected creative practice as a writer of prose narratives.
In 1982, Arun Kumar Mukhopadhyay in his eulogy on Mahasweta,
wrote:
Hajar Churashir Ma and Operation? Bashai Tudu – these two

Mahasweta Devi novels are notable for various reasons. . . .
58
N ovelist M ahasweta D evi
Mahasweta Devi does not represent any political party, nor do her
stories and characters advertise any Politburo. Her Bashai Tudu
goes beyond even the Naxal movement. It is the people sympa-
thetic towards exploited humanity who have emerged as protago-
nists in Mahasweta’s novels. Bashai Tudu represents the reality of
the seventies. . . . Mahasweta seems committed to bear the burden
of showcasing a writer’s responsibility towards a nation’s social-
political-economic history, in writing Aranyer Adhikar.
(A. K. Mukhopadhyay 1982: 41–42)
Since this review was published, Mahasweta herself had evolved into an
individual in sympathy with suffering humanity (Devi 1983: 105).1 At that
time, Mahasweta appeared to consider form or language unimportant, giv-
ing the greatest priority to ‘the content and the author’s honesty/commit-
ment’ (Devi 1983: 105).
In the 1980s, like-minded literary authorities were profusely generous in
their praise of Mahasweta. In 1985, Jyotsnamoy Ghose wrote,
At the heart of our most important writer’s main anxiety are the
70s. . . . From the 60s itself it was evident that the Marxist political
content was no longer fitting into her customary form. . . . The dec-
ade of the 70s was the time to break this proven traditional form.
The strong blows left us sometimes bewildered, sometimes enraged,
or reassured. In Mahasweta’s novels and stories, these blows have
repeatedly reverberated. In her writings, we have confronted reflec-
tions of the times, possibly even of our own selves. But her maternal
tenderness for the 70s is a thing of the past. In the meantime, she
has traversed a very long path, strewn with various encounters and
ingredients of her gradual transformation.
(J. Ghose 1985: 171–174)
Also in 1985, Sharmila Basu in her review of Mahasweta Devi’s Shreshtha

Galpo, wrote:
That the language of women can often easily surpass even the bril-
liant male style is evident in Mahasweta Devi’s stories. . . . She was
never part of the feminine world, the sentiments and personal free-
dom of expression created by the pens of women authors. Mahas-
weta was not a member of the world built up around women in
Bangla literature from Swarnakumari Devi to Ashapurna Devi. Her
style, her dispassionate awareness of reality, could at times chal-
lenge male writers, even daring to show them up as emotional in
comparison.
(S. Basu 1985: 343–348)
59
A rup K umar D as
Basu adds that, after writing Hajar Churashir Ma:
[T]he political ambience that framed Mahasweta’s awareness and

her perspective could be felt at places. . . . It appeared as though,
through each novel, Mahasweta Devi wanted to showcase and hold
on to a particular time – whether it was the Sepoy Mutiny as a
backdrop or the tumultuous 70s in West Bengal. Mahasweta Devi
could keep the children and excited youth of the 70s aroused. . . .
At the end of Mahasweta Devi’s writing journey, there is only one
address – that is humanity.
(S. Basu 1985: 343–348)
The overwhelming bewilderment, desolation, and lamentation over the fail-

ure of the Naxal movement are mirrored in the novel, Hajar Churashir Ma.
A 1991 review says:
Keeping the ‘Naxal’ movement in the forefront, Hajar Churashir Ma

was unable to present any positive statements and pictures and . . .
this novel’s political character . . . instead of helping to understand its
main aspect is actually forced to confuse the perspective on the whole
issue . . . . Hajar Churashir Ma as a political novel ‘unnecessarily’
provokes the reader against Dibyanath, Jyoti, Tuli and Neepa. . . .
Mahasweta’s Hajar Churashir Ma is a story of a bourgeois house-
hold seen through the eyes of a bourgeois, a story in which in spite
of a lot of dissimulation, nothing has been said which could endan-
ger the bourgeois . . . this modern ‘political’ novel while expressing
purposeless anger . . . has not really been able to fulfil the political
responsibility . . . As an honest representative of the middle-class, it
was not possible for Mahasweta Devi to sidestep the indirect shock
of the 70s that fell on their class as well.
(P. Mukhopadhyay 1991: 17–22)
Reader, look at essayist Partha Mukhopadhyay’s use of compound words to

ascribe lineages. At one time, he describes Mahasweta as an authority who
sees everything through a ‘bourgeois eye,’ then, again, he identifies her as
one who belongs to the ‘honest middle class’. So, are the middle-class bour-
geois honest or are the bourgeois the ‘honest middle-class’ humanists? . . .
In 1987, Saroj Bandyopadhyay wrote:
Bashai Tudu, the hero of Mahasweta Devi’s novel, has transformed

into a myth the inevitability of life in the 70s. The basis of that ‘myth’
and its conclusion were the same – it did not die even after death. . . .
Mahasweta has almost transformed Bashai Tudu into a mythical hero.
(S. Bandyopadhyay 1987: 60–61)
60
Also in 1987, Nandita Basu wrote about Hajar Churashir Ma:
In “perspective” and successful craftmanship, this novel is the best

of all her works written during this period. . . . The shock of harsh
reality had exposed the true character of the nation. Rather than
grieving over the Naxalites, asking about the reasons and core con-
cerns for their movement taught us to recognise its reality. Mahas-
weta had never confronted the nation in this way before,
(N. Basu 1987: 145–166)
Basu continues:
Mahasweta’s social criticism was not focused on preserving the sta-

tus quo, it was more geared towards the Birsa-Bashai Tudus, under
whose leadership she hoped the society would change. . . . Her
stories and novels reveal India’s wombs of fire (Bihar, West Bengal),
the rural belts, where rebels were very active and progressing at
great speed.
(N. Basu 1987: 145–166)
However, Basu complains:
By constantly portraying potentially revolutionary characters,

there is danger of unreality. . . . The very nation and social systems
against which Mahasweta’s anger blazed like the sun, were however
repeatedly trying in various liberal ways to spread out and co-opt
her. Hence, whose is the final victory will be decided by Mahas-
weta’s future collection of stories.
(N. Basu 1987: 145–166)
This critic, while endorsing Mahasweta’s individual heroes in their per-

sonal wars, actually feels that her writing shows an inclination to deny soci-
ety and community as a whole.
Mahasweta’s writing about her excessive love for small tribes, castes, and
regions also displeases a group of leftist critics. In 1988, Anunoy Chatto-
padhyay writes about Aranyer Adhikar:
In this unimaginative, reportage-bound story, the writer’s heavily

factual account of the rebellious Birsas has attempted to draw a
supernatural image. Lacking a correct viewpoint, the writer, by talk-
ing of a Munda region and a Munda-world, did not give any impor-
tance to the specific question of the unity of the Adivasi groups and
the poor classes at large. . . . In her literature, by demanding Santhal
Raj for the Santhals, Munda Raj for the Mundas, in fact a Lodha
61
A rup K umar D as
Raj even for the negligible number of Lodhas, she shows a childish
love for the Adivasis. With her weak language, inability to create
a variety of new characters and failure to give body to her novels,
Mahasweta’s only option now is to focus on the life of the Adivasis
like a missionary. . . . Those historic novels based on the Adivasi
rebellion, which gave her so much success, have been abandoned in
her present novels about the Adivasi community.
(Chattopadhyay 1988: 458, 465–467)
Other critics do not want to destroy Mahasweta’s adopted Adivasi world in

quite the same way. Acknowledging her choice of theme, her realistic and
imaginative empathy for her subject, and her ability to mix reality and imagi-
nation, Suresh Chandra Maitra still finds her lack of involvement with labour-
allied political parties unacceptable. In his view, her stories feature women
but others as well, including the middle class, the lumpen, the destitute:
Her Aranyer Adhikar and Hajar Churashir Ma have marked the

acceptance of an unprecedented courage in Bengali fiction. . . . She
opens the chest of anthropology and social science and delves into
it. No one has ever come to create literature with such a vast store-
house. . . . She followed the rarely trodden paths on her own. . . .
Continually, she has broken old ‘myths’ and created new ones. Not
only does the subject of her craft owe no allegiance to Ashapurna,
her artistic skills and methodologies are very different as well. . . .
In the world of Tarasankar, Advaita Mallaburman, Manik Bandyo-
padhyay, she created a new edifice – a hollow house of straw, which
did not have even a blade of straw in its roof. . . . Mahasweta’s pen,
like the Charsa River, is dry, rough, again sometimes like a descend-
ing rapid. It swells like the river, overflowing the banks, flooding
the villages.
(Maitra 1993: 37–38)
Yet, even after such fulsome praise, Maitra remains dissatisfied:
However, whether the revolutionary characters in her stories and

the struggle of their tribes were part of the innumerable labourers’
agitations in India or separate from them, or how in the end that
agitation would be strengthened – this question cannot be bypassed.
(Maitra 1993: 39)
Generally, in Mahasweta’s writings, even if we find signs of the views and

convictions of the West Bengal ‘Leftists,’ she does not use her stories and
62
novels to satisfy the decrees of committed cadre-based Leftists. Herein lies

the problem. In 1991, Sumita Chakraborty writes:
Mahasweta is possibly that novelist who has repeatedly destroyed

and constantly recreated herself. She has changed herself while
traversing life’s path, and changed the image of her craft, not
because of any external or institutional pressures, but entirely out
of the warmth of her own heart, her own conscious desire. . . . As
history does not give any explanations to anyone, Mahasweta too
does not. She has no interest in defending herself nor is she both-
ered about getting the support of others. We have not come across
such a powerful and unwavering novelist in a very long time. She
continues to write with purpose, from a sense of responsibility,
she wants to write and spread her words and messages as much
as she can.
(Chakraborty 1991: 397–404)
After a decade, I see Arun Kumar Mukhopadhyay’s enthusiastic respect for

Mahasweta’s writings and her ability to write. In a 1993 essay on one of
Mahasweta’s novels, he uses two descriptive terms for her:
1. ‘Exceptional writer’
2. ‘She towers above a whole group of equally eminent writers’.
(A. K. Mukhopadhyay 1993: 70–75)
In reality, today, the appreciation of Mahasweta’s novelty, generosity, and

long-standing reputation is not dependent on any critic’s praise. Her talent
has been appreciated in many fields. Hence, a critic declares:
The ability to present such controlled, straightforward yet sharp,

powerful statements, has possibly not been seen in any of her con-
temporaries. . . . Her political views are very clear, but that has
not diminished her position as a writer in any way. Her novels are
not “political novels,” and definitely not propaganda – they are
extremely skilful works of art.
(Bhattacharya 1996: 129)
Till 1996, reviews of Mahasweta’s stories and novels flourished quite hap-
pily, despite a few that carried a bitter taste. But as soon as it was announced
in 1997 that she was to be given the Magsaysay Award, a new phase began.
Even those who had no interest in the literary windmill and very little in
Mahasweta, in particular, jumped onto the bandwagon. . . . The trend of
63
A rup K umar D as
Mahasweta criticism remains the same to date. In this phase, the first testi-
mony is Ranjan Bandyopadhyay’s new, delightful personal essay. He writes:
The special reason why Mahasweta Devi’s writings have brought

an original flavour to Bangla literature, is the independence of her
subjects. No one writes about a slighted and disgraced tribe like
she does. . . . Stories like “Draupadi,” “Stanadayini,” “Pindadaan”
and “Bayen” have amazed and mesmerised Bangla readers; as have
novels like Aranyer Adhikar, Hajar Churashir Ma, Chotti Munda
Ebong Tar Teer and Operation? Bashai Tudu.
(R. Bandyopadhyay 1997: 1, 4)
In Mahasweta’s life, January was like a month of appreciation, especially

the January of 1997. Sankho Ghose writes in Sananda:
In the behaviour of cultured society, an expected standard was cre-

ated by us a long time ago. Within a measured gauge we fixed our
movements. Mahasweta is capable of upturning that gauge, and
breaking that standard. In a way it can be said that wanting to
blow away that standard maintained by our civilised society is the
greatest purpose of Mahasweta’s individual and creative life. Her
character allows her to merge and unify herself with the humiliated
and neglected classes, the marginalised backward tribes, with their
wishes and aspirations, things we cannot even touch in our middle-
class ways of life. . . . In our literary society there is this one person,
who in the true sense, can be welcomed in any region, not only in
the seminar rooms of learned men, but with the sound of tom-toms
even in the path of the ordinary Santhals.
(S. Ghose 1997: 75).
In 1997, even Sunil Gangopadhyay says:
Mahasweta’s writings have two levels. Some of her works are based
on history, whereas other stories and novels are a sharp and cut-
ting exposure of present realities. Hasn’t her Hajar Churashir Ma
already made history? With her two kinds of writing, Mahasweta
has created for herself a unique personal language. . . . Who else has
written such completely emotionless, unembellished prose?2
Kalyani Ghose, in her 1997 review of Mahasweta’s dramatised stories and

novels in English, writes of ‘Mahasweta Devi’s use of language, her oscillation
between reality and nightmare, almost like the “stream of consciousness”
novels yet much more passionate, side by side with simple straightforward
descriptions, which are nearly flawless in their neat arrangement of arrows’.3
64
The combined narrative of praise for Mahasweta’s personal lifestyle and

her literary creative work that has been recorded in the last four years of
the 20th century marks the birth of a new trend after her being awarded the
Jnanpith (1997) and Magsaysay (July 1997) awards in quick succession.
Amitesh Maity writes: ‘From the stories of Mahasweta Devi, which tell us of
the people of a particular society and world, the work of realising the dream
of building a new world can possibly be started’ (Choudhury 1979: 11).
From 1968 to 69, Mahasweta Devi has been writing stories and novels
based on society’s ‘struggling people’ and their battles. In 1979, she had said,
‘I will march ahead without looking back. I have to go ahead. Repeatedly
I am forging past my goals, and I surely will’ (Choudhury 1979: 11). Such
a singular, single-minded unique literary personality’s estimation cannot be
completed within her lifespan. As of now in the life of Bengalis, ‘during the
widening rift between the working class and the middle class’ (Elias 1996:
4), it is extremely necessary for a stubborn and dogged literary personality
like Mahasweta Devi to remain alive for many more years.
From Abhibhab, Sharadiya, B.E. 1408 (circa 2001)
Notes
1 In her review of Gram Banglar Galpo in Mahanagar, Mahasweta Devi writes:
‘From the books we get, I see the same picture of both Bengals. In the vast world
of professional literature there is a great scarcity of books which expose the
human reality of country-time-society’ (1983: 105).
2 Sunil Gangopadhyay, cited in Ranjan Bandyopadhyay (1997: 1).
3 Kalyani Ghose, “Mahasweta Mulyayaner Khetroti Bistrito Korlen Gayatri,
Samik, Anjum ra,” Sangbad Pratidin, 25 August 1997, p. 3, cited in Deepak-
kumar Choudhury, “Mahasweta Devi: Kichchu Prashno o Uttar,” Gharowa, 23
March 1979, p. 11.
References
Bandyopadhyay, Ranjan. 25 July 1997. “Shoborder Janya Sangram Magsaysay Dilo
Mahaswetake,” Anandabazaar Patrika, 1, 4.
Bandyopadhyay, Saroj. 4 April 1987. “Samayer Daag o Bideerno Darpan,” Desh,
57–62.
Basu, Nandita. April–June 1987. “Itihaas, Sahitya Srishti o Mahasweta Devi,”
Proma, 145–166.
Basu, Sharmila. 1985. “Manush Ebong Manush Ebong Manush (Review of Mahas-
weta Devir Shrestho Golpo),” Proma (Silver Jubilee edition): 343–348.
Bhattacharya, Shakuntala. 1996. “Samprati Bangla Sahitya: Ekti Dhara,” Sharad
Samway, 119–131.
Chakraborty, Sumita. 1991. “Sahityer Lokho o Mahaweta Devi,” Proma (Subarno
Sankhya): 397–404.
Chattopadhyay, Anunoy. B.E. 1395 (circa 1988). “Bangla Sahitye Adivasi Samaj,”
Nandan (Sharad): 443–468.
65
A rup K umar D as
Choudhury, Deepakkumar. 23 March 1979. “Mahasweta Devi: Kichchu Prashno O

Uttar,” Gharowa, 10–11.
Devi, Mahasweta. B.E. 1376 (circa 1969). “Bayen”. Amrita (Sharadiya).
———. B.E. 1373 (circa 1966). “Busstope Barsha,” Dipannita (Sharadiya): 249–294.
———. B.E. 1383 (circa 1976). “Aami/Aamar Lekha,” Desh Sahitya Sankhya,
89–92.
———. April 1983. “Communist Naitikatar Samay O Sena Bibhag Unmochan
(Review of Gram Banglar Galpo),” Mahanagar, 105–108.
Elias, Akhtaruzzaman. 28 July 1996. “Lekhoker Daye,” Anandabazaar Patrika, 4.
Ghose, Jyotsnamoy. October–December 1985. “Kaler Mukhchhabi,” Agrani, 1(1):
170–176.
Ghosh, Sankho. January 1997. “Mahasweta Devi: Gandi Bhanga Manush,” San-
anda, 75.
Goswami, Achyut. B.E. 1365 (circa 1958). “Review of Madhure Madhur by Mahas-
weta Devi,” Chaturanga (Sravan): 197–199.
Maitra, Suresh Chandra. B.E. 1396 (circa 1993). “Shwarnabha Bastab Theke Pingal
Bastabta/Mahila Lekhika: Bangla Chhotogolpo,” Golpoguchcho (Sharad): 23–39.
Mukhopadhyay, Arun Kumar. B.E. 1400 (circa 1993). “Mahasweta Devir Bya-
tikrami Upanyash: Kobi Bondyoghoti Ganjir Jibon o Mrityu,” Korak (Sharad):
70–75.
———. 1982. “Sampratik Bangla Upanyas, Pratyasha o Prapti,” Sharadiya Parib-
artan, 27–46.
Mukhopadhyay, Partha. March 1991. “Sottor Dashak, Ekti Upanyash: Kichchu
Katha Kichchu Mathabyatha,” Antardwandwa, 17–22.
66
8
MAHASWETA DEVI
In Search of a Rare Uniqueness
Dipendu Chakrabarti
Mahasweta Devi’s singularity is recognised, felicitated, and yet is some-

what disputed as well. In Bangla literature, no woman has earned the credit
for being able to arouse such excitement through her new form of writ-
ing. Now her art of literary creation has spread beyond Bengal, and it has
been acclaimed at an all-India level. Again, thanks to Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, even in Western academia, her works have been warmly received.
Spivak has placed Mahasweta’s work in the ranks of the classics, such as
Bronte, Mary Shelley, Baudelaire, Kipling, Rhys, and Coetzee (in A Critique
of Post-Colonial Reason, 1999). Such good fortune did not come to Manik
Bandyopadhyay, nor to Tarasankar, Amiya Bhushan Majumdar, or even
Samaresh Basu.
The uproar over Mahasweta was not solely due to her literary achieve-
ments. She had gone beyond her literary works to join forces with the
marginalised people of the lower classes, through various social-activist
organisations, which no revolutionary male writer had been able to do. This
unusual role was another reason for the fuss over her. In fact, Mahasweta
has herself acknowledged that her responsibility was mainly towards the
exploited and suppressed Dalits, and her literary work was only one of her
mediums to that end. It was for this reason that she edited the periodi-
cal Bortika, whose purpose was to supply correct facts about these tribal
groups. With this same goal, she was writing reportage in other periodicals
as well. Yet, she was no representative of any Leftist political party. Her
progressive outlook had made her decide her own independent position.
Of all the debates around Mahasweta, very few have appeared before us
in writing. We mostly hear them through verbal opinions. The main subject
of this discussion is her exclusive position in progressive politics. Even if she
sympathised with the armed struggle of the Naxalites, she never wanted to
be their spokesperson. On the other hand, she appeared in the role of a ruth-
less critic of the various other Leftist groups. According to her, there were
honest people in all groups, and to support these honest people, she did not
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-1167
D ipendu C hakrabarti
discriminate between their group affiliations. Those who measured progress

through party politics would obviously look on such a liberal attitude with
suspicion, but their opinions did not discourage Mahasweta even an iota.
It is meaningless to search for a particular politics in my writing.

Exploited and suppressed people, and those in sympathy with them,
play the main roles in my writings. . . . Life is not a mathematical
problem, and people are not there for politics. All politics should
aim to succeed in giving mankind their right to live, that is what
I believe in.
(Devi 1978: n.p.)
In the Preface to Agnigarbha, the clarity of Mahasweta’s declaration is

praiseworthy. Yet, in a way, her hope that the purpose of all politics will
be the same is a kind of idealism, which will never be acceptable from the
Marxist point of view. Modern Marxists see a lingering note of bourgeois
humanism in the idea of politics ‘for the people’. By denying that the idea
of ‘the human’ is produced by a historic process and holding up instead
the idea of ‘the human’ as an unalterable concept, Mahasweta has herself
opened the doors for debate. As the writer of Hajar Churashir Ma, those
who had expected to see her as a supporter of the Naxal movement were
also rather disappointed later on. After all, in her writing, the path to deliv-
erance was not shown clearly. In reply to this, Mahasweta declares:
Those who are saying that I am showing exploitation and depriva-

tion, without saying how to gain deliverance from these – to them
I will say, if my writing makes them understand that the situation
is unbearable, and freedom from this is essential, then I will have
succeeded in my purpose.
(Devi 1984: n.p.)
Mahasweta’s courage is in her ability to have ignored the Marxist for-

mula for social reality and to instead have relied on her own experience
and knowledge. An author normally does not take on the responsibility to
show the way, as does a revolutionary leader. Mahasweta’s success is not
as a political expert but as an author. As an author alone she has presented
politics, the politics which did not remain confined to theory but came alive
in practical experience. That she was really passionate in her political opin-
ions is very clear – yet, from this passion excellent literature can be created.
Many of Mahasweta’s works have succeeded mainly because of her passion-
ate social awareness.
The disputes about her are possibly of her own making, because she has
stepped beyond the domain of service to literature into social service. On the
68
M ahasweta D evi
one hand, revolutionaries have been for very long suspicious of this social
service; on the other, it is regarding this social service that others’ hopes and
expectations of her have increased fourfold. The proof that she was able to
build herself up as a true progressive thinker can be found in Ashok Mitra’s
essay in Anustup (1999: 18–19). Why were Mahasweta Devi and Jaya Bach-
chan on the same stage at the function for the Hindi movie, Hazaar Chau-
rasi Ki Ma? Why was the role of Brati’s mother Sujata assigned to an actress
whose family was close to the highest leadership in Delhi, always ready to
destroy young Naxalites like Brati, and why did Mahasweta not object? But
then, Mahasweta was not creating a revolution – she was only reaching out
to the neglected and oppressed people in society and trying to really under-
stand them. She had taken on the responsibility to help those who did not
know them or knew them wrongly and understand the marginalised people.
If required, she was ready to help these people in their fight to live. This
could be a revolt or even like digging a hole as a small contribution to the
struggle to excavate a much greater cause.
To the script of Govind Nihalani’s film Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Ma, what
Mahasweta adds is that Sujata, Brati’s Ma, is now a human-rights worker.
Iraban Basu Roy (1998: 30) objects to this: ‘Those who were victims of
torture and exploitation, those were the ones it was her job to help. She
need not learn any politics for this’. It is clear that Iraban was more com-
fortable with the way Sujata suddenly died in the novel. What could Sujata
have done if she had survived? Would she become Gorky’s Mother? . . .
Mahasweta Devi herself was unable to write another Hajar Churashir Ma.
Her own work too was about the protection of human rights. Sympathy for
revolutionary politics and to be actively involved in them are not the same.
Brati’s mother Sujata had never tried to understand what her son’s poli-
tics was about. Had Brati wanted to make her understand? Brati could not
become Pavel, Sujata too could not become Pellagiya Nilovna. . . .
No, Mahasweta may be emotional, but also has the courage to accept
reality as it actually is. That is why she did not step back from co-operating
with Govind Nihalani. With the help of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, she
did not hesitate to enter the Western academic world. Just as she warmly
accepted the Sahitya Akademi and Jnanpith awards, she also felt no qualms
in accepting the Magsaysay Award. Responding to those who feel that her
acceptance of those awards endangers her progressive outlook, Mahaswe-
ta’s answer appears irrefutable.
Please clarify your attitude towards these awards. In cinema and

theatre, especially in the field of cinema, the producers get innumer-
able government awards and honours. You have not questioned
their honesty and integrity. You neither point out that Leftist pro-
ducers are selling their souls nor speak against them, but will do
69
so about literature. This proves that you are applying two kinds of
judgements simultaneously.
(Devi 1984: n.p.)
Actually, we cannot but accept that in spite of her oscillations between

the separate worlds of media hype and awards on the one hand and revolu-
tion and social service on the other, Mahasweta does show more courage
than other progressive intellectuals and works hard and sincerely to realise
her own progressive agenda. . . . After having got so much from Mahas-
weta, our expectations naturally increased, creating all the problems that
followed. When she was a ‘Bhattacharya,’ the kind of stories and novels she
had written – Etotuku Asha, Timir Lagan, Madhure Madhur, Premtara –
gave us no reason to raise any expectations. When she became ‘Devi’ and
wrote Hajar Churashir Ma, a transformation occurred, comparable only to
Utpal Dutt’s switching from English theatre to Bangla revolutionary theatre.
In this context, it is to be remembered how Utpal Dutt, too, after arousing
a kind of expectation, later disappointed the revolutionaries. In the case of
Mahasweta, even if the debates were not so widespread, it does not seem as
if disputes will stop chasing her. It might easily be thought that to Mahas-
weta, literature was now only a component of her larger social functions,
hence she was no longer interested in judgements about whether her writ-
ing qualified as true ‘Literature’ or not. Actually, though, it wasn’t as if she
had abandoned the idea of ‘Literature’. The truth was that Mahasweta had
in her own way created a literary language and structure that could not
possibly match our usual aesthetic ideas. In the present essay, the topic of
discussion is this language created by Mahasweta, its structure, and narra-
tive style. The purpose of this discussion is to highlight how unique she is
even in this field.
Before Mahasweta’s transformation into a revolutionary, her language
and narrative style, even if they couldn’t claim originality, were still much
stronger and more candid than that of other women writers. Even though
she had moved easily within both the customary romantic and realistic
traditions, her subjects compelled her to select her language and narrative
style. The novel Nati (1957) tells a 120-year-old story. For this journey
into the past, and to portray the highborn feudal princely class, she uses
a language in which there is no risk, which for ages has been accepted in
historical romances: ‘A star-spangled sky, the wild wind at midnight, some
great unheard melody makes known its last obeisance, which was received
by earth with much compassion’ (Devi 1957: 234).
In Premtara again, where only circus people are in question, we encoun-
ter extremely powerful realistic narrative and the free use of candid lan-
guage. In Madhure Madhur, a novel about the love and struggles of dance
artists, the language self-consciously uses occasional touches of poetic
rhythm and melody. Mahasweta had outgrown the verbal slackness of
70
M ahasweta D evi
her second innings. As for structure, in her novel Swaha, Mahasweta con-
tinued experimenting with backward and forward movements in time.
Actually, Mahasweta has never shown any direct interest in breaking
traditional literary styles and creating new ones. Whatever little change
we notice lies in her transitions from one tradition to another one. Mov-
ing from popular literature, she brought in the traditions and styles of
our Leftist literature and theatre, which from the 1940s grew stronger
in various ways, reaching a new level in the 1970s. Within the limits of
this tradition, of course, the multifaceted language and narrative style she
has adopted and the way she builds up many levels of meaning, bringing
together various voices from different sources to comment on generally
neglected aspects of the central issue, produce an effect unique to Mahas-
weta Devi.
In the novel Hajar Churashir Ma, the point of view of the upper-class
mother makes the language introspective. Like cinematic shots, in short,
sharp sentences, a montage of Sujata’s past and future moments are built
up. . . . There is no display of artistry or language skills in the novel. What
is there is a heartfelt sincerity of utterance that allows the reader to enter
Sujata’s inner being. Its influence becomes so magical that it does not even
occur to us that this novel, which had taken Mahasweta overnight to the
first rank of the hitherto male-dominated domain of Leftist literature, actu-
ally has many elements that are not credible.
The breadth, moderation, and, above all, the speed of its shifts between
different times and locations were very much like a film script. Since we had
to see everything through the eyes of Sujata, even Brati’s politics appeared
like a synthesis of small fragmented images captured by a camera. Owing
to this structure, Mahasweta did not have to go deep into the radical move-
ment. Unlike Gorky’s Mother, she did not place the political movement at
the centre of the story; her target was the dissection of the well-to-do bour-
geois society, for which Brati’s death was only a pretext. After all, she had
never declared that this novel was a document of the Naxalite movement.
Yet, some intellectual Naxalites in their unguarded enthusiasm had almost
lost their restraint and had assumed it was.
In Hajar Churashir Ma itself, we find some ingredients of Mahasweta’s
future narrative skills, such as special statements regarding contemporary
politics, caricatures of class enemies (at Tuli’s engagement party), use of rep-
etition creating the mood of a poetic drama (‘Today she was with Brati the
whole day . . . With Brati she was the whole day’; or ‘Every nerve and sinew
of the body was saying No-No-No. Sinew-vein-spine-blood were saying
No-No-No’), repeated emphatic speeches (‘those who are not respected, so
that Brati can respect them. Do not love, so that Brati can love them. Brati
wants to respect, wants to get love’), which almost hammer a statement into
your head, and short sentences like cinema shots that illuminate each image
one by one (‘Sujata came out! Streets of Kolkata’).
71
In Agnigarbha and elsewhere, added to these special traits, is the narrator’s

studied use of irony and caricature. ‘Suddenly before them fell a huge shadow,
resembling Frankenstein (what chaos everywhere! The demon-maker’s name
was Frankenstein, yet for the people the demon itself was named Franken-
stein). The monstrously huge sergeant Ramavatar says, “Bring it down from
the van” ’ (Devi 1978: 101). The narrator in this case could not resist talking
down to the readers from a higher level. On page 154, we discover medical
facts about the brain. In “Stanadayini,” the medical descriptions of breast
cancer help to highlight the horrific circumstances but are presented starkly
as facts. Likewise, in “Jal,” the scarcity of water among some particular
people is described to underscore the feeling of deprivation:
Water – 70 per cent of the earth’s surface is made up of water.

As a result of the movement of water, the earth continuously gets
eroded, washes away, and yet again is irrigated as well. However,
even the Moghais do not get water.
(Devi 1978: 117)
Specially in writing the history of the Shobor-Santhals, Mahasweta has pre-

sented various facts in a style that has become one of Documentary Thea-
tre’s well-known features today. We first encounter these features in Utpal
Dutt’s plays of that genre, but Mahasweta was probably the first to develop
this form in fiction, as a necessary part of her narrative style.
Mahasweta knows who her readers are – educated middle-class people,
who even after becoming progressive have been unable to free themselves
of the deep-rooted prejudices ingrained in binaries such as village/city,
woman/man, individual/group. . . . That her readers are not illiterate or
little educated city people and definitely not the marginalised tribes, is
something she herself demonstrates very clearly. For instance Mahasweta
assumes that her readers will be able to grasp the mockery and irony in
the literary and historical references and allusions in Agnigarbha. Can
such a reader belong to the neglected, illiterate, or labour class sections of
society? Once when such a hint was published in a newspaper, a number
of rickshaw pullers informed the paper in a letter that they regularly read
the writings of Mahasweta Devi. If such a claim exists, then it has to be
said that their education surely qualified them to understand Mahasweta’s
allusions and also the innumerable English words that are usually sprin-
kled throughout her writings. We find words and phrases such as ‘phase,’
‘gagged,’ ‘encounter,’ ‘injected,’ ‘tense,’ ‘premise,’ ‘superior,’ ‘abstrac-
tion,’ ‘exploration,’ and ‘colonisation’ in Bashai Tudu and references
to Archimedes, Prospero, Pan, Neanderthal, and target in “Draupadi;”
to Icarus and comraderie in “Jal;” and the expression ‘Hindu female’ in
“Stanadayini.”
72
M ahasweta D evi
It is clear that even if the rickshaw pullers and labourers could read Mahas-
weta’s writings, what she was writing was directed at us. Hence, in her style
of writing, the mixed play of language gains a lot of meaning. Given her
expertise in this matter, she could have replicated a collage of ‘magic real-
ism’ or post-modernism. But her responsibility was towards the exploited
people, especially those who were Adivasis. Mahasweta’s use of language
is definitely experimental. Being one of us, she wants to wound our con-
sciences using our very own language as a brilliant sarcastic commentary.
However, sometimes she has embroiled her own self – in self-opposition – as
with the figure of Kali Santra in the story of Bashai Tudu. The middle-class
intellectuals, in spite of working amidst the exploited masses, are unable to
give up their self-egos. However, this is something Mahasweta has achieved,
as is proven in her representation of Kali Santra.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak – who, Mahasweta says, ‘reads, loves and
teaches my work with great interest’ (Dedication to Mahasweta Devir
Chhotogalpo, 1990) – has not called Mahasweta a ‘bourgeois writer,’ but
has described Rabindranath as one. In spite of being a prolific intellectual
and expert philosophical writer, Spivak has not been untowardly disturbed
by the debates about Mahasweta Devi. . . . The main foundation of Spivak’s
philosophy is language, yet she does not say anything about Mahasweta’s
‘Bangla’. She speaks on the basis of the English translation, and that too for
readers in the West. . . . Spivak reads Mahasweta’s stories ‘with great inter-
est,’ and ‘she reads and teaches’ (Devi 1990). Who does she teach? Western-
ers! Hence, another kind of reader of Mahasweta’s novels has been found.
Mahasweta is grateful for them. That is not unusual. Who does not want a
worldwide readership! That is not the question; the question is, isn’t Mahas-
weta too, like other progressive novelists, dramatists, and film producers,
also making exploited people the subject of her creativity in order to make
them the source of enjoyment for those city-bred middle-class educated and
opportunistic intellectuals?
This dispute is not Mahasweta’s alone today; in this one-sided age of
world capitalism, it is every revolutionary artist’s concern. One can without
hesitation say that Mahasweta had added new parameters to the narrative
language and attitude, by bringing out different voices through the role of
the narrator. She did not write in the same style about the same subjects; she
changed her language according to the requirements of the story; and she
had combined many prevailing styles.
Mahasweta had tried to combine the passion and imagination of the
romantic, the dry analysis of the realist, and the sharpened ridicule of the
satirist – all at the same time. She was not always successful, no one could
be. She did not completely cut out emotion and passion from her language
and did not put them to use like a sharpened knife only for scientific analy-
sis. She played with language to create various special effects. If one looks
73
separately at the ingredients of her word play, most of it will appear already
familiar to us, but the artistic style her combination creates will lead us to
the discovery of something even more unique and unparalleled.
From Jalarko, 12 (1), January to April 2000
References
Basu Roy, Iraban. B.E. 1405 (circa 1998). “Sharadiya,” Anustup, XXXIII(3–4):
223–231.
Devi, Mahasweta. 1957. Nati. Kolkata: New Age.
———. 1978. Agnigarbha. Kolkata: Karuna.
———. 1984. Gram Bangla. Kolkata: Karuna.
———. 1990. Mahasweta Devir Chhotogalpo. Kolkata: Pratikshan.
Mitra, Ashok. B.E. 1406 (circa 1999). “Rakter Daag Dhakbey Artanadey,” Anustup,
LXXXIV(Sharadiya): 16–19.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a
History of the Vanishing Present. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
74
9
HAJAR CHURASHIR MA,
MAHASWETA, AND THE NEXT
PHASE OF THE BANGLA NOVEL
Dilip Kumar Basu

In her foreword to Shrestha Galpo (1984), Mahasweta Devi says that

although many people have questioned why after Hajar Churashir Ma,
published in the 1970s, she suddenly switched to writing novels in a ‘new
way,’ this opinion was probably not justified. She also analyses why it is
not justified, and in a way her argument is justified. In her analysis, she has
mainly stressed her interest in the common people and that they are the only
true creators of history. She insists that this was her conviction, from the
very beginning. In Mahasweta’s Rachanabali, her collected works, we can
find some evidence of this. Yet, there is also some basis for the question that
has been repeatedly asked of her by various people. That change in Mahas-
weta Devi at the beginning of the 1970s, applauded everywhere as almost
revolutionary, a change after which her pen has for one decade, rapidly and
voluminously, produced memorable novels and short stories – that trans-
formative event will remain the most significant milestone in the history of
a huge turn taken by Bengali literature.
How great a writer Mahasweta is, which is her best novel, and what are
the merits and demerits of her various works are not questions that con-
cern us here. In the whole of Bengali literature in India, a new current had
entered during that decade, and virtually none of the novelists, with their
different practices, beliefs, and modes of writing, could ignore the Naxalbari
movement’s stormy effect. Mahasweta’s personal transformation, which
was a kind of ascension, was the supreme instance of the change that swept
through the entire field of Bengali literature at that time. Our true purpose
here is to explore the nature of this change.
In the 1960s, many Bangla stories, novels, and plays offered accounts
of the impetuous mindsets of higher/middle/lower-middle class youth of
those times. Many even portrayed in great detail the anti-social, criminal
image of the characters (especially characters of the lower-middle class),
who, with the support of self-respecting neighbours, were immediately and
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D ilip K umar B asu
easily being made to confront reality. These texts represented young girls
and boys from well-to-do backgrounds, involved in improbable activities,
which were somewhat hard to believe, completely startling, and mostly
focussed on manic depressive sexuality. This new generation wanted to live
from moment to moment, wonder to wonder, one form of excitement to
another. In an impossible rush, they wanted to snatch one or two moments
of life as instant fulfilment; their identities, desires, and values changed from
moment to moment. What these narratives project is an unsettled condition.
Also, it had become the fashion to look at their fragmented, restless lives
with the compassion and sympathetic understanding of the elderly and wise.
As for actual social contexts, the pace and circumstances in which a whole
generation or at least one huge section of it could present such a spectacle,
and the direction that social reality might take today – these texts did not
offer even the vaguest sign or analysis. To this, the issue of the rapid rise
in unemployment among school–college–university-educated youth might
have been loosely attached on occasion, but projected only as a natural
phenomenon. The complexities of an individual and his conflicts with the
complicated human world, through which the novel should reflect the his-
tory of his evolution, did not find an opportunity for expression. . . .
In those days, the concept of the ‘generation-gap’ had become very popu-
lar. And since this ‘gap’ or distance existed, and was inevitable, it was given
the importance of an eternal ahistorical reality, beyond the grasp of history
and the context of the country and the times. . . . As a result, we find more
description than analysis; the use of fragmented images to arouse shallow
excitement and wonder, instead of fullness of representation; the superficial
illogic of cynicism instead of the restrained logic of realism; and a tendency
to wink at or passively accept irresponsibility rather than a sense of respon-
sibility. Alongside this trend, another kind of novel was very popular, where,
in a recurrent pattern, the protagonists (well-to-do ‘successful’ m iddle-class
heroes) were shown to have committed a grave ‘sin’ – a crime – in one situ-
ation or more, and, for all these vile sins, had borne unadulterated mental
suffering. These fictional characters were not only shown to be representa-
tives of basic, common humanity but also presented in an attractive light
and elevated to a heroic status. One suspects that those novels have not
been created only for worthless general popularity, nor for neighbourhood
boys, nor to gratify readers from the various lumpen groups now spreading
across society, nor to enjoy massive sales through their easy appeal to the
youth, nor to capture the hearts of intellectually lazy readers by depicting
every form of roguery. In fact, these novels have also been inspired by a
deep inner impulse. . . . That even the lives of apparently ‘successful’ and
well-to-do people are riddled with crimes, that even after falling into the
abyss, their souls still remain thirsty for human relationships, express their
anguish, and retain the true inner grace and purity – the writers had tried to
convince themselves and their readers of these things, when confronted with
76
M ahasweta and the N ext P hase
a tremendous inner calamity. In the context of the real situation, the dangers
facing the writers were easily comprehensible. And maybe this accounts for
the growing awareness that at every social level, those who appear to be
culprits have actually been forced to disguise their real, extraordinary selves,
due to a mechanical conflict between their simple, pure inner lives and a
harsh outer reality, almost in a mockery of fate. . . .
In the years immediately after Independence, the recent World War, fam-
ine, Hindu–Muslim riots, and the Partition had almost completely occupied
the Bengali consciousness. After that, Bengali literature in the 1950s and
the 1960s appeared rather directionless. . . . Very often writers expressed
themselves in an irresponsible and frivolous manner, perhaps savouring the
freedom of the artist in a free country. At this time, the Desh-Anandabazar
group took the lead in matters concerning social responsibility, proactively
taking up the task of supporting and encouraging writers. Another great
project took shape in independent India. At that time, the content of novels,
in choice of topics if not in the final analysis, included all kinds of miscel-
laneous material. Many popular genres appeared in books that resembled
novels. Catering to people of varied tastes, released through the endeavours
of publishing houses and enhancing their enterprise, these texts created ever
new tastes among the readers. All this reveals our effort to forge ahead in the
production and marketing of a variety of consumable commodities. How-
ever, in most novels, the meaning of society began to get narrowed down
and unclear, the bonds between the individual and society began to weaken,
and life became scattered and desolate, reduced to an individual’s life.
In search of the root or rootlessness of this fragmented, chaotic, embit-
tered life, the 1970s discovered the nation. In the field of the Bengali novel,
this was an extremely special discovery. After being under imperialist rule,
feudal India had once attempted to recognise its own identity in a particu-
lar way; at that time, the novel’s impulse lay elsewhere. It was only 22 to
24 years after India gained independence that her literature of independence
began to truly develop, when it actually wanted to understand that freedom,
focusing on and analysing that nation’s reality, through the depiction of the
essence of that nation’s relationships and conflicts with its society and its
individual members. This kind of literature was published for the first time
in the 1970s. It was emphatically stated that unless this new, young Indian
nation understood its unity as well as its conflicts with the greater Indian
society and the individual people, the individual’s identity would remain
half analysed and unknown, in the free world . . . . The tensions between
society and the individual were therefore replaced by the mutual conflicts
among nation, society, and the individual. In Bengali literature, the feudal
system had been traditionally perceived as a fundamental obstacle to indi-
vidual development. There now began an analysis of the extent to which
the relationship between that feudalism and our new nation was harmoni-
ous or adversarial. In this way, the traditional quest for the discovery of
77
D ilip K umar B asu
India reached a new stage. And whatever course it may have taken in the
visible field of politics, in novels written and read by the middle-class, into
the fragmented process of the middle-class search for the self, there was a
huge infiltration of the Indian people, of the lives of the common masses.
And now, every so often, and in Mahasweta’s own fiction very frequently,
these common people became established as the central characters in novels,
while continuing to inhabit their own immediate social milieu. This arrival
of the nation in the novel was the most notable subject of Hajar Churashir
Ma. . . .
All this became possible, and the realism fundamental to the novel came
to be achieved in Bengali literature, due to the force of a political move-
ment, directed at the nation, begun by some dedicated writers in the 1970s.
This was the time when some of the best stories of the decade carried titles
such as “Ganatantra o Gopal Kahar” or “Gangman Nataborer Bharat
Akromon.” In Mahasweta’s own story Douloti, on a beautifully drawn
map of India, in the grounds of a village school in Bihar, poor Douloti falls
face down, emptying her heart’s blood. In Debes Ray’s Mofussil Brittanto,
the poor farmer Chyarkatu’s only connection with the country’s economic
developmental plans and the fight for votes among the political parties was
that he gathered some big posters and stitched them together to repair his
dilapidated house . . . This was that time when, in Shankar Basu’s novel
Communis, the poor middle-class youth of the city were living on the streets
instead of their homes, fighting continuously with the nation, on the streets
and in secret shelters, in war, and after dismissal. Their lives, individuality,
relationships, broken dreams, and desire to build a dimly sensed future were
all depicted here. It was not as if talk of the nation was only possible if the
central character was political. Debes Ray’s narratives Mofussil Brittanto,
Teesta Parer Brittanto (two volumes), and Jotjomi were not about politi-
cal characters. Nor were Mahasweta’s Hariram Mahato, Ganesh Mahima,
Jagomohoner Mrityu, and Ghanta Baje. However, when the realism in these
texts is analysed, the nation’s presence (or its self-withdrawal or retreat,
at opportune or difficult times) can be recognised in the greatest measure.
The nation’s presence is depicted through economic planning, social welfare
plans, instruments of law and order, etc. Here, again that complication per-
sists, acceptable in reality – those who run the nation’s work are also indi-
viduals. In Teesta Parer Brittanto, the Borga recording officer Suhas remains
preoccupied with his own identity problem, along with the reality of the
country and the Bagharus, even though the problem of the Bagharu identity
is really more important. The hero of Mahasweta’s Untrish Number Dharar
Koyedi is himself an ordinary policeman. In Mahasweta’s story “Shishu,”
the predominant reality is that of a disfigured, almost extinct Adivasi tribe
absconding from the nation; yet the agony at the heart of the narrative also
includes the torn psyche of a BDO who gets involved in that reality.
78
M ahasweta and the N ext P hase
Still, in the new literature of the 1970s, from the lower middle-class to
the utterly destitute, are scattered human lives, whose reality constitutes
the main area of representation. That the struggle of these people to barely
survive and remain alive is really the battle to find human respect in human
society, the struggle to find self-identity and establish oneself in the big wide
world – this true vision is something our devoted writers were endlessly
struggling to achieve. That struggle included experiments involving lan-
guage and structure – the new content demanded that. Their restless search
for form was radically different from the language experiments of many
writers in the 1960s or Santosh Ghose’s stylistic innovations and Shirsh-
endu’s experiments in the 1970s. This new fiction depicts the way in which
the thousands of poor in poor India, in their search for identity, are reach-
ing out to the new free nation, promise-bound to civil society to take them
towards fulfilment. How this nation with its vast immobility, ineffective-
ness, and futility; its body made up of plans, schemes, and policing; and its
soul manifest in its class character confronts that hunger for fulfilment is the
picture commonly represented. Today, readers of Bengali novels continue
their quest for selfhood in the context of this huge, diverse, Indian society
and the reality of the conflict-ridden relationship between the common peo-
ple and the nation. . . . On the path to attain this reality, there are phases,
progressions, and regressions . . . How the 1970s first set forth on this path,
reading Hajar Churashir Ma can attempt to demonstrate.
From Digangan, 6(5–6), May–June 1985
Reference
Devi, Mahasweta. 1984. Shrestha Galpo. Kolkata: Proma.
79
10
MAHASWETA DEVI
Forests and Nature
Partha Pratim Bandyopadhyay

Translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty
Up until the early 1980s, Mahasweta Devi was framing experience in such
constructions and altered forms that her stories, and even some of her novels,
were achieving a multiple resonance. The adivasis, tribes, and farm workers
she was choosing to write about were in a sense nature-dwellers and nature-
proximate. Hence, nature becomes a major theme in several of her stories
and novels. The resistance of her human protagonists is directed against
the fragmented subjectivity of colonial ‘civilisation’. Mahasweta’s portrayal
of exploitation and oppression indeed has to do with class issues and eco-
nomic considerations, but it is also profoundly connected to nature. These
human beings are death-defying, like nature. Nature is both the subject and
object of comparison. In the current crisis that afflicts the Western bour-
geois world, many people are thinking of the green campaign as a path to
survival. But the majority of such people want to regard the environment as
something divorced from class struggles, revolution, and such things. They
regard nature as something ahistorical. In Mahasweta Devi’s stories and
novels, nature and humans are represented as equally trapped in an oppres-
sive framework, their survival and destruction woven in the same thread.
Nature here is humanised and hence full of special significance in the dreams
and broken dreams of history. In the message and narration of Mahasweta’s
fiction, nature therefore resounds as the war drum of the same history.
And along with such historicisation, nature also gives birth to a myth, a
legend, in Mahasweta Devi’s fiction. Animals emerge as symbols, as if this
is that world of myth, where humans understand the language of beasts
and live with them in harmonious co-existence. The supremely distinctive
feature of this Paradise myth is the idea of immortality. She brings in the
mythology of the Natural Man and the Good Savage by creating protago-
nists with an affinity to nature. The dream of the golden age that still drives
those downtrodden human beings, shattered by the so-called development
of civilisation, leads them to seek refuge in nature. They suffer great torment
in their craving for a strong, healthy existence in the lap of nature. The idea
80 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-13

M ahasweta D evi
of the noble savage is closely entwined with the myth of the golden age.
It is because she combines a significant historical consciousness with these
mythic elements that Mahasweta Devi’s protagonists can stand apart from
colonial and semi-colonial history. The very myth of a pure, simple exist-
ence from which they have been gradually cast asunder by the exploitation,
greed, and perversities of the so-called civilised world is the myth that still
sustains them. Mahasweta Devi certainly connects this maternal image of
nature with distinctive elements of resistance and struggle. This myth does
not remain in its pure, unchanging form in her fiction but becomes an aspect
of history through the working of a modern consciousness. Consequently,
the characters become simultaneously mythic and historical. As a result of
the combination of history and myth, rising above these characters’ defeats
and the futility of their existence, there emerges a new mythology of suc-
cessive rebirths and renewal of life, investing these figures with a vastness
of stature.
In Devi’s story “Draupadi,” for instance, even after being gang-raped in
such a dramatic fashion, the character develops a mythological stature. Like
an imminent awakening of the mythic, Draupadi pushes Senanayak with her
mangled breasts, and for the first time, Senanayak is afraid to stand before
an unarmed target. He feels a terrible fear. Here we see the noble savage
touched by history, who remains pure and free of sin even after being raped
a hundred times. Nature figures in this story too. After the rape, Draupadi
glimpses a murky moonlight, and the moon vomits out some moonlight
before going to sleep. The very nature that is the final refuge for Drau-
padi and her people is used by the police. When the mounds begin to move
towards her, it is nature, the final refuge, which becomes instrumentalised
by the police. In the story “Jal” (“Water”) from Agnigarbha, nature appears
in an immensely suggestive figurative mode. The human centre for the nar-
rative is the 80-year-old Maghai, a dom by caste and a gifted water diviner.
And the natural centre is the Charsa river and the lands around it. “Water”
is a story about the relationship between these two ancient entities, man
and nature. But it is also a story about how history interferes in this ancient,
mythic relationship, destroying both, ravaging their means of survival. . . .
In the novels, this use of nature appears in a different form and attains a
different level. Forest and man, through a profound conjunction, through
the awakening of a primeval, mythic immortality, attain a place beyond
the defeats of history. Nature here functions as resistance, located firmly in
Paradisiac elements. In Aranyer Adhikar (1384 BE) and Agnigarbha (1385
BE), we encounter nature in this form.
In her Preface to Aranyer Adhikar, Mahasweta Devi declares:
Therefore this novel too had to end with Birsa’s death. But the truth
of life, revolution, whatever is continuous and dynamic, does not
81
P artha P ratim B andyopadhyay
end at any particular era, with the death of some national leader,
after all. Through the ages, in the flow of inheritance, its forward
movement continues unabated.
This history and outlook on life can be found in Mahasweta’s awareness

of nature. . . . Aranyer Adhikar narrates the story of Birsa Munda and his
rebellion. In the historical sense, his revolt against the entire system ends in
failure. But exceeding this failure, the awakening of a sense of possibility
that exists as a dream is articulated through nature alone. Historical and
social time is seen in relation to a natural, geographical time. Only then do
Mahasweta Devi’s mythic characters attain validation. In this mythology,
the Eurocentric notion of ‘modern’ time becomes irrelevant. Just like nature
itself, these human figures survive and stand strong despite the assaults of
colonial, national, and class-based forces. Hence, Aranyer Adhikar begins
with the death of Birsa, the death of a myth, and ends with a figurative rep-
resentation of nature, beyond that death:
I write. Just below me, flows a river. I can hear its voice within
myself. Stony soil, wild forest of trees without fruit, mountains rear-
ing their heads like waves stretching to the horizon. On my body,
the touch of a cool breeze. They tell me, all of them together: ‘Just
as we stand for eternal struggle, so also does Birsa’s fight. Nothing
finishes, on this earth – the Mundari world, soil, stone, forests, riv-
ers, cycle of seasons. The struggle too does not end. It cannot end’.
The comparison of nature with Birsa’s struggle is significant. In the world of

nature, there is no final destruction. After destruction, nature revives. Birsa,
the adivasis and tribes of this region, the farmers, and oppressed people –
they are like nature after all. Not destroyed by a hundred assaults, they live,
revive, continue to struggle. The stony soil, forests of trees without fruit,
exalted mountains – they are reflections of Birsa and his people.
The novel is titled Aranyer Adhikar. In other words, the forest and the
Munda-adivasis are here seen as kindred spirits, synonymous with each other.
This represents the primal union of nature and humanity. It is this unity that
history and so-called civilisation are out to destroy. In the idea of the forest as
the mother, the life-giver, we see nature personified. Like a primal myth, this
conception flings itself against the oppressive body of hierarchical history.
Upon Birsa’s death, or rather, his killing, the Munda prisoners, rotting away
in the tremendous heat, burst into song: ‘The tune that is like a wail, the song
whose language is incomprehensible, as ancient as the language of the storm
in the forest’s heart, the song that is as profound as a sacred mantra’. . . .
The forest appears again and again, as metaphor and subject. After
Birsa’s cremation, ‘the flames of the pyre are still smouldering. Shiban
knows that such fires burn long’. . . . The flames of Birsa’s pyre are like the
82
M ahasweta D evi
fires of spring. It is the heat of this smouldering fire that makes the dark
coldness of their lives bearable for Mundas, adivasis, the oppressed, and
exploited. Birsa’s body had come to resemble leaves, which don’t burn to
ashes, but produce heat instead. They will release the ashes into the air,
inside the jungle. For ‘He had said, if the ashes are released in the forest
air, the forest will know that it has not been forgotten by Birsa. The ashes
will fall on the ground, from which trees will sprout, and grow’. Birsa
becomes nature. He will be killed, but live again, and grow. This tree-cycle
is like the myth of the phoenix rising from its own ashes. In the metaphor
of the forest, Birsa is immortalised, mythified. In the forest, he finds eter-
nal peace. The image of the mother as life-giver returns: ‘At that time,
Birsa had gone inside the forest’s womb, into its profoundest depths’. . . .
Mahasweta Devi alters the myth: the forest is now endowed with speech.
Keeping the framework of the adivasi’s un-natural beliefs and the mythic
sensibility intact, she represents the forest as an image of the living reality
as a feminised victim of rape and oppression. Like nature in that mythic
world, the forest speaks. In a dialogic relationship with the forest, Birsa
enters the realm of a new consciousness, a new rebellion. The forest reveals
a harsh truth to him:
Birsa was gazing at the blood. Ahaa, his body is the world of Chho-
tanagpur, his blood the flowing river. At that river-shore, stands the
mother, his mother, his forest-mother, like a naked young Mundari
girl. But this nakedness doesn’t arouse desire or greed. At the heart’s
core, it lights a fire of grief.
It is this forest that turns Birsa into a deified figure. At this transformation,
Nature erupts in resonance: ‘With a tremendous noise, the thunderbolt had
struck. Lightning had ripped the sky apart. Somewhere the trumpting of
elephants and the roar of tigers was heard’. . . . The Mundas, Birsa too,
were people of the pre-political age; the language of hope and aspiration,
in other words, the language of politics, was unknown to them. The forest
gifted that language to Birsa. . . . As the educated middle class of the 19th
century had compared the country to a mother and spoken of liberating
her, Birsa too, compares the forest with the Munda mother, regarding it as
a nude Mundari maiden. Thus, Mahasweta Devi turns Birsa into a political
figure; through her narrative of a millennial dream and rebellion, she signals
a modern revolt. Birsa becomes an image of a generalised resistance, yet his
original mythic identity remains intact. Birsa’s dialogue with the forest is
really a dialogue with history. In the context of the geographical age and the
person named Birsa, the forest too becomes history. ‘Birsa had said nothing
more. He was listening to the forest. In the murmur of leaves, the weeping
of the wind, the forest was speaking to him’. The forest here is myth, pri-
mordial purity, history.
83
P artha P ratim B andyopadhyay
Agnigarbha is set in contemporary times; it is clear that Bashai Tudu

marks the political moment of these times. But in his repeated deaths and
revivals lies the immortality of a heavenly myth. Between 1970 and 1976,
Bashai Tudu dies four times, and each time, it is Kali Santra who is sum-
moned to verify his death. . . . The external structure of the novel consists of
Bashai’s death being announced again, and Kali Santra’s journey in quest of
Bashai. This journey takes him through forests and the realm of nature. It is
a journey of an honest yet reliable political worker, to his roots, his dreams.
Here, too, the forest is Bashai’s refuge. On his journey to Bashai, Kali San-
tra is surrounded by forest, water, nature. In Kali Santra’s memory, Bashai
and rain are inextricably intertwined. . . . In Agnigarbha, soil and rocks are
as significant as Kali and Bashai. This time, Kali Santra and Bashai don’t
meet. . . . Even after his fifth death, how many times more will Bashai have
to die? After each death, his voice will ring out again. Bashai’s voice reso-
nates, like the forest, like the mountains, like the rain. The soil too slowly
grows fertile, the forest lies in wait.
From Korak Special Issue on Mahasweta Devi, January 1993
84
11
MAHASWETA DEVI’S WRITINGS
An Evaluation
Sujit Mukherjee
This book1 is so beautifully printed that I wish the publisher had, for once,
broken with convention and named the printer on the title-page itself. That
worthy is no other than P.K. Ghosh (Eastend Printers, Calcutta). There can
be few more scrupulous and learned printers plying the English language
reproduction trade in India. His contribution to this book has been pleas-
antly acknowledged by Samik Bandyopadhyay in his introduction. I must
try, in due course, to guess the areas of expression in which this printer and
the translators, perhaps even the author, are likely to have differed.
To take another look at the title-page, it mentions one author, one title
and two translators, thus giving the impression that the same story has been
jointly translated. Whereas the volume actually offers us two stories – the
first and longer one, entitled Operation? Bashai Tudu in the original, trans-
lated by Samik B., the other and shorter entitled “Draupadi” also in the
original and translated by Gayatri S. Samik B. has provided an introduction
(pp. vii-xiv) to Mahasweta Devi as a writer as well as to the background
of these two stories drawn from the collection published in 1978 under
the title Agnigarbha (which I would translate as ‘Fire in the Womb’ rather
than Samik B’.s ‘Fire in the Depths’). There is also the ‘Author’s Preface to
the present edition’ (pp. xv-xxi), which, apart from three additional para-
graphs, is more or less a translation of the bhumika Mahasweta Devi wrote
for the Bangla volume some ten years earlier. No translator is mentioned
for the English preface and we may presume the author produced it herself.
The stories are not easy to summarise or even to describe. The title-story
(148 pages) tells of a tribal peasant hero known as Bashai Tudu, who organ-
ises and leads the action wherever there is occasion for landless agricultural
labourers of the region to resist some particular tyranny imposed by land-
owners with the backing of police authorities. In the ensuing clash, he is
killed each time by the police or by soldiers, but he seems to reappear when
he is needed again. And each time the corpse is identified by the leftist party-
worker and small time journalist, Kali Santra, through whom much of the
story is told. The much shorter (13 pages) second piece “Draupadi” focuses
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-1485
S ujit M ukherjee
on Dopdi Mejhen, a tribal woman Naxalite activist, whose spirit refuses to

surrender even when she is captured and her body horribly violated. Both
stories are set in villages and forest areas of northern and western Bengal.
Whoever reads these two powerful stories is bound to ask for more in
English. She or he could try, in India, “The Wet Nurse” (trans. Ella Dutta)
in the anthology Truth-Tales (1986), published by the New Delhi firm Kali
for Women. Another version of the same story done by Gayatri S. and
given the title “Breast Giver” features in Subaltern Studies: V (OUP, Delhi,
1987) which also contains Gayatri S’.s discourse on this story. Represented
by “Etoa Munda Won the Battle” (trans. Meenakshi Mukherjee, 1989),
Mahasweta figures in the Nehru Bal Pustakalaya programme of National
Book Trust. And if any Delhi theatre-goer saw the Hindi version of Hajar
Churashir Ma (Mother of No. 1084) enacted some years ago, she or he will
find this and four other dramatised stories in the collection Five Plays (trans.
Samik B., 1986) published by Seagull Books of Calcutta.
Many years ago, Adil Jussawala had complained while searching for
English translations of stories and poems by Indian writers for the Penguin
anthology New Writing in India (1974) that many of our authors are noto-
riously unconcerned about how well or ill they are rendered into English.
This cannot be said of Mahasweta. Samik B. has testified, with regard to
the plays as well as to Operation? that she produced her own draft transla-
tions for reference and collaborated in other ways with the process of being
transplanted into English. I learn from a fairly reliable source that when the
person commissioned to translate “Etoa Munda” handed over her render-
ing to the English editor of NBT, the latter was much dismayed to find that
it differed noticeably from the version already provided by the author. How
this editor resolved the situation remains unknown, but it is the translator’s
version which has been published by NBT.
If I may distend this digression a little, the blurb on the back cover of
Five Plays says that Mahasweta began to dramatise her own stories out of
a feeling that only as plays could they reach the large illiterate audience that
is invariably overlooked by writers. I was reminded of the Telugu poet and
activist, Cherabanda Raju, who began to compose songs towards the end of
his short life so that he could address and persuade an audience that could
not read. However, we learn from Samik B’.s introduction to Five Plays that
Mahasweta’s dramatisation of Hajar Churashir Ma ‘has never been staged,
though there have been productions of several “safe” and neutral dramati-
sations of the novel itself, most of them in Hindi . . . These productions have
actually represented the Establishment’s endeavour to absorb the exposure
with which Mahasweta’s novel and play challenged them’ (1986: xii). Was it
to ameliorate this situation that Mahasweta’s dramatisation was translated
into English, the so-called world language? But our Establishment mouths
English when it is not speaking Hindi, so what is the way out? Four other
translated dramatisations were added to make up this book, which carries
86
M ahasweta D evi ’ s W ritings
the advice ‘Performance rights in English controlled by the author and the
translator’. I wonder how often these rights have been exercised and where.
Dwelling just a little longer on the making of Mahasweta’s English career,
I find that the operation began in 1981 when Gayatri S. translated “Drau-
padi” in – of all places – Critical Inquiry, one of those hi-fa scholarly jour-
nals with which the University of Chicago Press keeps the academic world,
not only of India, in a state of orderly bewilderment. I understand (that
is, I have not seen it myself) the story appeared soon after in Writing and
Sexual Difference, ed. Elizabeth Abel (1982), also published by the same
scholarly press. Whether as a result of this projection or not, Mahasweta
attended the Festival of India in France as a representative Indian writer.
By now she is being heard about in the southern reaches of English-reading
circles in Delhi, and Kali for Women finds the translation entitled “The Wet
Nurse” fit for inclusion in their first anthology of contemporary writing by
Indian women, which was reprinted within a year of its first publication in
1986. Five Plays also appeared in 1986 but not, I think, stirred by any inter-
national aspiration. Around this time, Kalpana Bardhan must have begun
translating Mahasweta (and also stories by Rabindranath, Tarasankar,
Manik Bandyopadhyay and Hasan Azizul Haq) for her selection eventually
to be published under the title Of Women, Outcasts, Peasants and Rebels
by the University of California Press in 1990, while Gayatri S. completed the
Mahasweta translation that would become “Breast Giver” and find place,
along with her “Draupadi,” in her collection of essays, In Other Worlds
(Methuen, New York and London, 1987). In this book both Mahasweta
stories are placed in the third section entitled “Entering the Third World,”
and what I am imagining to be ‘Operation Mahasweta’ is nearly complete.
Hereafter she will be the door to the Third World through which the First
can enter, ushered in by an incomparable dwarapalika.
I can’t locate Samik B. as part of this ‘operation,’ though I am unable to
fathom why he has taken over Gayatri S’.s visually ugly and rhetorically
confusing device (‘The italicised words in the translation are in English in
the original’) which seems to be aimed mainly at the First World reader. To it
Samik B. has added an element that is likely to aggravate rather than reduce
the difficulties of a reader in other worlds as well: ‘In our text italicisation
marks the English words used transliterated by Mahasweta Devi, as also
the Indian words’ (1990: xiv). I should love to know how P.K. Ghosh was
persuaded to accept these deviations.
Gayatri S. offers an explanation for her device, Samik B. does not. Both
choose to ignore (or omit to inform non-Bengali readers) the fact that much
contemporary Bengali speech at all levels of Bengali speaking society is full
of English words and terms. Mahasweta exploits this phenomenon bril-
liantly in a number of ways both in what her characters say and in what she
has to tell us. I should have thought that placing such English words within
single quotes would have distinguished them enough, while italics could
87
S ujit M ukherjee
have been reserved for the so-called Indian words. Then it would be up to
the reader to watch out for the single quotes and decide for herself or him-
self which thus distinguished word is mere officialese, which meant ironi-
cally, and which is a convenience available only to a once colonised people.
I have also wondered why Samik B. decided to tag “Draupadi” on to a
fairly long Operation? Bashai Tudu. The novelette, along with 22 pages of
prefatory matter, would by itself have made a sizable enough publication.
He makes an attempt to justify the adjunction (see para 2 on p. xii) but does
not convince. Alternatively, having decided to include the shorter piece, was
he not tempted to produce a new translation instead of using one that was
done nearly 10 years ago by Gayatri S.? Had he succumbed, forthcoming
Mahasweta buffs who cannot read her in the original could have compared
two versions and wrung some more wattage from this highly charged story.
Samik B. does say that he pointed out some omissions and mistransla-
tions which Gayatri S. has now corrected, thus giving us a revised, perhaps
the definitive version. However, one correction remains to be effected in the
fourth line. The original Dui takmadhari uniform has been translated as
‘two liveried uniforms’ (1990: 149). Takma (a medal-like object of brass or
bronze worn by a servitor) cannot be taken to mean livery, while livery and
uniform can sometimes be the same. My other general demand would be
that if Gayatri S’.s translation had to be included, her translator’s foreword
should also have been reproduced. That foreword is best read along with
the story, and its presence here would have made it more easily accessible to
readers in this country than it is at present.
Reading the translation of literary texts that one can read in the original
sometimes creates unexpected problems. After re-reading the originals in
order to refresh my memory, I find I cannot shake off the impression that
not only are the two stories very different in character but even the transla-
tors belong to two quite different experiences. Gayatri S. appears to have
discovered (or this may be her artfulness) Mahasweta’s stories fairly recently
and felt challenged by the problem of translating them. In responding to
the challenge Gayatri S. has defied convention (for example, in the matter
of italics), taken liberties like converting the tribal deity ‘Singboma’ into a
cosmopolitan ‘their Maker’ (1990: 149), risked using a word like ‘ululate’
(see the first line on p. 160) which is not listed in my copy of LDOCE,2 and
generally makes the story radiate a purpose that may well attach more to the
translator than to the author. In other words, there is a strain of manipula-
tion (womanipulation?) in the rendering of “Draupadi” which is wholly
absent in Samik B’.s effort. Possibly out of longer personal acquaintance
with the author and wider reading of what she has written, he has chosen a
quieter, more neutral approach, more regardful (if I may use such a term) of
the original. Given the variety of speaking tones and language registers that
complicate Operation?, his was the more difficult task and, like Bashai him-
self, Samik B. didn’t give up. If I have to find fault – and I must, to justify the
88
M ahasweta D evi ’ s W ritings
role of reviewer – it is with the occasional lapses into idioms such as ‘rush to
the defence,’ ‘spare a thought,’ ‘take the cake,’ ‘head on a platter,’ ‘treading
on the toes,’ ‘incurring their ire,’ and so on. Such phrases, quite acceptable
in themselves, puzzle me when used in translation because I can’t guess what
the original contained.
I would also question the undue pedantry of his altering the transliteration
of place names like Bankrajhar (as spelt earlier by Gayatri S.) to Bankdajhad
and Jharkhani to Jhádkhani, complete with pronunciation dots above or
below relevant consonants. I prefer Samik B’.s ‘kounter’ (which removes it
just far enough from English speech) to Gayatri S’.s ‘counter’ which looks
strange as a word uttered by Dopdi Mejhen. Gayatri S. has retained the
British Raj spelling Burdwan while Samik B. uses the more contemporary
Barddhaman (but we could do with one ‘d’ less). Neither has dared to write
Kolkata, which is what Bengalis say, rather than Calcutta.
The language used by Mahasweta in these two stories is at times no less
difficult to read and comprehend as it must have been to understand and
translate. Gayatri S. has described it in her foreword as ‘A prose that is a
collage of literary Bengali, street Bengali, bureaucratic Bengali, tribal Ben-
gali, and the languages of the tribals.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter
two varieties represent Mahasweta’s inventiveness rather than actual speech.
Operation? is even more varied in its multiplicity of languages, which is why
I think it is more difficult to translate. At one place, a huge police sergeant
is quickly identified in the original not only by his name, Ramavatar, but
also by his reaction to some young men who have got into his jeep claiming
they are Congress Party volunteers. Ramavatar snarls in the original: ‘Teri
Kangres ki aysi ki taysi – utar saley!’ This has been converted rather than
translated to ‘Fuck your Congress. Get down, bastards!’ (1990: 94), which
fails to carry the force as well as the inevitability of what a stalwart Bihari
policeman would say to young Bengali trouble-makers.
Readers encountering Mahasweta Devi for the first time through Bashai
Tudu in 1990 need to be reminded – as indeed Samik B. has in his introduc-
tion (which I find more useful) to Five Plays – that her first novel Jhasir Rani
was published as far back as 1956, that is, when a thirty-year-old reader
of Bashai Tudu today was not even born. By 1983, according to Sahitya
Akademi’s Who’s Who, she had written more than 50 novels (but some
are really novelettes). Leaving aside the pot-boilers and pan-cleaners which
most Bengali novelists tend to churn out every Puja annual time, Mahas-
weta’s career reached one kind of peak with Aranyer Adhikar (1977), her
account of the times and life, thoughts and deeds of Birsa Munda, tribal rebel
reader of the last century. This work won her a Sahitya Akademi award. But
another phase of her career had already begun with Hajar Churashir Ma
(1973/74) which, despite Gayatri S’.s finding it as written in ‘the generally
sentimental style of the mainstream Bengali novel of the 50s and the 60s,’
would I think, unerringly find response and win recognition anywhere in the
89
S ujit M ukherjee
so-called Third World. That could be for some writers, a greater achieve-
ment, than earning the approval of the First World. With Hajar Churashir
Ma the author turned to recording the present instead of, as in the earlier
phase, reconstructing the past. Bashai Tudu seems to represent a third stage
rather than phase, a stage of maturation which probably merges the two
phases. Where she used to make fiction out of history, here she is making
myth out of fiction.
Both the Sahitya Akademi and the National Book Trust transcribe this
author in English as ‘Mahasveta’. If she is to continue to dwell in English
reading world, she will have to decide whether to ‘swet’ it out or ‘svet’ it
out. I call upon Mr P.K. Ghosh to adjudicate.
From The Book Review, 15(3), May–June 1991
Notes
1 Review of Bashai Tudu [and “Draupadi”] by Mahasweta Devi, translated from
the Bengali by Samik Bandyopadhyay and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Kolkata:
Thema, 1990), published in The Book Review.
2 Using these initials represents my feeble attempt to promote the Longman Dic-
tionary of Contemporary English.
References
Abel, Elizabeth. 1982. Writing and Sexual Difference. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press.
Bandyopadhyay, Samik, ed. 1986. “Introduction,” in Five Plays by Mahasweta Devi,
vii–xv. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Devi, Mahasweta. 1977. Aranyer Adhikar. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani.
Jussawala, Adil, ed. 1974. New Writing in India. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
90
12
READING “PTERODACTYL”
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Thangam Ravindranathan’s excellent recent piece on how literature relates

to climate change celebrates Marguerite Duras’ 1950 novel The Sea Wall
and the brilliant diasporic writers Amitav Ghosh and Shumona Sinha from
India, writing in English and French, but does not mention Mahasweta
Devi’s “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha.”1 I am writing this essay to
fill that gap. And more.
The unreal fable of the pterodactyl in Mahasweta Devi’s “Pterodactyl,
Puran Sahay, and Pirtha” is framed in the love story of a wanderlusting
investigative journalist, Puran Sahay, and Saraswati, a patient, intelligent,
educated middle-class schoolteacher with whom he has had a long and
interesting relationship. He leaves his unresolved situation with her to inves-
tigate an unusual story, with her uncertain response: ‘I can’t give my word’
(98). And, at the end of the novella, Puran climbs up onto a truck presum-
ably to return to that uncertainty. Such middle-class ‘equal’ gender relation-
ships are the deep background of the story. Note Saraswati’s ‘surprising’
anger at Kamal’s criticism of the ‘evolved’ tribal (118–119). Other examples
would be Harisharan and his public sector wife (111), Surajpratap, and
Sheila (112–113). I believe the representation of this gendering is to show
the absolute incommunicability between the story of liberated middle-class
gendering and the women of a place such as Pirtha, a remote valley in hilly
Chhattisgarh. ‘Dimag’s wife,’ dazed by the sale of her sister, shown as full
of speech and tight love, is the exception that breaks the unreality, towards
the end of the story:
Yesterday the Sarpanch arrived and distributed bundles of posters,

“End separatism, keep communal harmony intact, and renounce
the path of violence.” Dimag’s wife was saying, “This paper is not
good, too thin.” She is now pregnant, and forever holds the hand
of a three-year-old girl, as if someone will snatch the child away.
She talks as well.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-1591
G ayatri C hakravorty S pivak
– O Shankar! When will we all die together?

– Shankar! Why did relief come this time?
– Shankar! Why did it rain?
They are not entitled to rain, they are not entitled to relief, the
ancestors’ soul has come and gone casting its shadow, therefore
unremitting death was their only lot (153).
The reader can know s/he is in Chhattisgarh because Mahasweta cunningly

mentions Abujhmar in the middle of the text: ‘In Abujhmar there is a huge
depression in the rock like a well, or like a monster’s bowl. The sunlight
never reaches its belly fully. The Adivasis live in the land of that primor-
dial dusk’ (109). She does not focus on what we know best about Chhat-
tisgarh, the ‘Maoist’ struggles inspired by middle-class leaders, but rather
what Njabulo S. Ndebele (1986) has described as ‘the ordinary,’ an idea
subsequently taken forward by Simon Gikandi (2021).2 Frame and fable
together stage the absolute separation of middle-class activist life and Adi-
vasis in remote enclaves that still exist in India and certainly in Abujhmar.
Let us remember as we enter the text ‘Puran has come to Pirtha with the
worry that Saraswati might leave some day’ (98).
From small-town middle class family life, we enter the world of the lower
reaches of the state civil service in a remote rural area where shreds of top-
down idealism still survive. We see this as they encounter the still feudal
functionaries of local self-government – the Sarpanch and his cohorts. But
this too is a frame. An indication of what will be held within this is given in
two passages. The first:
The survey map of Pirtha Block is like some extinct animal of

Gondwanaland. The beast has fallen on its face. The new era of
the history of the world began when, at the end of the Mesozoic
era, India broke off from the main mass of Gondwanaland. It is as
if some prehistoric creature had fallen on its face then. Such are the
survey lines of Pirtha Block.
(99)
There is a perfectly reasonable discussion of ‘development’ needs in terms

of that map:
Look at this map. Near the foot of the animal there is a church
but no missionaries. We are forty kilometres to the south of this
church. And a canal would have gone from the animal’s tail to its
head by the Madhopura Irrigation Scheme. The scheme is in the
register. That canal would have joined the Pirtha River as well. And
look here.
92
R eading “ P terodactyl ”
I’m looking.
The tribals are in the animal’s jaws. Near the throat, water gushes
down into Pirtha at great speed in the rainy season. If there were small
dams 3 miles down the river, and then another mile down, the tribal
area of Pirtha would be green (100).
The second:
A boy painted this on the stone wall of his room. The picture was
taken by Surajpratap, but no, this photo is not for a newspaper, not
for publicity.
He did not print a photo.
No, we took away the negative. He cannot print this, he doesn’t
have a copy.
What is it? Bird? Webbed wings like a bat and a body like a giant
iguana. And four legs? A toothless gaping horrible mouth. But this
is . . . Don’t say it. I won’t hear it.
The prehistoric Mesozoic animal from a time and space that intervene in the
opening of the journey into the true fable. There are two unrealities in the
telling of the journey – the fable.
This is fiction. When I brought literary considerations into the work of
the Subaltern Studies collective at Professor Ranajit Guha’s invitation, there
was a fierce disciplinary opposition from most of the other members of the
collective, who were historians. And, when I wrote my critical essays on
various pieces by Mahasweta, a reviewer in India Today dismissed them as
‘sermonising’. I will therefore add here a few corrective words before I com-
ment on the unrealities in the fable at the centre of “Pterodactyl.”
It was my great good fortune to be close to Mahasweta Devi for many
decades. Whatever our differences, it was clear to me that, even more than
in her personal life, in her writings, right from the start, she was in pursuit
of the possibility of the ethical. Therefore, any capable reader would track
that in her writing – and that is not sermonising. As for fiction not hav-
ing any home in that historians’ house, I would ask my historian friends –
not all, the best of them already know this – that if history is perceived
as well-researched verified facts, ranged together appropriately, in order
to provide ingredients for an interpretive narrative – then fiction, under-
stood not merely as the opposite of truth, is the imaginative activism that
allows the emergence of the historical object of investigation with a subject-
character of its own. Then, a further understanding, which is a little bit
harder: that the reader of fiction learns from the singular and the unverifi-
able. And sometimes, the details that are not necessarily and clearly correct
in fact will make the reader ask: Why has the writer staged the text in this
93
way? Why indeed, sensing this perhaps, Mahasweta writes in a final note,
as author rather than narrator within the text:
In this piece no name – such as Madhya Pradesh or Nagesia – has

been used literally. Madhya Pradesh is here India, Nagesia village
the entire tribal society. I have deliberately conflated the ways, rules,
and customs of different Austric tribes and groups, and the idea of
the ancestral soul is also my own. I have merely tried to express my
estimation, born of experience, of Indian tribal society, through the
myth of the pterodactyl.
(Devi 1995: 196)
Let us rather ask, as readers rather than author, why the text has staged an
absolutely deprived community of child-bearing women, with their chil-
dren dying of malnutrition, and one male, Shankar, the only literate per-
son in the community, almost silent throughout the text until he breaks
into the philosophical discourse which refuses the interference of so-called
‘development’:
What is Shankar Nagesia saying? A warning bell goes off in Puran’s

mind. He must understand Shankar’s words, otherwise no justice
can be done to himself or Saraswati in the Saraswati affair . . .
Shankar speaks. As if he is singing a saga. . . . Shankar comes up
close and says, “Can you move far away? Very far? Very, very far?”
Shankar sways, he faints.
(119, 120)
He supposedly ‘say[s] a lot’ (129), directing his fellow-tribals. But that goes
unreported.
In fact, Mahasweta knew well that, even in the direst circumstance, Adi-
vasi women were rarely a silent group, although she (and under her aus-
pices, I) had heard Lochu Sabar speak history (itihash bolchhi, he would
say) like a saga. What we are looking at is a structuring of the text that may
have an effect on the reader. We remember that the story began with a frame
containing a singular man held within family-inclined women and find here
a structural parallel on a more deprived level. In other words, the absolute
divide between middle-class India and the tribals shows some commonal-
ity in gender-structure through this textual structuring, not available in the
narrative or storytelling. For reproductive heteronormativity is bigger than
all the problems of society.
The central unreality, the incursion of the pterodactyl among these Adi-
vasis, goes even further. For if reproductive heteronormativity (or RHN, as
I have affectionately abbreviated this here and there) is the broadest link that
holds human beings together, the earth holds the human. The pterodactyl
94
is staged to teach us a couple of things. First of all, the difference in gaze

between the implied reader and the protagonists. For us, an improbability.
For them, the punishing spirit. But the author warns: ‘the idea of the ances-
tral soul is also my own’.
The pterodactyl draws forth from Puran the difference between planetarity
and our responsibility to the earth. But in order to be prepared to respond,
to access the pterodactyl’s message in his imagination, and to ‘read’ it in an
act of imaginative activism, Puran has to be prepared. He has to be moved
from the political to the literary. He is ready for he is already ‘romanticising’:
‘This room is telling me, or I am grasping this as I’ve entered this room . . .
this is sensed in the blood, it flows in the blood from generation to genera-
tion. – Puran! Don’t romanticise it’ (134). And the first step is to show that
he does not know.
As he sleeps in an emptied dwelling, the rains finally come and end the
drought. Puran walks to the forbidden shrine room. ‘Filling the floor a dark
form sits. . . . The creature is breathing, its body is trembling. Puran backs
off with measured steps’ (141). A bit later, ‘Bikhia [the boy who drew the
pterodactyl] looks at him in deep expectancy and Puran understands noth-
ing’ (144; translation modified). He weeps. Shankar tells him: ‘You have
brought this rain, the people of Pirtha are now in your debt’ (idem). And,
finally, an explanation from his friend Harisharan:
People who have nothing need miracles. For now it’s through you . . .
now a story will be put together from voice to voice, the story will
become song . . . and the song will enter the history that they hold
in their oral tradition.
(145)
There is a good deal of statistics in the text, sometimes in a non-

characterological ‘objective’ voice, sometimes in free indirect discourse inhab-
iting Puran’s voice which always gives way to texture, ‘experience’. There is
also a good deal of representation of private sector and public sector aid
work, shot through with political strategy, that is given with narrative irony.
Through all this, now a companion of Bikhia in taking care of the ptero-
dactyl, Puran worries: ‘There is a tremendous problem facing him’ (153).
Alone with the pterodactyl, Puran says toward it: ‘forgive me,’ as he reads
up on the pterodactyl, classified under ‘Reptiles: in sea, in air’ (154). Con-
trast this to the absence of affective focusing on the couple of pages on ‘the
characteristics of the Indian Austric’ (114–115) broken by the appropria-
tion of the tribal identity by the caste-Hindu Sarpanch, as the text suggests
paratactically (with no transition between ‘[t]here are some caste-Hindus in
Gabahi’ and ‘Bhan Singh Shah the Sarpanch . . .’).
Bikhia, the subaltern (‘social groups on the margins of history,’ Gramsci),
takes agency. He ‘establish[es a] pact of secrecy’ with Puran, and Puran
95
starts to address the pterodactyl. The object of knowledge has become a

subject from whom a response is sought:
What do its eyes want to inform Puran?

Corporeality constructed of the gray dusk or this liquid dark-
ness is altogether still. Only an unfamiliar smell, sometimes sharp,
sometimes mild. When Puran stands, or Bikhia stands, the smell
turns mild and faint. Some in-built perception for self-protection
from unknown beings?
There is no circulation eye-to-eye.
Only a dusky waiting, without end.
What news does it want to give? (157; translation modified)
And then Mahasweta offers the distinction between extinction by plane-

tarity and anthropocentric extinction as imagined by Puran trying to ‘read’
what the pterodactyl’s message might be. The first sentence is about plan-
etarity. The rest is about our responsibility for killing our earth. Please allow
me a long quotation:
We are extinct by the inevitable natural geological evolution. You

too are endangered. You too will become extinct in nuclear explo-
sions, or in war, or in the aggressive advance of the strong obliterat-
ing the weak, which finally turns you naked, barbaric, primitive,
are you going forward or back, think. Forests extinct, animal life
obliterated outside of zoos and forest sanctuaries. What will you
finally grow in the soil, having murdered nature in the application
of man-imposed technology? ‘Deadly DDT greens,/charnel-house
vegetables,/uprooted astonished onions, radioactive potatoes/
explosive bean-pods, monstrous and misshapen/spastic gourds,
eggplants with mobile tails/bloodthirsty octopus creepers, animal
blood-filled/tomatoes?’
The national spirit of the ancient nations is crushed, like
nature, like the sustaining earth, their sustaining ancient civilisa-
tions received no respect, recognition didn’t happen, they were
only destroyed, they are being destroyed, is this what you are
informing us?
The grey lidless eyes do not answer.
Have you come up from the past to warn, are you telling us that
this man-made poverty and famine are crimes, this wide-spread
thirst is a crime, it is a crime to take away the forest and make the
forest-dwelling peoples naked and endangered? Are you telling us
that it is a crime to strangle and destroy all voices of protest, and
the arm of combat?
The eye utters no word.
96
How grey, what amazing eyes. It wants to say something, to give

some news, Puran does not understand. No communication point.
No word can be said or written.
Is there a message in the smell of its body? Why do its eyes look?
In the inner shrine room (the worshipped and the worshippers are
gone) of the family of a poor tribal (who is dead), oh ancient one
sitting unmoving, what do you want us to know?
The grey eye does not answer.
You have come to me for shelter, and I don’t know how to save
you, is that why I’ll see your death? I don’t know, if I knew I could
have saved you, you would have taken wing and left again, you
would have searched and found water, food, shelter. I don’t know, if
I knew . . . In this shrine room of stone and earth in the last years of
the century an urgent piece of news that humanity needed to know
came to us and the news could not be given because human beings
did not know or understand its language.
The grey eye wants to give Puran some news (157–158; transla-
tion modified).
Critics such as Bruno Latour, Timothy Morton, Margaret Cohen, and Ami-
tav Ghosh have suggested that the rise of the novel, conventionally con-
nected to modernity, can be re-constellated today as connecting to the
Anthropocene and the climate change that is bringing the world to its own
destruction. ‘Jennifer Wenzel, Jesse Oak Taylor, Ursula Heise, . . . Sadia
Abbas [and others] have taken issue with [these writers],’ writes Thangam
Ravindranathan. She suggests that this criticism of the novel
[a]t the same time imagine [s] the epilogue, the final twist, to a long
story about (ultimately deceived) reading. This story’s end would
read: Human literature turned out in the end to be ‘carbon emis-
sions’ uncannily clever gesture of self protection.
(Ravindranathan 2019: 8–9, 11)
It is in complicity with this deceived reading that I add my appeal for a

more robust practice of reading, harnessing the humanities for the kind of
imaginative activism, holding back from planetarity, that Mahasweta stages
in “Pterodactyl.”
What I am proposing, through the practice of literary reading, is a
training of our students’ habit of ‘normality,’ continuing through further
teaching and rearing, developing a worldwide collectivity, generation by
generation, rearranging the ground-level affect of greed and parochiality at
all ends. I want to be able to say, without accusations of sermonising, that
“Pterodactyl” can become a teaching text for such a practice of literary
reading. I have tried to show how the text throws the reader structural and
97
textural signals for reading, finally limited by planetarity. For the planet is
in the species of alterity, belonging to another system; and yet we inhabit it,
on loan. It is not really amenable to a neat contrast with the globe. I cannot
say ‘the planet, on the other hand’. And that is the figurative space of the
pterodactyl.
The pterodactyl is brought alive from that space through the map (‘The
survey map of Pirtha Block is like some extinct animal of Gondwanaland’
[Devi 1995: 99]) and is meticulously re-written back into the visual repre-
sentation of the map in the end. This is an important step to understand –
for the animation of the map into special texture is a topos, and mapmaking
is the beginning of civilisation, and the tectonic separation of Gondwanal-
and may be the inauguration of the remote possibility of the map of the still
changeful world we live in
(‘[t]he new era in the history of the world began when, at the end
of the Mesozoic era, India broke off from the main mass of Gond-
wanaland. It is as if some prehistoric creature had fallen on its face
then’ [99]),
and it is that cusp situation that we are addressing here. I have suggested
elsewhere that mapmaking is also the beginning of the Anthropocene (Spi-
vak 2019: 32–43). Gramsci (1971) once suggested that the way to bring
back social justice is to locate where history went wrong and start our work
at redress from there (cited in Babic 2020: 767–786).3 One might say that
this use of the topos of opening up the map to texture in a completely new
way is also part of what we must learn by reading this text as it signals to
the reader, as follows:
Bikhia and Puran, with a shared unspoken understanding, find a place to
dispose the pterodactyl’s body with appropriate respect for tradition. They
go down to the deepest level of the cave structure, to the shores of a deep
natural well. Here is again the real:
The sun comes in at one side through the crevice above. Puran
shines his flashlight where Bikhia points. Drums beat from the
smooth stone, one hears the clamor of the dance. With great care
and over time, who has engraved dancing men and women, drum,
flute, the khoksar to keep the beat? Peacock, elephant, deer, bird,
snake, naked child, tree, Khajra tree, bow and arrow, spear. . . .
Who carved these pictures, filling the cave wall for how long? Do
these pictures date from the time when Bikhia’s people were free,
and the animal kingdom was their dominion, beasts of prey? When
the forest was mother and nurse?
(175)
98
Real, as in a news item:
12000-years-old ancient cave paintings in Hazaribagh face destruc-

tion; Government inaction continues. . . .
Ranchi, 21 October [2005]: . . . Here one finds the ‘Isco Cave’ –
famous for its treasure of ancient rock paintings. And not only at
Isco, but we also find cave paintings in the Keraderi hills. Ancient
cave paintings are also found in the Kebdur Cave in Barkagaon. But
the most significant among them is found in Thethangi village, in
Tandwa block. Thethangi is about twenty kilometers to the south-
west of the town of Tandwa. It is in the caves of this village that one
finds the rock painting of a dinosaur.
According to antiquarians, this dinosaur figure was carved into
the rock some 10,000 years before the Christian era. Historians are
also investigating as to how the dinosaur, thought to have become
extinct during the Ice Age 65 million years ago, re-appeared in a cave
painting dating from 10,000 BC. But, due to a complete absence of
any effort at preservation such a priceless specimen of prehistoric
cave painting decays away. And the dinosaur figure is not the only
one – several geometrical figures are found in these caves of Theth-
angi. On the one hand, historians say that these geometrical figures
bear testimony to the mathematical genius of the ancient peoples
of the region. To the local villagers on the other hand, these geo-
metrical figures are nothing but images of malevolent gods. And, in
order to placate their wrath they continue to apply generous dabs of
sacred vermillion, all the while defacing the valuable paintings. The
villagers are adamant, and refuse to pay any heed to the requests
from the visiting researchers to give up this practice. The state gov-
ernment of Jharkhand has of course done nothing to protect and
preserve any of these cave paintings in either Isco or Thethangi.4
The reader remembers that on his first sleep in the area, Puran had dreamed
that Saraswati must become part of the cave paintings with him. There are
enough hints in the text that she is there in her own mind, to be recognised
as a companion. With that dream, he is ready to get on the truck and move
into Pirtha.
In his sleep, the men and women of the cave paintings dance. In his sleep,
a shadow flies floating. No, this incident is not of the type where I come,
I see, I take some notes for writing a report, I record some voices on tape.
How about staying on a bit? I must write to Saraswati if I can. Thirty-two
is not old. Yet in his dream the men and women of the cave paintings keep
dancing, and Puran asks Saraswati, Will you dance? It’s at this point that
someone shoves him awake. ‘Get up, get up, the truck’s here’ (107).
99
‘Measurement began our might,’ W. B Yeats wrote in “Under Ben Bul-

ben,” his valedictory poem. And the well is measured. A stone’s throw, and
the sound of the drop comes back in a few moments. Deep.
Now look at the description of the death. The prehistoric animal is

restored to the map:
The body seemed slowly to sink down. A body crumbling on its

four feet, the head on the floor, in front of their eyes the body
suddenly begins to tremble steadily. It trembles and trembles,
and suddenly the wings open, and they go back in repose, this
pain is intolerable to the eye. Bikhia goes on saying something
in a soundless mumble, moving his lips. He sways, he mum-
bles, sways forward and back. About an hour later Puran says,
“Gone.” (180)
The actual internment is not described.

Now it is as it was, when all of the top-down workers saw it and discussed
‘development’ in terms of the animal, as I have pointed out before (see
pp 92–93). The planetary is restored (as it can be done in didactic literary
space, but of course not in our practical everyday) to the worldly.
The word ‘planetarity’ was first used by me in “Imperatives to Re-Imagine
the Planet,” in 1997 (Spivak 1999b: 72–87). My use of ‘planetarity’ does
not refer to an applicable methodology. It is rather the limit to our efforts
to save our world. It is different from a sense of being the custodians of our
very own planet, although, as this chapter emphasises, I am fully committed
to such a sense of accountability, present in Mahasweta’s text in the descrip-
tion of monstrous vegetation.
Planetarity is not susceptible to the subject’s grasp. Since the human ideal
may be to be intended towards the other, we provide for ourselves tran-
scendental figurations (‘translations?’) of what we think is the origin of
this animating gift: Mother, Nation, God, Nature. These are names (nick-
names, putative synonyms) of alterity – some more radical than others. If
we think planet-thought in this mode, the thinking opens up to embrace
an inexhaustible taxonomy of such names including but not identical
with the whole range of human universals: aboriginal animism as well as
the spectral white mythology of post-rational science. If we imagine our-
selves as planetary subjects rather than global agents, planetary creatures
rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us,– it is not
our dialectical negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away – and
thus to think of it is already to transgress, for, in spite of our forays into
what we metaphorise, differently, as outer and inner space, what is above
and beyond our own reach is not continuous with us as it is not, indeed,
specifically discontinuous. We must persistently educate ourselves into
100
the peculiar mindset of accepting the untranslatable, even as we are pro-

grammed to transgress that mindset by ‘translating’ it into the mode of
‘acceptance’. This task is what Puran Sahay, Mahasweta’s protagonist, is
shown not to understand.
Do not think this acceptance is giving up. Think rather that nothing works
if you do not know the limit of your powers. It is to ‘supplement’ top-down
philanthropy with the impossible task of harnessing the humanities robustly
into education.
In Mahasweta’s narrative, Puran’s lack of understanding is given to us
transformed as another improbability, if not impossibility: Puran the caste-
Hindu activist, following Shankar the subaltern activist’s behest; and not
writing a report for his paper. If I may say it with utmost respect and indeed
affectionate devotion: Mahasweta could not do this in life. But the imagina-
tion took her further.
Yet the report is written in the text. And the rhetoric is of a letter not sent,
except in fiction, to every reader as s/he animates the text in the existential
temporality of reading.5 What can come of such readings? I have offered you
one example. The literary offers no guarantees. Perhaps at least an acknowl-
edgement that the first right of those we want to ‘help’ is the right to refuse?
A further acknowledgement that nothing can change without a total epis-
temological transformation of the state? A call for the humanities beyond
the disciplines? An acknowledgment of our limits, which makes practice
stronger? You will add to these possibilities, I hope.
Notes
1 I hope in her future work, Thangam Ravindranathan will spend some of her con-
siderable energy on discussing teaching reading.
2 For the best-known description of the Chhattisgarh ‘Maoists,’ see Arundhati Roy
(2010/2011).
3 Gramsci (1971), cited in Milan Babic (2020: 767–786), https://doi.org/10.1093/
ia/iiz254 (accessed on 12 December 2021).
4 Email source Avishek Ganguly, and the translation from Hindi is also his.
5 As I have presented in my discussion of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea in “Three
Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” (1985), in Critique of Postcolonial
Reason (1999a), and in my discussion of Toni Morrison’s Beloved in “Acting
Bits/Identity Talk,” in An Aesthetic Education in an Age of Globalization (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
References
Babic, Milan. May 2020. “Let’s Talk About the Interregnum: Gramsci and the Crisis
of the Liberal World Order,” International Affairs, 96(iii): 767–786, https://doi.
org/10.1093/ia/iiz254 (accessed on 12 December 2021).
Devi, Mahasweta. 1995. “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha,” in Gayatri Chakra-
vorty Spivak (trans), Imaginary Maps, pp. 95–196. New York: Routledge.
101
Gikandi, Simon. 2021. “Introduction,” in Sophonia Mofokeng (ed.) and Nhlanhla

Maake (trans), In My Heart. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: Inter-
national Publishers.
Ndebele, Njabulo S. 1986. “The Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Some New Writings
in South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 12(2): 143–157.
Ravindranathan, Thangam. December 2019. “The Rise of the Sea and the Novel,”
Differences, 30(iii): 1–33.
Roy, Arundhati. 2010/2011. Walking with the Comrades. New York: Penguin.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Autumn 1985. “Three Women’s Texts and a Cri-
tique of Imperialism,” Critical Inquiry, 12(1), “Race, Writing, and Difference,”
243–261.
———. 1999a. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanish-
ing Present. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
———. 1999b. Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet/Imperative zur Neuerfindung
des Planeten. Ed. Willi Goetschel. Vienna: Passagen. Reprinted as “L’imperativo
di re-Immaginare Il Pianeta,” Aut Aut, 312(November–December 2002): 72–87.
———. 2012. “Acting Bits/Identity Talk,” in Gayarti Chakravorty Spivak (ed.), An
Aesthetic Education in an Age of Globalization, pp. 158–181. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
———. 13 November 2017. “Halting the Map Maker,” Inaugural Lecture, 50th
Annual Convention, International Association of Art Critics, Paris. Reprinted
with revisions in “From Forest to Furrow,” in Olivia Fairweather (ed.), Root
Sequence Mother Tongue: Asad Raza, pp. 32–43. London: Koenig Books, 2019.
102
13
DOULOTI AS A NATIONAL
ALLEGORY
Jaidev
For its action, Douloti (1985), one of Mahasweta Devi’s Palamu novellas,
keeps itself confined to Palamu district.1 Most of its chief characters are
quite ignorant of India the nation-state. Even those few of the bandhuas
who do remember 1947 remember it for the freedom it brought to their
caste superiors. ‘When you people got your independence’ – is these slaves’
characteristic remark and indeed most valid response to 1947.
Predictably enough, the upper-caste characters in Douloti are fully aware
of 1947, the nation, and the new opportunities for profit that exist for them
now, in post-1947 India. The novella does not grudge India or her upper
castes and classes, their independence, but, being about the prevalence of
slavery in postcolonial India as it is, it is at pains to demonstrate that both
the nation and independence have remained in the service of the so-called
Great Indians.
Mahasweta makes Douloti’s 27 years a parable of postcolonial India,2
a parable addressed to whatever/whoever professes to be the nation.
Syphilis-ridden, Douloti dies coughing out blood in the night leading on to
15 August 1975 – over the map of India. This bloody end is the sole reward
she gets for 14 years of merciless exploitation in the Misras’ brothel. The
long term of labour has yielded over 40,000 rupees but all this money has
been neatly expropriated by her owners, though she was secured only for
300-odd rupees. There is no doubt whatsoever that her blood is on the
independent nation.
The novella is Douloti’s story – but its protagonists are innumerable Dou-
lotis and Ganoris spread all over the nation. . . .
The facts of Douloti’s existence are easy to catalogue, and they speak for
themselves. Born in 1948 she is carried away openly from her village home
in 1962 by a brahmin brothel-owner from a nearby town who ‘incredibly’
promises to marry her. The man at once offers her to Latia Sahib, an influ-
ential government contractor with a seemingly unending sexual urge for
harijan girls. After Latia discards Douloti, she is passed on to another con-
tractor, a Singh Sahib. He keeps her for over two years.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-16103
J aidev
Singh’s departure coincides with Parmanand Misra’s sudden death. The

brothel now passes on to his son, who introduces new management policies
here. Unlike his ‘kind’ father, Baijnath Misra believes in making a fast buck.
He compels each girl to take dozens of customers every night – irrespective
of what such an overloading would do to them. He is a better economist and
sees that it is more profitable to reduce their rates and take more customers
than to have fewer customers paying more money. Of course, the girls turn
into old, rickety things very fast, but then, thanks to a good drought, the
‘old cows’ get easily replaced.
It is thus that even though she is only in her mid-twenties, Douloti looks
like an emaciated, sick, old creature. She is discharged only when she cannot
attract even one-rupee customers; she is dying, of course.
When Douloti’s father, Ganori Nagesia’s oversight leads to the death of
a bullock, Munavar yokes Ganori himself to the paddy cart. He collapses
under the weight, and although he survives, his back is permanently bro-
ken. Hence his popular name Tedha Nagesia. Hence also Munavar’s ready
release of him from bondage for three hundred rupees.
The novella duplicates Ganori Nagesia’s career in his daughter. Both are
bandhua slaves. His pointless release turns his daughter into a bonded pros-
titute. The system is illegal, but is practiced in broad daylight and offers
lavish returns to bandhua owners. . . .
Douloti is certainly important in her own right, important as a tragically
blighted life, but she is even more important as the site on which a whole vari-
ety of ‘the Great Indian Meaning’ – mythological, historical, socio-cultural,
class, casteist and gender – converges as a set of operative, oppressive forces.
It is in their astonishing range that these forces turn Douloti into a national
allegory, or, rather, an elaborate chargesheet against the nation. . . .
The most important moral Douloti, like several of Mahasweta’s tales,
holds out is this: all those who fight on behalf of the victims fight equally, if
not more, on behalf of their own conscience. . . .
In a rejoinder to Fredric Jameson’s thesis about Third-World texts all
of which he says should be read as national allegories,3 Aijaz Ahmad has
asserted that collectivities in the specific sense of classes and social for-
mations are as relevant categories in postcolonial societies as they are in
the First or the Second World. Ahmad’s rejoinder is actually more sharply
against the currently dominant post-modernist and post-structuralist posi-
tions according to which nation and nationalism are imaginary, obsolete, or
irrelevant categories, are ‘mere myths of origin and [. . .] essentialist coercive
totalisations’ (1993: 12). Ahmad, like Edward Said,4 does not see the nation
as an irrelevant category – but does not allow it to eclipse the more basic
categories like class and relations of production, either. Nations have often
been coercive but there is nothing to stop them from being progressive or
revolutionary (Ahmad 1993: 11).
104
D O U L O T I A S A N AT I O N A L A L L E G O RY
The term national allegory is not gratuitous, although it makes more

sense if we remember the following: (1) It is universal in application rather
than restricted only to Third World texts; (2) Not all texts are national
allegories, although in many texts the nation intrudes through astonishingly
transformed motifs and patterns; (3) National allegories are not necessar-
ily xenophobic, chauvinistic or issued out as character certificates for the
nation; (4) They, more often than not, do proceed along the specific lines of
class, caste, gender, and region,5 and such can effectively subject the nation
to merciless scrutiny, put it on trial, as it were, instead of reifying or fetishiz-
ing it as something beyond interrogation; (5) Where they score heavily over
sociology or history is in the fact that they are often successful in complexi-
fying issues like caste, gender and class by suggesting that even the similar
victims of a system need not manifest an identical level of consciousness or
of capacity for praxis; (6) It is not at all necessary for national allegories to
resort to that kind of rhetoric which takes the term of: ‘Ask not what your
country can do for you’.
One has to be wary of many an arrogant post-structuralist exercise in
debunking the nation, aimed at wishing away the Third-World national-
ism on the ground of its origins or its having been hijacked by a flawed
nationalist bourgeosie. Whenever or however we might have turned into
a nation, indeed whenever or for whatever sinister purpose we might have
been inspired to turn in to a nation, the nation-state today is a realised fact,
albeit admittedly a badly realised fact acutely in need of redefinition and
negotiation right at the conceptual level. The postmodernist globalism that
seeks to render nation irrelevant is too much in complicity with a multina-
tional consumerism in which the rights of the consumer are the lone con-
sideration, not those of the citizen.6 . . . Mahasweta Devi depicts realities
which are often the obverse of the conditions that sustain such theoretical
globalism. . . .
Mahasweta Devi sees no practical use of abandoning national terms
of discourse. She is insistent that her tales are parables of India, national
allegories along the collective lines of class, caste, gender and tribe. She is
against being termed either merely a Bengali writer or a writer of subaltern
fiction. She insists that she is an Indian writer.7
Douloti also allows us to infer another strong logic behind Mahasweta’s
‘obsession’ with the nation. This reason is of a different order. The novella
can be read as a plea for that nation to be defined by the victims rather than
by the ruling, parasitic groups. . . . To put it more correctly, the novella is a
plea for a radical change at the structural level so that the alternative vision
is able to fashion out a more decent, less asymmetrical India.
Let me refer in brief to one of the core motifs present throughout the
novella, namely, mamatva, maternal, protective regard. This motif is invari-
ably associated with the victims, both male and female. Bono’s hands kill
105
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the rapist-goon in Dhanbad, because the goon arouses no mamatva in him,

because he does not appear to be any mother’s son. Later, as Bono is being
held captive in the house of the ruthless landlord, he finds that Munavar
arouses no soft feelings in him, that Munavar, too, does not strike him as
any mother’s son. Latia Sahib rapes Douloti repeatedly every night, and
while the girl faints, he keeps devouring her, making grunting noises like a
pig. Later Douloti wonders if the man has a heart at all. In contrast, she goes
very maternal while caressing Bono’s calloused feet, in the brothel scene. It
is her unrealised maternal affection that similarly makes her donate part of
her secret savings so Somni can buy some bread for her beggar-children.
One has only to contrast such low characters as Douloti and Bono with the
landlord Munavar’s enormous wife, who quite candidly says that she can-
not identify with anyone except herself, anyone in this case including her
son and his wife. Mamatva is a value, although in the given order it doesn’t
have any; this is Mahasweta’s way of reinforcing her call for an alternative
structure, a structure in which mamatva, together with the tender poetry it
generates, would have value! . . .
While it is true that Mahasweta always prioritises her urgent human
themes over form and technique, one ought not to assume that she is indif-
ferent to the latter. For Douloti is brilliant in its subversive parodies, its
careful use of motifs such as freedom, lack of freedom, and the freedom
to deny others all freedom; fairy tale versus reality; hands and burdens; its
sharp contrasts as between Douloti’s and Latia’s expressions of naturalness;
and its images of birds and beasts as well as of carts and trucks; and also in
its narrational swerves and principled indirection. . . .
I should like to conclude this essay by referring to the seven insets in
Douloti, each stylised, formally isolated from the main narrative, each an
apparent case of alienation technique. These insets demonstrate her careful
discrimination between the three distinct kinds of voices in the narrative,
namely the exploiter’s, the victims’ and the narrator’s. The reason why the
narrator decides to foreground her own voice in this way is that Douloti
as the narrator’s performance is acutely concerned with two all important
questions: does a non-dalit writer have the right to tell a dalit story? and if
yes, then how does she go about it?8
There are two inset speeches allowed to Parmanand Misra and Munavar
Chandela. . . . Their rhetoric is mythical, self-justificatory, and patriarchal,
aimed at forcing the victims into abject surrender. . . . In complete contrast
to the terms of discourse evident in these two ‘high’ and pompous speeches,
there are four songs, the first a two line verse from Ganori to his ‘imagined,’
apparently superior but actually unsympathetic . . . interlocutor, and the
next two directly sung by harijan women. The fourth is a song delivered by
the narrator to introduce Parmanand’s bandhua randis. . . . It is addressed
as much to the audience/listeners/readers as to Douloti, and . . . extends the
range of reference for the otherwise specific, localized story.
106
If this song prepares the way for national allegory, the other intervention
by the narrator – in hard, factual prose – makes the reader grasp the logic of
the nation-wide phenomenon. . . .
Land-owning-moneylenders are a neo-landlord caste – and this caste

has been created by the Government of Independent India. This
government needs the support of land-owning-moneylenders. . . .
The Government exchequer is sustained by agriculture land, and
that land has landlords for its real rulers! These princes and rulers
of agriculture and land need free labour and free land, that’s why
they come out like warriors and turn people into bonded slaves and
servants and labourers. But really uncovering and propagating such
facts is illegal. . . . (My translation)
What this hard-hitting inset reveals is a macro-perspective, an understand-

ing of the structural logic, which is not available to the harijan characters
for self-evident reasons. For less acceptable reasons, that kind of a perspec-
tive is often not available to the literate, supposedly knowledgeable sec-
tions of our privileged population, either. The inset is nothing less than a
rebuke to them. This perspective is offered in the hope that they would
review their location vis-a-vis both the nation and its victims. It is offered in
the hope that they will undergo the necessary, humanising change of heart
and develop some ethical responsibility, some love for the victims.9 That is
how, one may argue, Mahasweta justifies her own position as an interpreter
of, a spokesperson for, her bandhua friends. The effort is to be of some use
to them, not just because it is a good cause, but because this is the only way
for her to justify herself. The need is her own even before it is theirs.
Mahasweta Devi is the most disturbing writer India has ever produced.
She is also our most necessary writer, simply because she lashes us out of
complacence in the way conscience is supposed to do. It is important to
remember that she is not only a writer. There is no division between the art-
ist who creates and the person who suffers, works for ensuring justice to the
sections who have long been victims, among others, of an appalling national
ingratitude. Both her life and her fiction demonstrate beyond question the
possibility of a non-dalit, middle-class person to earn the right to write the
dalit. But there is no easy route to such a right. It is not even claimed as a
right; nor is it earned by dissolving one’s own identity as a non-dalit or a
middle-class person. One remains what one is: and then one acts in every
possible way to legitimise one’s existence as a decent, socially conscientious,
thinking being. . . . There is, in short, no disjunction between Mahasweta’s
art and her activism. For her art is intervention, an act of retrieving the
corpses from beneath the apparently charming-looking national spots as
well as of visualising a better, more humane nation. To cling to any dehistor-
icised, universalist formalism while reading Mahasweta is only to highlight
107
J aidev
one’s own Nero-like location rather than to say something sensible about
her art.
From “Not by Law Alone: Douloti as a National Allegory.”
In The Politics of Literary Theory and Representation:
Writings on Activism and Aesthetics, ed. Pankaj K. Singh,
New Delhi: Manohar, 2003, 25–52
Notes
1 Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps (Calcutta: Thema, 1993), pp. 61–62; Cf.
Mahasweta Devi: “The Palamu I have depicted in my stories [. . .] is a mirror of
tribal India; and I have named the village Seora. But there are such villages eve-
rywhere in Palamu [. . .] Douloti is still true, and true for the rest of India [. . .]
Decolonisation has not reached the poor. That is why these things happen.
Women are just merchandise commodities [. . .]. For the flesh trade all you have
to invest is two sarees, a bit of food, some trinkets, and a bit of money for the
parents. Poverty, poverty, poverty,” Imaginary Maps, pp. vi, xiii–xiv. Also cf.
Palamu: ‘any number of terms exist for the bandhuas – sevakie, kamia, harwaha,
charvaha, etc. Such is the custom that they remain in lifelong debts. Of these, the
lot of dharmaru bandhuas is the most pitiable. Palamu is a place where anything
goes. In itself Palamu is a microcosm of India’. In Douloti (Hindi), 117. Also
cf. Mahasweta, “Rudali,” in Bhumika (Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, 1993), p. 5:
‘Using Palamu as an example, I have revealed again and again the exact shape of
India’s land owning system and feudal class divisions’.
2 Douloti is available in both Hindi and English translations. The Hindi transla-
tion, by Dilip Kumar Banerjee, is included in a collection of three of Mahasweta
Devi’s Palamu tales entitled Douloti (New Delhi: Radhakrishna, 1987), pp. 9–95;
the English translation, by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, titled “Douloti the Boun-
tiful” is included in Mahasweta Devi (Imaginary Maps [Calcutta: Thema, 1993],
pp. 19–95). I find the Hindi translation the more reliable, but for quotations in
this paper have mostly adapted Spivak’s. I have italicised all those words in quota-
tions which I have substituted in place of Spivak’s.
3 Fredric Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital-
ism,” Social Text, Fall 1986: 15; Aijaz Ahmad, “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness
and the ‘National Allegory’ ,” 1987, rpt. in Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations,
Literatures (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 95, 122, esp. 102, 107, 110, 112–120.
See also Ahmad’s remarks in “Introduction: Literature Among the Signs of
Our Time,” in In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1993),
pp. 11–12.
4 See Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992),
p. 256.
5 Cf. Gayatri C. Spivak on “Stanadayini”: ‘Here the representation of India is by
way of the subaltern metaphor’. ‘Breast-giver: for author, reader, teacher, subal-
tern, historian [. . .],’ in Mahasweta Devi, Breast Stories, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak
(Calcutta: Seagull, 1997), p. 79. Also cf. Mahasweta Devi, Unpublished Interven-
tion, Subaltern Studies Conference, Calcutta, 9 January 1986, quoted in Breast
Stories, p. 78: ‘ “Stanadayini” is a parable of India after decolonisation’.
6 I am indebted to Javeed Alam for this insight.
7 ‘Mahasweta Devi, “In Conversation with Amar Mitra and Sabyasachi Deb,”
Indian Literature, 179, May–June 1997: 163.
108
8 These questions trouble a great many concerned but non-dalit citizens. Gayatri C.
Spivak argues that there is nothing wrong at all in a non-dalit speaking on behalf
of the subalterns – since unlike their ontology, which belongs to themselves, their
epistemology might often be accessible only to a specialist. I feel ambivalent,
indeed quite sceptical, about this otherwise very attractive distinction. See my
“This Fiction Is Injurious to Illusions,” Indian Review of Books, 16 June–15
July 1997: 3.
9 The most poignant expression of this hope is in “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay and
Pirtha.” Cf. Puran: ‘To build (the communication-point with the tribals) you
must love beyond reason for a long time. For a few thousand years we haven’t
loved them, respected them [. . .]. Only love, excruciating, explosive love can still
dedicate us to this work when the century’s sun is in the Western sky, otherwise
this aggressive civilization will have to pay a terrible price, look at history, the
aggressive civilization has destroyed itself in the name of progress, each time’. In
Imaginary Maps, p. 197. Gayatri C. Spivak’s useful term for this love is ethical
responding – a two way road (206).
Reference
Devi, Mahasweta. 1985. Douloti. Kolkata: Nabapatra Prakashan.
109
14
RE-ORDERING THE MATERNAL
Histories of Violence in Mahasweta Devi,
Toni Morrison, and Amrita Pritam
Shreerekha Subramanian
Bringing together the three literary giants named here – Mahasweta Devi
alongside Toni Morrison and Amrita Pritam, this essay addresses the sym-
bology of three women writers whose works interrogate cultural and his-
toric practices that commit violence upon women’s bodies, especially women
who are othered within the nations they inhabit. Toni Morrison writes of
Black and other marginal women in the Americas; Amrita Pritam against
the backdrop of nation making in Punjab that experienced the severing of
communities, especially women; and Mahasweta Devi about the lives of
subaltern groups. Through my comparative approach, I locate Mahasweta
Devi’s radicalism within a broad transnational frame which takes in South
Asian and Black American feminisms.
All three writers radically re-imagine the maternal and the reckoning with
the Self. Morrison’s Beloved (1987) presents the narrative of an enslaved
woman who kills her own infant when captured as she attempts to flee the
horrors of chattel slavery in 19th-century America. Paradise (1998) radi-
cally re-imagines a women’s haven built on the maternal logic of nurture, as
a utopia outside the violence of systematic erasure faced by women within
projects of masculinist nation-making. Pritam’s Pinjar, published in 1950
(Pritam 2004), recollects the horrors of Partition in South Asia and pivots
around the story of a woman on the wrong side of the border. If patriarchy
is the pinjar (cage) that confines women from birth, then Pritam’s central
female figure, Pooro, is the agent who rehabilitates and builds community
for the women who have been violated for a host of reasons – madness,
religion, nationalism, blood history. Pooro’s alternative community rests on
a maternal logic of nurture and care rather than biology and kinship, based
on inclusivity and reaching out to one’s Others. As spelt out in Pritam’s
poem, “Me,” and noted by translator D. H. Tracy (2011): ‘Knowing one-
self, she seems to say, depends on knowing people you don’t know’. Pritam’s
Pinjar and Morrison’s Paradise are texts that underscore the importance
of knowing people erstwhile unknown. Many of Mahasweta Devi’s stories
110 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-17

R e - ordering the M aternal
make her investment clear in interrogating the Bengali/Indian maternal logic

of care, nurture, and self-sacrifice against a context of multiple histories of
violence that intersect at the crossroads of nationalism, colonialism, devel-
opment, patriarchy, casteism, and capitalism. In Devi’s story “Giribala”
(2004), we encounter daughters being sold on the market for the capital
that will pay for the father’s dissolution and dreams. Devi’s stories articu-
late her radical re-ordering of the maternal, a discourse that has oft been a
site of patriarchal reifications of misogyny masquerading as deification and
empowerment. These texts by Devi, Morrison, and Pritam remain deeply
embedded in their respective socio-historical contexts, drawing attention to
the material conditions of abject poverty, deprivation, and oppression that
define the lives of the female protagonists of these fictional narratives. These
texts imagine future possibilities rooted in the material, yet enjoining a radi-
cal, visionary re-ordering of the maternal, moving away from old discursive
histories of violence associated with the duplicitous discourse of patriarchy.
All three writers re-imagine the marginalised bodies of women as agen-
tial and capable of a motherhood that extends its nurture beyond the licit
familial economy sanctioned by the Name/Law of the Father. They invoke a
motherhood that radically catalogues the Other: runaway throwaway girls
(Paradise), refugees and other dispossessed women (Pinjar), and survivors
of the sex-trafficking global racket and other castaways of Late Capital
(“Giribala”), providing shelter and forming community in the ‘wild zones’
(Ardener 1978) outside the bounds of patriarchal edicts. Chandra Talpade
Mohanty’s notion of ‘transnational feminist crossings’ offers a valuable the-
oretical framework for an essay bridging the worlds of these three literary
giants. Mohanty articulates the academic double-bind that has systematically
depoliticised radical projects in postmodern collusion with neoliberalism,
leaving it ‘sceptical of a systematic analysis of institutionalised power and
of decolonising methodologies that enter marginalised experience (women-
of-colour epistemology) in struggles for justice’ (Mohanty 2013: 969). This
essay is an effort at a transnational bridge-building, arguing for the possibil-
ity of imagining a radical sisterhood between African American and South
Asian women writers through a comparative study of selected writings by
Morrison, Devi, and Pritam. Ranjana Khanna’s (2009) interrogation of psy-
choanalysis through feminist, Marxian, and postcolonial vectors is valuable.
In raising questions of slavery and colonialism around the melancholic in
psychoanalysis, Khanna politicises the female figures who are marked as
disposable or throwaway in the modern world and invites a radical feminist
reading of the abject woman. Each of these writers contends with the condi-
tion of woman as the throwaway object of modernity, and Khanna’s politi-
cal astuteness around female abjection speaks to the resistance offered by
these writers. My argument addresses tropes such as history, nationalism,
region, and religion in order to address the narratives of poverty, violence,
and survival in the selected texts by Morrison, Devi, and Pritam.
111
S hreerekha S ubramanian
Mothers in Morrison’s Novel, Paradise

Toni Morrison’s novels write into the historical lacunae of the American
past, seeking to recover the lost or disappeared narratives of Black lives
that are stitched back into the heart and hearth of an American discursive
and domestic order. Her fiction provides a foil and sister-imaginaries to the
South Asian feminist discursive order at work in Pritam and Devi. Morri-
son’s most-discussed novel, Beloved (1987), contends with re-ordering the
maternal. The slaying of a baby by her own mother provides the pivotal
action in a narrative that dwells on the reckoning of a nation’s past of chat-
tel slavery where the failure of a normative maternal order shines a light on
the greater structures of violence at play. In this essay, I argue that Mor-
rison’s novel Paradise (1997) also foregrounds the failures of the maternal
when ensconced within patriarchy. The novel conjures for us a paradise
made solely of female labour in the material and non-corporeal (post-death)
realms. Heaven is located at the margins of townships of Haven, then Ruby,
where community is made outside the strictures of patriarchy, law, state-
hood, and naming. The women come from everywhere and travel great
distances, escaping their pasts of marital abuse (Mavis), childhood aban-
donment (Seneca), sexual abuse (Pallas), or general despair (Grace known
as Gigi). In the double exclusion of sexism and racism hiding them in plain
sight, these forsaken female figures seek and form a home around a mother-
figure, Consolata (Connie). Not a mother, Connie is an orphan of unknown
origins adopted from South America who is, by the time we meet her, an
alcoholic, anomalous in her very existence, persona non grata, akin to the
disposable (Khanna 2009) ‘throwaway people that sometimes blow back
into the room after being swept out the door’ (Morrison 1997: 4). The
women seeking haven gathered around her learn to feed their outer and
inner selves – a bread and pickle production to afford material currency and
secret ritual of dream speaking to break through fear – speak out desire.
For Morrison, the maternal embedded within patriarchy is always
already marked by violence. Mavis, the mother who kills her twin babies
left untended in a hot car, survives the terror of an abusive husband who
turns her own children against her. Mavis, who manages to run to her own
mother as safe harbour, realises soon enough that she plans on turning her
own daughter back to her assailant. Seneca is a woman who survives aban-
donment, left alone in an apartment at five. Pallas, Gigi, Seneca, and Mavis
are all refugees of the patriarchal and national order that leaves them as
‘bare life’ (Agamben 1998) who can only be fully recognised through the
intersectional lens of race, class, gender, and ethnicity.
Morrison’s Connie leads the women away from their injuries through ses-
sions of loud dreaming done in the cool of the basement. Naked, the women
speak out loud. Someone says to the child that was once abandoned, ‘Are
you sure that was your sister? Maybe she was your mother. Why? Because a
112
mother might, but no sister would do such a thing’ (265), signifying that in
Morrison’s imaginary, community rises out of radical sisterhood, where the
maternal is always already marked by the violence/law/name of the father.
Morrison interrogates the agency of women embedded within classic or
alternative patriarchies and re-creates a radical imaginary wherein women
form community with one another, outside law, materiality, and even life,
to do the work of making paradise on the earth. Her mythos highlights the
othering that is contained within normative mothering and the failures of a
patriarchal society to offer women safety from violence of all forms – physi-
cal, psychological, ideological, spiritual (Tally 1999; Elia 2001). For Mor-
rison, the familial arises outside the traditional family and the biological
confines ordered by patriarchy. Morrison’s imaginary maps an alternative
vision where, once freed from the claustrophobia and carcerality of tradi-
tional structures, one can begin to see the possibilities of communion with
kindred spirits, rather than the kinship circles defined by blood, lineage, and
identity as prescribed by phallogocentricism.
Mothering Across Borders in Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar

Both the state and the patriarchal institution are directly indicted in Mor-
rison’s Paradise, as in Devi’s “Giribala,” because both institutions are seen
as enforcing their violent will on the bodies of women (Subramanian 2013:
155). Amrita Pritam, who rose to prominence in her 1947 poetic call to
Waris Shah (Dutt 2017), wrote about the Partition and the formation of the
nations of India and Pakistan, during a time when female writers and the
subject she chose were beyond the pale.
She used the power of her podium to launch the literary careers of a
generation of Punjabi writers, all the while being a well-recognised voice
on radio and the public sphere in Delhi. Pinjar, her novel about Parti-
tion, begins a decade before 1947, when the young protagonist, Pooro, is
abducted by her Muslim neighbour, Rashid, who does so to fulfil a family
vendetta against Pooro’s family. After the initial horror of the violent loss
of her freedom, fiancé, and community, Pooro reconciles herself to her new
life as Hamida and begins to exercise choice and agency for the rest of the
narrative. In beginning long before Partition and ending with the horrors
unleashed during the period of nation-making where women paid in body
and blood depending on their religion and geography, Pooro’s narrative
intersects with that of the nation, indicting both the patriarchal and the
national orders that wreak violence on women’s lives and bodies.
Shazia Malik’s (2020) recent work on motherhood in Kashmir attests to
the freighted work of mothering eclipsed by violence. Women continue to
remain implicated after Independence and pay the price for discord in the
nation and its demilitarised zones and are persecuted for their attempts to
exert agency. Different forms of structured oppression – religion, region,
113
nation, patriarchy – work in tandem, to keep women subjugated as passive

silent bearers of history.
In The Other Side of Silence (2000), Urvashi Butalia provides a critical
historical framework for articulating the experiences of women and the vio-
lence wrought on lives of the vulnerable, during and after Partition. More
recent scholars, such as Tulika Chakravorty (2019), Pippa Virdee (2013),
Rabia Umar Ali (2009), Joya Chatterji (2014), and Teresa Joseph (2013),
inform how gendered perspectives, sentiments, and emotions re-configure a
much-studied but misunderstood period of South Asian history that requires
the type of intersectional lens argued for by Patricia Hill Collins. History is
brought home to bear upon the bodies locked within domesticity, women
rendered palimpsests to be written upon, then discarded, mutilated, vio-
lated, or disappeared.
Pooro, in the early years of her marriage to Rashid, realises the vulnerabil-
ity of women always already living under the shadow of violence prescribed
within the name and law of the father and begins to form alternative com-
munities with disenfranchised, lost, and broken women, such as Kammo,
Taro, and Pagli (madwoman). In fact, the patriarchal mythos upon which
Pooro asserts her sovereignty rests on a minor goddess of fate, Bidhmata,
who comes to your home in a state of displeasure with her spouse and, if
happily re-united, returns. Thus, if the goddess is satisfied with her conjugal
relationship and in a hurry to return, the result is a girl, quickly-wrought
and easy to make according to this cosmic logic. Such cosmic logic trans-
lates into cultural ideology that determines a girl child is a bhaar (load) to be
gotten rid of early, even if that means turning away a kidnapped daughter
who is imploring for refuge, as Pooro did one night early in her captivity.
It is Pooro’s comprehension of the disposability of women under patriar-
chy that leaves her as the only person who recognises the humanity of the
mad woman, a person without agency or empowerment, a ‘pinjar of bones’
(skeleton/cage) who is raped and left pregnant. As Pooro takes care of the
infant left by Pagli who dies in childbirth in a field, she is questioned by
the townspeople who wish for the baby to be declared a ‘Hindu’ orphan
and removed from the shelter given by Pooro, who is now recognised as a
Muslim woman.
While Pooro’s own history and origins are erased in these arbitrary trans-
actions that do not leave room for humane or maternal feelings, what the
novel’s rhetoric points to is the inherent violence of religious, communal
identifiers. Pooro extends community to those exiled from it beyond the
limitations of national, religious, communal, or caste borders. In Pooro’s
mothering, which extends beyond biological kinship, the maternal is re-
configured as an agent of shelter for those deemed disposable by society. In
her refusal to abide quietly within phallogocentricism, Pritam’s imaginary
births mother-figures who are agential beings, radical in their plenitude.
114
Exiting the Familial in Mahasweta Devi’s “Giribala”

Martha Nussbaum opens her analysis on the futures of feminist liberal-
ism (2000) by quoting from the opening of Mahasweta’s short story –
“Giribala.” Her article, unpacking Kant, Rawls, and the liberalist tradition,
only hints at the story obliquely, but towards the end of the article, she sum-
marises the story in an appendix and concludes with the idea that liberalism
is right, offering women a refuge from violence. In contrast to the Western
feminist liberalist tradition that names it a healthy tension in ‘touch with
the difficulty in life’ (68), I argue, adding to existing scholarship on the the-
matic of motherhood in Devi’s stories (Basu 2010; Shikha 2016; Karmakar
2019), for rendering visible a narrative that demands a reckoning with its
history of violence and scripts a way out. Devi’s “Giribala” tells the story of
its eponymous protagonist, a young woman married off early to Aulchand,
a man of dubious livelihood and character, who ultimately sells off two of
her daughters into the sex trafficking market. Ultimately, the story resolves
Giribala’s grief by her exit from this oppressive scenario in search of a life
in the city, away from the familial order defined by her home and husband.
Deniz Kandiyoti’s (1988) formulations of women’s place and role within
classic patriarchy provide an important entry point into Giri’s story: ‘The
young bride enters her husband’s household as an effectively dispossessed
individual who can establish her place in the patriliny only by producing
male offspring’ (279).
The story’s opening introduces Giribala as a girl with ordinary features,
who compels attention because of her eyes: ‘She’d catch your eyes because
of those eyes’ (61). Her appearance marks the passive quietness as being
potentially agential in a narrative where the women remain mute except in
mourning the loss of daughters. Giribala is brought up on proverbial wis-
dom about the disposability of the girl child: ‘A girl’s by fate discarded, lost
if she’s dead, lost if she’s wed. Giri senses that hard times lie ahead’ (64).
Mother of four children – Belarani, Paribala, Rajiv, and Maruni, three of
whom are daughters – Giri chooses surgery that prevents future pregnancies.
Though expected to live her life as an iteration of an old story – ‘A daughter
means a female slave for someone else’s house, after all’ (67) – it is a story
that she challenges through this action. She also threatens to mete out vio-
lence upon her children if Aulchand dares to turn her daughters into brides
before their time. Her threat reads like an echo of Morrison’s Beloved, the
real-life story of Margaret Garner (Morrison 2017) who slashes the throat
of her child rather than have her returned to the system of chattel slavery. As
Giri mourns for her first child lost to the sex-trafficking industry, sold for Rs
400 by her husband Aulchand, she realises that she too had been exploited
and victimised as a girl: ‘She, too, is female. Her father too had surrendered
her to a monster without making any enquiries first’ (73).
115
Liberalism enshrines individual freedom but never contends with the

marginalisation sedimented into its foundations. Freedom for the very few
was predicated on the enslavement and colonisation of many others. Giri’s
condition of gendered and classed subjections reflects the limitations of lib-
eralism because from its origins, they never included her. Within patriarchy,
as a girl child, she is the weight that has to be married off, a transaction in
the private sphere that continues generationally as Aulchand sells off his
daughters in the public sphere. And yet, despite this knowledge, the local
community see Giri’s predicament as common script and frown at her deci-
sion to leave. They blind themselves to Aulchand’s culpability and their own
complicity in his crime, choosing instead to blame the woman who poses
a threat to the status quo: ‘What kind of woman was that?’ (84). At sto-
ry’s end, like many a feminist script of awakening and empowerment, we
find Giri exiting the carceral lockdown of patriarchy as ‘she walks on’ (85),
determined to begin a new life in the city. As a maidservant in town, she
might be expected to perform domestic duties similar to those she already
practiced at her marital home, but still, she prefers the newly accorded com-
pensation and relative autonomy offered a professional worker living away
from the patriarchal family.
Possibilities open up for the plenitude of the maternal once the mother
walks out of her home and keeps on walking, leaving behind the familiar
script of subjugation and violence, enforced passivity, erasure, and enslave-
ment. Thus, within the world of Devi’s narrative, the refuge from or alterna-
tive to the patriarchal order appears to lie in the teeming multiplicity outside
the confines of domesticity, not scripted to the lush fullness of Morrison’s
paradise, or the shelter-making offered up by Pritam, but presented through
the imagination of an exit from the oppression and exploitation of patri-
archy, towards a more independent future. Giri’s only regret at story’s end
is: ‘If the heart’d mustered up courage earlier, I’d have left then, long ago’
(85). Her story signifies that departures are required for a re-alignment,
the one path to new beginnings and the possibility of re-igniting those eyes
full of light. In its fullness, the maternal is always already in opposition to
the restrictions imposed by culture, family, and community. If one returns
to Nussbaum’s list of women’s entitlements, including the right to bodily
health, integrity, senses, imagination, thought, and emotions (68), then it
requires the re-scripting of the dominant discourse of patriarchy through
radical female resistance.
Conclusion
This comparative reading of Black feminisms, vis-à-vis Morrison and Col-
lins, with South Asian feminisms, vis-à-vis Pritam, Devi, and Butalia, recon-
ciles the multiple forms of textual resistance adopted in writings by women
of colour. In responding to the inherent and systemic violence of patriarchy,
116
the literary imaginary involves an extrication from the normative kinship

structures and the re-generation of ‘wild zones’ that remain liminal to the
phallogocentric order. In coping with the histories of violence systemic to
patriarchal discourse, the maternal logic extends kinship beyond the bio-
logical and other borders imposed on family, such as race, ethnicity, nation-
ality, religion, caste, class, and other identifiers of difference. Maternal
re-ordering, as represented in the selected texts of Morrison, Pritam, and
Devi, requires a severing from the narratives of abject poverty, violations,
and degradations visited upon the bodies of women and a relocation, geo-
graphically and psychically, to alternative places. In the selected texts, such
alternative sites are indicated: the no-man’s land outside Ruby in Paradise;
Pooro’s chosen nation to which she never fully belongs in Pinjar; and the
city where Giribala disappears with her two surviving children in Devi’s
story. Violent systemic harm requires violent re-negotiations and forays into
the unknown or unfamiliar. Within the literary imaginaries of Devi, Mor-
rison, and Pritam, safety and community lie in forging new allegiances and
new forms of kinship beyond the limits imposed by traditional societal and
family structures.
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Photo 2.2 In the Name of the Mother book cover.

119
15
THE POLITICS OF
POSITIONALITY
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and
Samik Bandyopadhyay as Translators
of Mahasweta Devi
Shreya Chakravorty
In a candid confession to Anjum Katyal, Mahasweta Devi once said:
I write as a writer, not as a woman. . . . I look at the class, not at

the gender problem. . . . In my stories men and women alike belong
to different classes.
(Katyal 1997: 17; emphasis mine)
Yet, in the process of being endlessly translated into English, there has
developed an unbridgeable gap, somewhat akin to Derridean ‘difference,’
between Mahasweta Devi’s Bangla originals and their English renditions.
Here, I propose to explore the politics of positionality of Mahasweta’s
translators which motivate their enterprise of linguistic transference. The
methodological tools deployed for this purpose will be derived from my
study of theories, central to translation studies, postcolonial feminist theory,
and subaltern studies. . . .
Of the several stories of Mahasweta Devi that Gayatri Chakravorty Spi-
vak has translated, Breast Stories can be taken up to reveal the manipula-
tive agenda of this metropolitan feminist towards the works of Mahasweta.
Even at the outset of the translated book, Spivak makes her own perspective
on Mahasweta’s works clear: ‘This introduction was to have been called
The Breast Trilogy. Mahasweta Devi is writing another story about the
breast. Let us look forward to The Breast Series’ (Spivak 1997: vii). Mahas-
weta Devi never, even indirectly, talks of such a guiding principle ordering
her creative universe. Other than “Stanadayini” or “Breast-Giver,” she has
not consciously chosen the breast as the concept metaphor of female exploi-
tation against the backdrop of so-called democratic nation. Even about
“Stanadayini,” Mahasweta has said, ‘I have thought of Jashoda as West
120 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-18

T he P olitics of P ositionality
Bengal while writing’ (Devi 2003b: 559; translation mine). In fact, neither
is she a feminist, nor is the postcolonial subaltern woman in particular of
central importance in Mahasweta’s works. She feels a grave responsibility
towards history in general. But moving away from Mahasweta’s intention
behind her creation, Spivak imposes her own vantage point.
Spivak feels that certain aspects in the work of the subaltern studies school
have the potential to undo the massive historiographical conflation of the
meaning of the subject and object of history. Even the translation of subal-
tern literature can avoid being trapped in the order of representation by a
kind of writing that ‘both marks and goes back over its mark with an unde-
cidable stroke’ (Derrida 1981: 193). As a translator of subaltern literature,
Spivak takes up such texts of Mahasweta in Breast Stories which conflate
past and present. As a pro-subaltern activist responsible towards history,
Mahasweta declares, ‘Characters are trying to come back in today’s context.
We have to admit them’ (Devi 2003b, jacket flap; translation mine). Prob-
ably the same reason impels Spivak to translate stories where time zones
converge, using translation as a site of subaltern emancipation.
For example, in “Draupadi,” the protagonist Dopdi, like her corrupted
name, is removed from the sacred core of Aryan tradition. But in her, Drau-
padi returns, both as a palimpsest and a contradiction. Both Mahasweta
and Spivak choose this story to rewrite the episode of Draupadi’s humilia-
tion in the epic Mahabharata. The mythical Draupadi has to depend on the
assistance of male agency for rescue. But Dopdi is not dependent on any
patriarchal source of salvation. Moreover, she insists on remaining naked
after being stripped and violently raped by Senanayak’s soldiers. Herein,
Mahasweta upholds the subaltern as subject of history. And remaining
faithful to Mahasweta’s vision, Spivak as a translator converges three tem-
poral zones – mythical past, activist present, and subaltern feminist metro-
politan contemporary, freeing the subaltern from the freezing stereotyping
gaze of Eurocentric Orientalism. But how far does Spivak remain commit-
ted towards translating Mahasweta’s story from the author’s perspective?
“Draupadi” first appeared in the journal Parichay in 1977. Later, in
1978, it was published with three other stories – Operation? Bashai Tudu,
“Jal,” and “M W Banam Lakhind” – in Agnigarbha (Devi 2003a: 464).
Mahasweta definitely had an agenda in publishing it along with these three
stories. She not only observes the origin and spread of the Naxalite rebellion
in this collection, but this book also rises above a particular political move-
ment and depicts the eternal historical process of human protest against
injustice. Common men and their struggle form the central subject matter of
Mahasweta’s opus. Dopdi figures not as a woman leader but as a comrade,
a fighter in the Naxalite movement just like her husband Dulna. Even when
she is bestially gang-raped throughout the night by soldiers on Senanayak’s
order, she does not get petrified with the sense of lost feminine honour. Her
121
S hreya C hakravorty
body is just the outer shell whose degradation cannot defeat her indomitable
spirit. She refuses to be clothed the morning following her rape and says,
‘There isn’t a man here that I should be ashamed. I will not let you put my
cloth on me’ (Devi 1997a: 36). Senanayak, beyond her class and gender,
now sees a very strong opponent in Dopdi. For the first time, he feels terribly
scared to confront an unarmed target, not a naked woman.
“Draupadi” is significant as the story of a brutal attempt to stifle a mass,
underclass movement by smothering the body of one of its leaders. It sup-
plies the voice of dissent to innumerable individuals systematically subdued
by oppressive establishment. But Spivak’s interpretation moves away from
the authorial intention. For her, Senanayak represents the white, middle-
class feminist who can identify and even empathise with the East-Asian
woman in theory, but, in practice, revels in the idea that her plighted sister
cannot be happy or free without losing her ethnic and contextual identity
and becoming one like herself (Spivak 1997c: 1–4). Mahasweta only wants
us to see the oppressive, antagonistic establishment in the two-dimensional
figure of Senanayak. But to privilege her own perspective of postcolonial
feminism, Spivak compares the America-based metropolitan feminist gaze
on the subcontinent with Senanayak’s approach towards the tribal people
(ibid.). She moulds Mahasweta’s story of human resistance and gives it a
specialised resonance, not originally intended by the author.
Mahasweta Devi is a master craftsman of historical fiction. Her works, for
their impact, often depend on the effect of the real. For example, in “Stan-
adayini” (which Spivak translates as “Breast-Giver” in Breast Stories), the
character of Jashoda could have existed as a subaltern in a particular historical
moment imagined and tested by orthodox assumptions. But as Spivak herself
points out, Mahasweta’s primary intention in this case is not representational:
By Mahasweta Devi’s own account, “Stanadayini” is a parable of

India after decolonisation. Like the protagonist Jashoda, India is a
mother-by-hire. All classes of people, the post-war rich, the ideo-
logues, the indigenous bureaucracy . . . abuse and exploit her. If
nothing is done to sustain her . . . she will die of a consuming cancer.
I suppose if one extended this parable the end of the story might
come to ‘mean’ something like this: the ideological construct ‘India’
is too deeply informed by the goddess-infested reverse sexism of the
Hindu majority. As long as there is this hegemonic cultural self-
representation of India as a goddess-mother (dissimulating the pos-
sibility that this mother is a slave), she will collapse under the burden
of the immense expectations that such a self-representation permits.
(Spivak 1997b: 78–79)
One must underplay the representation of the subaltern as such in this

parable where the subaltern only acts as vehicle to a greater meaning.
122
Yet the afterword to Spivak’s translation of “Stanadayini” attempts to

empower the subaltern by practising a kind of active deconstructive read-
ing of the source text. Spivak acts more as a mouthpiece of the Indian
underclass than a medium of unfolding self-sufficient subjects. Going
against her own proclamation in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?,”
she speaks for that very class of people who, according to her, cannot
be self-represented and thus questions the very premise of subaltern
historiography.
Mahasweta’s text shows the complicity of the nationalist elite with the
colonisers. The former act as the latter’s replacement within a system in
which they unleash oppression to subjugate the subaltern. But Spivak does
not stop with presenting the subaltern simply as class-subject; she portrays
them as gendered subject too. In this way, her interpretation of the story,
in order to privilege the postcolonial feminist point of view, departs from
Mahasweta’s envisioned plot.
Spivak (1997b: 103) notes that Jashoda’s employers’ granddaughters-in-
law are part of post-independence diaspora and international brain drain.
Thus, she restates her notion of the subaltern woman by situating Jashoda
in a discourse which is no longer untouched by capitalist dynamics. Con-
trary to her former assertion, Spivak assigns a second meaning to subaltern
as a ‘real’ and concrete historical category. Subalternisation, assumed to
have begun with colonialism, is shown to have been consolidated by the
current international division of labour.
But Mahasweta Devi’s reception of Spivak’s translations is far from disap-
proving. She appears overwhelmed by Spivak’s attempt to make her widely
known among international readers: ‘Gayatri, you surprised me. I never
expected that you would translate my story, and I’d become known to the
non-Indian reader’ (Devi 2002: xix). Perhaps the same joy of gaining recog-
nition restrains Mahasweta from objecting to Spivak’s attempts at changing
the import of her oeuvre. The following conversation in course of the same
interview indicates this:
GCS: I think one of these days you should write about the woman warriors.
di. . .
MD: When Birsa was arrested, Sali was with him and another woman. . . .
Motia is a leader too. Women do not do it all the time by going to the
battlefield and raising their machetes. But Motia, in her own way, that
Dhobin, who kicked at Tirathnath and went to open a laundry at Patna
– that is woman’s resistance as well.
GCS: Yes, you’re quite right, I agree with you, but still I would say, as an
obstinate reader, I want you, one of these days . . . To write about the
woman warriors.
MD: Laro is someone I know, I will write about her.
(Devi 2002: xvii–xviii: emphasis mine)
123
Spivak almost persuades Mahasweta into writing more about women char-
acters, the translation of whose stories would facilitate her own enterprise
as a postcolonial feminist. And contrary to her own often expressed view,
Mahasweta Devi agrees to do the same. . . .
Lawrence Venuti recalls Freidrich Schleiermacher’s comment that there
are only two ways in which to go about translating a text, ‘Either the trans-
lator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader
towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and
moves the author towards him’ (Venuti 1995: 101). Perhaps no other line
can so comprehensively summarise the distinction between Gayatri Chakra-
vorty Spivak and Samik Bandyopadhyay as translators. If Spivak seeks to
mould Mahasweta’s oeuvre according to the palate of her select target audi-
ence, Bandyopadhyay keeps the soul and substance of fervent protest intact
in his translations to give a regional author like Mahasweta a primarily
pan-Indian exposure.
In the interview “Telling History” that prefaces Chotti Munda and His
Arrow (2002), Spivak subtly tries to influence Mahasweta to write from the
postcolonial subaltern feminist perspective (Devi 2002: 17–18). But Samik
Bandyopadhyay, ‘[p]ossibly out of longer personal acquaintance with the
author and wider reading of what she has written’ (Mukherjee 2004: 162–
163), creates an expectation in the reader that he will render authentic trans-
lations of Mahasweta’s texts. He apparently chooses a quieter and more
neutral approach in far greater reverence to the original. Unlike Spivak,
who argues that historical accountability is asymmetrical for different parts
of the globe, Bandyopadhyay, perhaps due to his locational proximity with
the author, adheres more closely to the historicity of Mahasweta’s texts.
Whereas Spivak’s translations highlight the problem of modernity as repre-
sented in Mahasweta’s texts, Bandyopadhyay presents intra-class struggle
as the central issue in Mahasweta’s writings. Like Mahasweta, Bandyopad-
hyay derides irresponsible authors who turn a deaf ear towards the crises of
the period and, like Nero, keep fiddling while Rome burns. In his attempt to
capture the milieux of Mahasweta’s texts, he traces the background of her
novel Hajar Churashir Ma (1974) in the introduction to his own translation
of it – Mother of 1084 (1997c). He draws an authentic picture of the 1970s
and explains the context, primarily for facilitating an Indian readership’s
understanding of Mahasweta’s intent. He argues:
One fails to see how Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak can find Mother
of 1084 written in a prose that ‘belonged to the generally senti-
mental style of the mainstream Bengali novel of the 50s and 60s’
(In Other Worlds, New York, 1987). Between the mid-40s and
60s mainstream Bengali fiction gained a tightening and a sharpen-
ing. . . . This is the prose that Mahasweta inherits.
(Bandyopadhyay 1998: xviii)
124
Samantak Das (2002: 40), thinking in line with Tejaswini Niranjana (1992:
43), states that all acts of linguistic translocation from and to English in India
are viewed as complicit with the ex-colonisers’ enterprise, marked by their
erasure of any possibility of resistance from the colonial subjects. But Ban-
dyopadhyay, as a postcolonial translator, chooses to extend Mahasweta’s
rhetoric of protest through the chief link language of India. By making her
writings accessible to people who share a similar history, Bandyopadhyay
provides Mahasweta with a greater intra sub-continental readership and
thereby a stronger podium for voicing her protest against injustice towards
the subaltern. Bandyopadhyay’s work proves that all translations into the
English language are not meant to portray the underclass as mere passive
vehicles incapable of self-expression. He takes up the master-language of
postcolonial cultural imperialists only to resist their civilising mission. By
presenting the indigenous people as English-speaking subjects, he forges a
new rhetoric of reverse cultural capitalism.
The translation theorists of Western metropolitan academies are products
of monolingual culture, but, in the Indian context, the translation process
can involve the influence of multiple languages. In our polyphonic multilin-
gual culture, the equations ‘source language = target language’ or ‘author-
text-receiver = translator-text-receiver’ (Das 2002: 39) become a lot more
complex since we must take into account the ghostly presences of several
other languages that hover around the margins of one or more texts, trans-
forming them and their mutual relationships. In Breast Stories, Spivak finds
‘a prose that is a collage of literary Bengali, bureaucratic Bengali, tribal
Bengali and the languages of the tribals’ (1997c: 4). This incongruous mix
shows the co-existence of at least three languages in the text – Bengali, Eng-
lish, and Hindi. Sometimes, Mahasweta’s use of the dialectal variants of
Bengali and English as well as phonotypes of lexicalised indigenous English
of India becomes extremely difficult to reproduce through translation. ‘It is
a pity,’ acknowledges Spivak, ‘that translation cannot keep track of Devi’s
movement from standard Bengali to varieties of local dialect’ (1997a: xvi).
Samik Bandyopadhyay tackles this problem by not only retaining as
many indigenous words as possible but also transforming the medium of
Mahasweta’s reception. Keeping her audience in view, it is difficult for Spi-
vak to keep some indigenous terms, unlike Bandyopadhyay, who knows
that most of his target Indian audience can relate to such native expressions.
For example, while translating Aajir (in Five Plays), Bandyopadhyay retains
the dialectal variations of terms like Behula (as Beulo) and Indra (as Ind), as
Indian readers will immediately relate them to the lore of Behula and Lakh-
indar and the rain-god Indra. Perhaps that explains the absence of foot-
notes, elucidating these words in Bandyopadhyay’s translation. But Spivak
only retains the English words of the original in her translation in italicised
form. Otherwise, she takes care to render every detail related to indigenous
culture in lucid English, for the sake of her audience. For example, ‘Rice in
125
her belt, tobacco leaves tucked at her waist. . . . Tobacco leaves and lime-
stone powder. Best medicine for scorpion bite’ (Devi 1997a: 31).
It is also interesting to see how Bandyopadhyay influences Mahasweta and
makes her interested in transforming her narrative texts into play-scripts,
most of which he translates into English. Mahasweta asserts her faith that
only in the form of plays can literature reach a larger mass of illiterate audi-
ences. Perhaps it is with this view that she permits Bandyopadhyay to trans-
late her plays into English. Bandyopadhyay testifies that Mahasweta had
produced her draft translations for Bayen and Water for reference and had
co-operated in other ways during the translation process (Bandyopadhyay
1998: ix). Taking up plays for translation gives Bandyopadhyay greater
opportunity to portray the subtle differences between various underclasses
through stage directions. For example, Urvashi and Johnny, the stage direc-
tion about the latter’s costume shows his urban underclass status: ‘He wears
baggy, patched trousers, a coloured vest, a coloured handkerchief about his
neck, a feathered cap on his head, and shoes’ (Devi 1997b: 55). This is in
stark contrast to the appearance of Chandi in Bayen. According to the stage
direction,
She looks utterly exhausted and despondent, at the end of her tether,
dragging her reluctant feet like some condemned ghost debarred
entry into human society. She draws in with her a string with a can-
ister tied to its end, rattling and clanging along the floor.
(Devi 1997b: 75)
By contrast, in Spivak’s translations of Breast Stories, the differences

between Dopdi and Gangor in terms of their respective predicaments seem
to be obscured, because they are homogenised under the sway of an indif-
ferent coloniser’s language.
Unlike Spivak, Bandyopadhyay does not aim at lending a feminist per-
spective to Mahasweta Devi’s texts through his translations. He sees an
extension of the same metaphor of exploitation through all characters of
Mahasweta Devi, irrespective of their gender:
There is a continuum between Mahasweta Devi’s mothers and lead-

ers of men. . . . Right from Chandi, cast out by a superstitious
community in Bayen (1971), to the tribal Naxalite, Draupadi . . .
(1976), Mahasweta Devi’s mothers are too earthy and emotionally
charged to bear the overtones of any mystical-mythical or arche-
typal motherhood. They are invariably located within a network of
relationships defining their personalities into absolute clarity.
(Bandyopadhyay 1997: ix)
126
All the same, Bandyopadhyay’s translations of Mahasweta Devi’s texts are

not altogether free from his own particular political or ideological agenda,
although his approach is more subtle and imperceptible than Spivak’s. In
his vision, Mahasweta’s urge to record history from an alternative subal-
tern perspective is of paramount importance. In this belief, Bandyopadhyay
comes close to the ideology of the subaltern studies historians. An Indian
elite working in connivance with British Raj has been a reiterated trope in
subaltern ideology. Devi deploys this mode of criticism in the most scathing
manner to reveal the continued displacement and marginalisation of the
subaltern in postcolonial India.
Whereas Spivak’s Marxist mode of analysis only feeds into her feminist
perspective on Mahasweta’s texts, Bandyopadhyay’s adherence to Marx-
ism aims at bringing up an alternative subaltern vantage point. But again,
Mahasweta’s belief in revolutionary politics is more than a mere theoretical
adherence to a branded mode of political ideology. In her introduction to
Agnigarbha (1978) she states:
I desire a transformation of the present social system. I do not

believe in narrow party politics. After thirty-one years of Independ-
ence, I find my people still groaning under hunger, landlessness,
indebtedness, and bonded labour. An anger luminous, burning, and
passionate, directed against a system that has failed to liberate my
people from these horrible constraints, is the only source of inspira-
tion for all my writing.
(Devi, cited in Bandyopadhyay 1997: viii–ix; emphasis mine)
But Bandyopadhyay side-lines the activist side of Mahasweta Devi. The

fact that she not only writes but also works practically to strive for social
change is an issue that we could have expected Bandyopadhyay to address
more extensively. This facet of Mahasweta’s writing cum documenting cum
activism has been illuminated, very commendably, by her younger brother
Maitreya Ghatak in Dust on the Road. In his introduction to Five Plays,
Bandyopadhyay devotes some space to Mahasweta’s activist approach, but
that is part of a typical teleological account of an author’s life. . . .
From a close study of their respective approaches to translating Mahas-
weta Devi’s texts, it can be found that both Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and
Samik Bandyopadhyay show a tendency towards speaking for the author and
putting their ideological points of view in her mouth, to justify their own indi-
vidual perspectives. And in this, we see a re-enactment of the colonial saga
of ventriloquism on the part of the culturally or politically dominating class.
From Mahasweta Devi: Translated or Translocated? (Avenel Press, 2014)
127
References
Bandyopadhyay, Samik. 1997. “Introduction,” in Samik Bandyopadhyay (trans),
Five Plays by Mahasweta Devi, pp. vii–xv. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
———. 1998. “Introduction,” in Samik Bandyopadhyay (trans), Mother of 1084 by
Mahasweta Devi, pp. vii–xx. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Das, Samantak. 2002. “Multiple Identities; Notes Towards a Sociology of Transla-
tion,” in Rukmini Bhaya Nair (ed.), Translation, Text and Theory: The Paradigm
of India, pp. 35–45. New Delhi: Sage.
Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Dissemination. London: Athlone Press.
Devi, Mahasweta. 2003a. Rachanasamgra, vol. 8 (Bengali). Kolkata: Dey’s
Publishing.
———. 2003b. Rachanasamgra, vol. 9 (Bengali). Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing.
———. 1978. Agnigarbha. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani.
———. 1997a. Breast Stories. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Kolkata: Seagull
Books.
———. 1997b. Five Plays. Trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
———. 1997c. Mother of 1084. Trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay. Kolkata: Seagull
Books.
———. 2002. “Telling History,” interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (trans), Chotti Munda and His Arrow, pp. ix–xxx.
Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Katyal, Anjum. 1997. “Metamorphosis of Rudali,” in Anjum Katyal (trans), Rudali:
From Fiction to Performance, by Mahasweta Devi and Usha Ganguly, pp. 1–53.
Calcutta: Seagull Books.
Mukherjee, Sujit. 2004. “Operation? Mahasweta,” in Meenakshi Mukherjee (ed.),
Translation as Recovery, pp. 158–165. New Delhi: Pencraft International.
Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1992. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the
Colonial Context. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1987. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics.
New York: Methuen.
———. 1997a. “Introduction,” in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (trans), Breast Sto-
ries by Mahasweta Devi, pp. xvii–xvi. Calcutta: Seagull Books.
———. 1997b. “ ‘Breast-Giver’: For Author, Reader, Teacher, Subaltern, Histo-
rian . . .,” in Breast Stories by Mahasweta Devi, pp. 76–137. Calcutta: Seagull
Books.
———. 1997c. “Draupadi: Translator’s Foreword,” in Breast Stories by Mahasweta
Devi, pp. 1–18. Calcutta: Seagull Books.
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation.
London: Routledge.
128
16
RECONSIDERING
‘FICTIONALISED BIOGRAPHIES’
Mahasweta Devi’s Queen of Jhansi and
Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s The Bronze
Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar
Arunabh Konwar
Fuming over historiography’s practice of ‘dumping a jumble of facts’

asymmetrically, the writer F. N. Monjo (1976) rationalises his decision
to fictionalise biographies. He says that when a biography is described as
‘non-fiction,’ the writer has nowhere to go if vital information is absent
from historical documents. However, when the work is described as fiction,
the writer is allowed to make use of ‘plausible conjectures’ to fill in these
‘awkward gaps’ in history (258) and get on with representing the life of
the person. Essentially, he argues that the plausible conjectures, which are
transgressive to a ‘historically accurate’ non-fictional account of a person’s
life, become acceptable practice in a fictional account of a person’s life.
The reason that these plausible conjectures are considered transgressions
is because these are hypothesised from oral traditions, folklore, and other
forms of ‘history’ which have often eluded the classification of ‘History’.
In considering these conjectures as the foundational tenets of the genre of
fictionalised biographies or ‘biofiction,’ the genre presents a challenge to
Western historiography, as it shows a propensity to value the contribution
of ‘microhistory’ in re-evaluating the past (Tunca and Ledent 2020: 339).
We see this in Mahasweta Devi’s Bengali work Jhansir Rani (1956) [trans-
lated as The Queen of Jhansi] where she writes about the contradictory folk
representation of the Rani Lakshmibai’s seemingly futile declaration that
she would not give up Jhansi:
Jhansi with 20,00,000 rupees of annual income in taxes looked so

weak, so small, compared to the expanse of British India in the
maps of those times that it really convinces us of the importance of
immortalising her words, especially since the Queen could speak up
so fearlessly with so little power.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-19129
A runabh K onwar
This is what we feel. But the old man who roasts corn over a
charcoal fire in winter in the outskirts of Jhansi does not know
anything of all this. He roasts the corn and his head shakes a little
when he recites a rhyme to his granddaughter –
That Queen, so very great was she,

Said she would never let go of Jhansi.
She fought for the sake of her soldiers,
And took the bullets herself.
As long as water in India flows

The Queen of Jhansi will live.
(Devi 2018b: 69)
Further, despite meticulous book-keeping, there remain certain aspects of a

person’s life that are just unknowable due to the difference of the person’s self
and its performance in book-keeping. As such, the exclusively non-fictional
biography relying on verifiable data probes into these ‘unknowables’ in
ways that skirt the ethical line where ‘knowledge of the other becomes inva-
sion, coercion, or appropriation, something akin to a forced confession’
(Clingman 2020: 352). Whereas bio-fiction allows the ‘other’ – that is the
person it represents – to exist as a character rather than an object and, thus,
provides agency to the person in terms of their ‘unknowables’. For instance
in Indira Goswami’s Assamese work Thengphakhri Tehsildaror Taamor
Toruwal [The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar], an unknowable
event is represented as given here:
Thengphakhri concentrated, recalled her grandfather’s instructions,

and fired at one of the symbols her grandfather had drawn. He
patted her back and encouraged her. Thengphakhri started to walk
deeper into the forests in a mesmerised state until she found herself
standing near a familiar guava tree where tigers cleaned their nails.
The trunk of the tree was badly scratched. Suddenly she heard a
very loud roar. The drunken men who were still singing fled imme-
diately in fear. But Thengphakhri fired and the tiger crumbled to the
ground. She realised that she had fired. When had she fired the gun?
(Goswami 2013)
Here, instead of providing an objective account of how she learnt to use

the gun, anecdotes are used to provide her with a subjectivity to narrate
the event. As such, the knowledge of the ‘other’ is not coerced but rather
speculated in this form.
In The Queen of Jhansi, Devi actively calls her text a ‘biography’ in
both the “Preface to the First Edition” (2018a) and later interviews (Devi
130
R econsidering ‘ F ictionalised B iographies ’
2018c: 320). However, its novel-like construction and subsequent criti-

cal appreciation bring it into the domain of fiction. The classification of
this text as a ‘fictionalised biography’ emerges as a compromise between
Devi’s active assertions, the text’s structure, and its reception. On the other
hand, The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar is actively marketed
as a bio-fiction depicting the lost ‘heroic tale’ of Thengphakhri. Further,
Devi’s text heavily relies on information from local sources, both written
and oral, along with other forms of popular stories, myth, legend, and folk-
lore (Chakravarty 2012–2013: 124; Devi 2018a: x; Singh 2020: 29–30),
while Goswami’s reliance on similar archives of communal knowledge to
‘reconstruct the life’ of Thengphakhri has also been emphasised (Kashyap
2011; Saikia 2016: 50). Having placed these two texts in the tradition of
fictionalised biographies nominally, the following discussion will focus on
the need to fictionalise biographies and its implications.
With regard to narrativity and the representation of reality, Hayden
White opines that whenever historiography is constructed through a repre-
sentation of real events, a certain narrativity is attached to these representa-
tions. He argues that this is done such that historiography reads similarly to
an imaginary [literary] narrative in terms of coherence and integrity (1980:
27). Consequently, drawing from White’s argument, if a fictional literary
narrative is the aspired ideal for representing real events, then this form
becomes the de-facto preference to create an overtly ‘legitimate’ or ‘authen-
tic’ account of such events. For instance it is this property that was exploited
in the 19th-century European historical adventure novel to teach history
through association by identification with historical characters in literary
narratives (Malone 2016: 221). These claims regarding the employment of
fictional literary narratives vis-a-vis historical authenticity can be extended
to biographies. Hence, the fictionalised biography emerges as a potent tool
for projecting a claim to greater legitimacy for its representations.
In the “Preface to the First Edition,” Mahasweta Devi expresses her
desire to write an authentic biography of the Rani of Jhansi (2018a: xxii).
Similarly, Indira Goswami had to navigate both the fanfare and apprehen-
sions with respect to authenticity following her announcement of writing
The Bronze Sword (Madhukalya 2013). Therefore, there was an apparent
authorial intent with regards to the perceived authenticity of their works.
As such, the decision to fictionalise the biographies instead of writing a con-
ventional biography becomes imperative as it lets both these writers benefit
from the reception-oriented devices that this genre facilitates.
White further argues that ‘the right to narrate hinges upon a certain rela-
tionship to authority’ (1980: 22). Every historiographic narrative is con-
structed from the vantage point of a certain contestable authority which
needs that narrative to supplement their legitimacy. Upon the construction
of such a narrative, a moral judgement is passed on the represented real
events from the vantage point of this newly ‘legitimate’ authority. However,
131
A runabh K onwar
White’s hypothesis results in the following corollary: the act of narration

itself becomes an act of constructing an authority which can dictate morality.
Therefore, through the two acts of narration that Devi and Goswami
accomplish, they construct their respective positions of authority which
contest with the erstwhile existing historiographic authorities. Interest-
ingly, Devi’s text does not take a conclusive stand in terms of preferring a
certain version of history regarding the life of Rani Lakshmibai. However,
in acquainting the reader with the multiple facets of the Rani, it signals
towards a disruption of the possibility of a conclusive truth in itself. Radha
Chakravarty points out that, ‘In place of a reified truth, the narrative empha-
sises the elusiveness and indeterminacy of the Rani as a subject’ reminding
the reader of the constructed nature of the history/story we have come to
know as the ‘Rani of Jhansi’ (2012–2013: 124). Goswami’s text, on the other
hand, portrays a Bodo historical figure from the ‘Lower Assam’ (Western
Assam) at the centre in an Assamese text. Thereby, it attempts at subverting
the tradition of buranjis1 which have historically been silent on the smaller
kingdoms of Middle and Lower Assam (Kashyap 2013). The meta-textual
implications of Goswami’s text subvert the glaring silence of Assam’s canon-
ical historiography. However, within the narrative, T hengphakri’s silence
is used to rescripture language within the Spivakian rhetoric of the sub-
altern speaking through a counter-hegemonic reconfiguration of language.
Regarding an exploration of silence in the novel, Tejoswita Saikia writes:
Transforming itself into an alternative story-telling medium, silence

became its own agency to hand down a form of resistance that
the colonisers could neither comprehend nor challenge. Such is the
silence of Thengphakri and the silence that pervades the novel.
(2016: 51)
Goswami’s exhibition of such silence draws immediate comparison to Devi’s

similar use of the language of the body in later works such as “Draupadi.”
While such pointed reconfiguration of language is perhaps more pervasive
in Devi’s later works, similar counter-hegemonic aspirations can be seen
in the meta-textual implications of The Queen of Jhansi if not within the
narrative itself. For instance drafting the story as a people’s narrative of the
Rani in opposition to the nationalist projection of ‘Hindu Queen’ Laksh-
mibai, Devi challenges the reproduction of the chauvinist logic of Indian
historiography. Further, as the first biography and fictional account of the
Rani written by a woman, Devi’s retelling of the story through the partici-
pation of Dalit and indigenous voices presents the Rani as ‘folk symbol of
indigenous resistance’ while simultaneously resisting an upper-caste, male-
identified historiography (Singh 2020: 29–30). Similarly, the iconographic
interpretation of Goswami’s portrayal of a revolutionary figure from one
132
of the oldest surviving indigenous ethnic groups of Assam can also be seen
within the same rhetoric of indigenous resistance.
Chakravarty hints that the production of Queen of Jhansi could be placed
against the tendency in post-independence India of containing and pushing
the women back into conventionality and domesticity after their active pub-
lic participation in nationalist struggles (2012–2013: 125–126). As such, the
specific production of a history of the Rani as a woman who exists both in
the private and the public simultaneously as both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’
offers a counter-discourse of female self-empowerment to that of active polic-
ing and regulation of women’s lives that had been prevailing in the India of
the 1950s. Further, in presenting the Rani as an indigenous icon through the
incorporation of Dalit and indigenous voices, the text mocks the monolithic
idea of the Indian nation of the upper-caste Hindus. Through its incorpora-
tion of elements from the legend of the Rani of Jhansi as disseminated from
the vantage point of the disenfranchised sections of the nation, Devi’s text
makes a deliberate invocation of the redistribution of the shared heritage as
it should have happened in a postcolonial nation (Singh 2020: 30).
Chakravarty sees Devi’s text within the theoretical rubric of Kumkum
Sangari’s idea of a ‘sensitive feminist historiography’ that opens radical
alternatives for an integrative political praxis (126). On the other hand,
Harleen Singh sees both the conventional historiographic narratives and
the subversive narratives such as Devi’s as literary figurations which engage
with the idea of the power being wielded through the ‘body of the rebel
woman’ and use tropes that replicate the patriarchal framework where
‘women fight to serve the interests of the family, the community, and the
nation’. Singh further argues that the death of the Rani provided the ‘per-
fect Deus ex machina’ for all representations of the Rani as neither the
British nor the Indian representations had to deal with ‘the real problem
of a woman in power’ (30). While I agree with Singh’s frustration with
the colonial and postcolonial preoccupations of such representations reduc-
ing the figure of the Rani for their own ends, I believe that a text can nei-
ther escape the context of its production nor the context of its reception.
Therefore, a text which is not ‘preoccupied’ with any political intentions is
elusive. Even a story where Rani is ‘the sole motivator’ separated from the
community and the nation will be complicated by at least the politics of
individualism and gender if not the colonial politics of the period. However,
Singh’s contestation regarding literary figurations of the queen fighting for
the family/community/nation in Devi’s postcolonial narrative can indeed be
relativised within the framework that Chakravarty suggests of the private/
public and masculine/feminine woman in Devi’s text. Put together, Singh’s
and Chakravarty’s critiques point towards the limitations within which even
such subversive representations of female self-empowerment operate in rela-
tion to dominant discourses and hence can be co-opted into the status quo.
133
A runabh K onwar
Published as a book in Assamese in 2009, The Bronze Sword of Theng-

phakhri Tehsildar came during a period when a ceasefire had been main-
tained between the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and
the Government of India (GoI) while the second Bodo Accord had been
signed between the Bodoland Liberation Tigers (BLT) and the GoI in 2003
(Bakshi 2020). Whereas the BLT had demanded a separate state for the
Bodos within the Indian Union, the NDFB had been demanding a sover-
eign Bodo nation. the roots of Bodo nationalism lie in the systemic denial
of equal representation in the political and social spheres of Assam by the
predominantly caste-Hindu, mainstream Assamese middle class, along with
the demands for resolution of the ‘immigrant problem’ (Misra 2012: 37–38;
George 1994: 889–890). This exclusion, which has only increased after the
Assam Accord and the rise of Assamese chauvinism in 1985, pushed the
formation of the NDFB in 1986 and subsequently the BLT in 1996. There-
fore, the question of competing nationalisms within the same geographical
boundaries of ‘Assam’ has strained the relationship between the two com-
munities over the course of time and thereafter has eluded a definite recon-
ciliation. It is during that brief period of potential reconciliation between
the two communities just after the second Bodo Accord and the ceasefire of
2005 that Goswami’s text was serialised in the popular Assamese literary
and cultural fortnightly magazine Prantik.
By this time, Goswami had already received the Jnanpith, and her recrea-
tion of the life of a forgotten Bodo heroine within an Assamese text can be
read as an attempt at correcting the historical silence and exclusion of the
Bodos within the cultural landscape of the mainstream Assamese. Kashyap
(2013) comments on the production of the text:
The act of writing a novel on a forgotten Bodo heroine by one of

India’s most respected writers has deep significance: Goswami was
actually transplanting Bodo life and culture, their contribution to
India’s Freedom Struggle into the centre of India’s literary and cul-
tural imagination.
Such placement of the Bodo community within the tradition of Indian lit-
erary history and India’s national freedom struggle attempts at drawing a
continuity between the centre and the periphery. Therefore, similar to the
redistribution of the shared heritage of the postcolonial nation in The Queen
of Jhansi, the ‘shared heritage’ of the anti-colonial movement is redistrib-
uted across the peripheries in The Bronze Sword. Further, in outlining the
possibilities of female self-empowerment and emancipation in The Queen
of Jhansi and the prospects of reconciling two ‘nearly-warring’ ethnic com-
munities in the case of The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar, these
texts radically respond to their immediate political contexts.
134
The historian Alex von Tunzelmann has been quoted saying, ‘There’s still
very much a sense that serious history is written by men – books about war
or politics – and that women are more likely to tackle fashion, or biographies
of queens or mistresses’ (cited in Flood 2016). One could be tempted to read
Devi and Goswami’s attempts as falling into the stereotypical gender-biased
modes of production for women writers. However, as both these fictional-
ised biographies simultaneously disrupt the canonical historiographies and
respond to contemporary politics, they are antagonistic to such readings
which facilitate the conformist male-identified historiography. In these texts
by Devi and Goswami, the gender bias implicit in the idea of women writ-
ing biographies of women within a ghettoised ‘women-writing-for-women’
tradition is subverted through the employment of the genre of ‘fictionalised
biographies’ in terms of the challenges the genre poses to the ‘serious his-
tory’ of men.
Note
1 Written chronicles of history during the rule of the Ahoms in Assam. These were
kept as official records of the state and were first written in Tai Ahom and later in
the Assamese vernacular.
References
Bakshi, Gorky. 7 February 2020. “Bodo Peace Accord 2020: PM Modi Announces
Rs 1500 Crore Package for Bodo Areas,” Jagaran Josh, www.jagranjosh.com/
current-affairs/govt-signs-historic-bodo-accord-2020-with-ndfb-factions-and-
absu-all-you-need-to-know-1580121685-1 (accessed on 15 December 2021).
Chakravarty, Radha. Winter 2012–Spring 2013. “Other Histories: Gender and
Politics in the Fiction of Mahasweta Devi,” India International Centre Quar-
terly, 39(3–4): 122–133. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24394280 (accessed on 15
December 2021).
Clingman, Stephen. September 2020. “Writing the Biofictive: Caryl Phillips and the
Lost Child,” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 55(3): 347–360, https://
doi.org/10.1177/0021989418808010 (accessed on 15 December 2021).
———. 2018a. “Preface to the First Edition,” in Sengupta Sagaree and Mandira
Sengupta (trans), The Queen of Jhansi, pp. ix–xiii. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
———. 2018b. The Queen of Jhansi. Trans. Sagaree and Mandira Sengupta. Kol-
kata: Seagull Books.
———. 2018c. “Appendix,” in Queen of Jhansi, pp. 313–321. Kolkata: Seagull
Books.
Flood, Alison. 11 January 2016. “Popular History Writing Remains a Male Preserve,
Publishing Study Finds,” The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/books/2016/
jan/11/popular-history-writing-remains-a-male-preserve-publishing-study-finds
(accessed on 15 December 2021).
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George, Sudhir Jacob. 1994. “The Bodo Movement in Assam: Unrest to Accord,”
Asian Survey, 34(10): 878–892. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2644967 (accessed
on 15 December 2021).
Goswami, Mamoni Raisom (Indira Goswami). 2013. The Bronze Sword of Theng-
phakri Tehsildar. Trans. Aruni Kashyap. New Delhi: Zubaan.
Kashyap, Aruni. 30 November 2011. “A Beloved Daughter of Assam, Writer,
Peacemaker,” The Hindu, www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/
a-beloved-daughter-of-assam-writer-peacemaker/article2672271.ece (accessed on
15 December 2021).
———. 2013. “Introduction,” in The Bronze Sword of Thengphakri Tehsildar by
Mamoni Raisom Goswami. New Delhi: Zubaan.
Madhukalya, Amrita. 26 May 2013. “Book Review: ‘The Bronze Sword of
Thengphakhri Tehsildar” ,’ DNA India, www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-book-
review-the-bronze-sword-of-thengphakhri-tehsildar-1839568 (accessed on 15
December 2021).
Malone, Irina Ruppo. 2016. “What’s Wrong with Medievalism? Tolkien, the Stru-
gatsky Brothers, and the Question of the Ideology of Fantasy,” Journal of the
Fantastic in the Arts, 27(2): 204–224. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26321201
Misra, Udayon. 2012. “Bodoland: The Burden of History,” Economic and Political
Weekly, 47(37): 36–42. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41720137 (accessed on 15
December 2021).
Monjo, F. N. 1976. “The Ten Bad Things About History,” Childhood Education,
52(5): 257–261. Taylor and Francis Online, https://doi.org/10.1080/00094056.19
76.10727494 (accessed on 15 December 2021).
Saikia, Tejoswita. 2016. “The Conspiracy of Silence in Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s
The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar,” IOSR Journal of Humanities
and Social Science (IOSR-JHSS), 21(1): 50–53, www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/
papers/Vol.%2021%20Issue1/Version-1/H021115053.pdf (accessed on 15
January 2022).
Singh, Harleen. 2020. “India’s Rebel Queen: Rani Lakshmi Bai and the 1857 Upris-
ing,” in Boyd Cothran, Joan Judge and Adrian Shubert (eds), Women Warriors
and National Heroes: Global Histories, pp. 23–37. Bloomsbury Collection. Lon-
don: Bloomsbury Publishing, http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350140301.ch-002
Tunca, Daria and Bénédicte Ledent. September 2020. “Towards a Definition of
Postcolonial Biographical Fiction,” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature,
55(3): 335–346, https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989419881234 (accessed on 15
December 2021).
White, Hayden. 1980. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,”
Critical Inquiry, 7(1): 5–27. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1343174 (accessed on
15 December 2021).
136
17
WRITING FOR THE STAGE
The Plays of Mahasweta Devi
Anjum Katyal
Mahasweta Devi’s deep social and political commitment defined her long
and prolific career. Her fiction bears witness to this, as do her journalistic
writings and more directly polemic texts. She wrote about the exploited and
dispossessed, the tribals, outcastes and lower castes, the landless rural poor,
and the migrant workers who are forced to leave their villages to eke out
a pittance in the cities. To her, writing and activism were intricately linked,
and she used her writerly skills to work tirelessly for the people and causes
close to her heart. This was a conscious, deliberate strategy:
Through reports in newspapers, through petitions, court cases, let-

ters to the authorities, participation in activist organisations and
advocacy, through the grassroots journal I edit, Bortika, in which
the dispossessed tell their own truths, and finally through my fic-
tion, I have sought to bring the harsh reality of this ignored segment
of India’s population to the notice of the nation, I have sought to
include their forgotten and invisible history in the official history of
the nation. I have said over and over, our independence was false;
there has been no independence for these dispossessed peoples, still
deprived of their most basic rights.1
She was prepared to use a variety of media and forums to reach out to the
people, to the authorities, and to her readers, so that this ‘forgotten and
invisible history’ could be brought to their attention. She wrote in the news-
papers, in little magazines, and in journals, and she explored a wide variety
of genres, from novels, novellas, and short stories to children’s stories and
nonfiction articles.
She also wrote some plays – five plays, to be exact. These were crafted
by her from her own short stories. Clearly, turning these works into plays
was important to her; and it raises some important questions: What was her
aim in rewriting her fiction as works for the stage? How effective are they
as plays? Our endeavour, in this essay, is to explore these questions through
the texts.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-20137
A njum K atyal
The five plays that Mahasweta Devi wrote are Mother of 1084 (“Hajar
Churashir Ma”), Aajir, Bayen, Urvashi and Johnny, and Water (“Jal”). Each
of them also exists in a prior form as a work of short fiction.
Samik Bandyopadhyay, senior editor and theatre scholar, was working
closely with Mahasweta Devi at the time when she began to think of rewrit-
ing some of her works as plays. In a telephonic interview,2 he said that the
idea had arisen from a desire to make her fiction more widely accessible to
a broader public and to take it from the printed page to the stage, where it
could reach a more varied audience of theatre goers. In order to fully under-
stand why this could be a valid motivation, let us take a look at the theatre
scenario in Bengal in the 1970s.
This was beyond doubt an extremely vibrant period for politically aware
theatre in Bengal. Whether it was in the metropolis Calcutta, the smaller
towns and suburbs on its outskirts, or even far-flung mofussil areas, thea-
tre was prolific and popular. The IPTA3 had disintegrated, but the path-
breaking work it had begun was being continued in different ways by a
host of amateur ‘group theatres’ committed to doing meaningful plays that
spoke about the social and political issues of the time. There were the big,
established groups like Bohurupee and Nandikar led by theatre stalwarts
Sombhu Mitra and Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay. Doyens like Utpal Dutt and
Badal Sircar who had their own groups, Little Theatre Group and Satabdi
respectively, were at the peak of their form; and several smaller, experi-
mental groups existed alongside, contributing to the overall atmosphere of
fervent theatre activism. Leading playwrights such as Manoj Mitra, Mohit
Chattopadhyay, and Debasis Majumdar were active at this time.
A range of styles and forms of theatre were flourishing side by side. The
group theatres largely performed proscenium productions in a few estab-
lished auditoriums, such as the hugely popular Academy of Fine Arts in Cal-
cutta. These were usually in the social-realist or naturalist mode, albeit with
the insertion of some stylistic flourishes and passages. Badal Sircar’s Satabdi
had shifted out of the proscenium into more intimate theatre settings which
allowed for a closer, more direct interaction with the audience, and this was
now a popular trend with younger groups who could not afford the higher
costs of an auditorium show and wished to take theatre into the community.
Outdoor spaces like Curzon Park had developed into theatre venues with
audiences of hundreds, with men and women off the streets who had never
entered an auditorium. Even during the Emergency,4 when state authori-
ties clamped down on performances, theatre activists retaliated by going
underground but continuing to produce work. Guerilla-style performances
on street corners, word-of-mouth publicity for surreptitious performances
in unconventional spaces and similar acts of resistance kept the tradition of
political theatre activism alive.
This is the background against which we should see Mahasweta Devi’s
foray into playwriting. If her primary aim was, as always, to reach as broad
138
W riting for the S tage
a cross-section of people as possible, then what could be better than theatre,

the most popular medium of the time for politicised cultural activity?
Let us now turn to the play texts themselves. This essay will treat the play-
scripts as original works and not as adaptations. Undertaking an analysis of
the differences between the prose fiction and the plays is a separate exercise
with a wholly different purpose – that of exploring how the ‘adaptation’
diverges from the ‘original’ work and what this signifies. Rather, this essay
aims to study these plays as dramatic scripts in their own right, no matter
what the ‘source’ may be, and to evaluate them as such.
Mother of 1084,5 one of Mahasweta’s more widely known works, was
the first play she attempted. Apparently, she wrote it in 1972–1973, ‘when
Asit Bose, the young actor-director, was planning to stage it’ (Bandyopad-
hyay 1986: xii). The play introduces us to a slice of urban history which was
still burningly fresh in the memory of Calcuttans: the ruthless suppression of
the Naxalite movement in the city by the government authorities and police
and the street battles that raged between factions.6
A date is impressed upon us at the very start of the play by an off-stage
voice: ‘Seventeenth January. Nineteen Seventy’ (Devi 1986: 3). This is the
date on which a group of young men, considered Naxal militants, among
them Brati Chatterjee, is betrayed and killed. As the main action of the
play occurs two years later, it is clear that the time of writing the play cor-
responds to the time frame of the events enacted. It was completely contem-
porary. We shall see why this is significant.
The action unfolds in the course of a single day, starting with a phone
call and ending with a party. It is Brati’s birthday, and also the day he died.
In the course of the day, his mother Sujata visits the family of his comrade
who died alongside him and his close friend and comrade Nandini, who was
jailed; but the timescape is broader – ranging from the news of Brati’s death
two years previously, to his last day, to the visit to the police morgue. Mem-
ory meshes the time frames together.
This play revolves around its women characters. Sujata, Brati’s mother,
stands at the centre, and the arc of her journey from the protections of
privileged innocence to political awareness is its trajectory. She moves from
having complete ignorance of harsh reality in the first scene – when she is
bewildered by mention of Kantapukur, the police morgue, and knows noth-
ing of her son’s political life – to giving an anguished political tirade at the
end, addressing the audience in a fevered call for social justice. The play
sensitively portrays the human price of the issue – the grief of mothers left to
mourn their dead children, jobs lost, lovers torn asunder, betrayals, and sac-
rifice. It is not only strong in emotional affect, but it also includes a probing
critique of the confusions and complexities of the politics of the time when
Nandini, in a central scene, questions their own shortcomings – ‘It was an
overdose of romanticism. We didn’t have a clue to the reality. These were
among the major failings of that time’ (Devi 1986: 19).
139
A njum K atyal
The writer is also careful to introduce social and class contrasts, between
Sujata’s upper-class privileged household and lifestyle and Somu’s simple
home; between the deeply sincere if doomed idealism of Brati and his com-
rades and the superficial chatter, self-serving attitude, and hypocrisy of
the party-goers in the closing scene. In terms of staging, this contrast is
often achieved by the device of a parallel space: two segments of the stage
which simultaneously and seamlessly portray different realities and scenes,
with characters crossing over from to another. These juxtapositions serve
to underline the interpenetration of these supposedly disparate and sepa-
rate worlds. Time too is collapsed through the same device, with memory,
haunting and ever present, being played out in a continuous back and forth
that undoes the formal ‘distancing’ of a flashback. Another juxtaposition
cleverly achieved is that of Sujata’s alienation within her own home and
family, echoing Brati’s in the society outside; both confirm, in their deaths,
the totality of that alienation. The burst appendix at the climax, after Suja-
ta’s passionate plea to the audience for moral action, can be read as a meta-
phor for the poison in the system finally taking over.
For the time when it was written for staging, this is a courageous play, in
its open empathy for the idealism and heroic sacrifice of the young urban
Naxalites, with their dreams of a more equitable social order and the man-
ner in which society covered up the harsh truth of their suppression. One sees
how the writer has managed to introduce several of her key concerns into
the dramatic form she adopts – a sensitivity to the reality of women’s lives,
particularly the woman as mother; the larger societal and political picture in
which the human story is embedded; and a concern with social justice.
These key concerns also inflect Water. This, along with the rest of the
plays, was written in her ‘second phase of playwriting in 1976–77’ (Bandyo-
padhyay 1986: xiii). Water deals with caste and power relations in a small
village, Charsa. It opens in 1971. Three young Naxalites on the run are
helped to escape by a Dom7 lad, Dhura, who knows they have assassinated
a local Daroga8 who was a ‘man-eater’ (Devi 1986: 109). Later, they are
apprehended and killed, and Dhura is labelled a sympathiser, with drastic
consequences for the whole village.
The cast of characters includes Santosh Pujari, rich and powerful land-
owner and moneylender, with absolute power over the poor villagers. As
panchayat head, he is in contact with the local administration and collects
all the rations, relief, and government aid which are hoarded and sold by
him for profit. He pretends to have a soft corner for the destitute villagers
but will go to any length to block even the smallest sign of progress among
them. Maghai Dom is a hereditary water-diviner, blindly faithful to his tra-
ditional calling, which he sees as a sacred duty enjoined on his ancestor
by the Goddess of the Nether Ganga. He has a deep bond with the river
Charsa, and indeed with all forces of nature. His wife Phulmani is a blunt,
feisty woman who refuses to be cowed by anyone and speaks her mind even
140
to Santosh; and his son Dhura is hot-headed and rebellious, eager for pro-
gress and change. Jiten, a Gandhian idealist, is the primary school teacher,
keen to help the poor villagers and resist the deep injustice he sees around
him. The administrative officer, the SDO, only wants to preserve the status
quo and regards any initiative by the villagers as a sign of Naxalite infiltra-
tion, to be brutally suppressed.
The plot revolves around water. This is a drought-ridden district, depend-
ent on wells. Maghai is expert at locating the sites for these wells, a service
Santosh Pujari cunningly demands as his sacred hereditary duty. However,
once Santosh has the wells dug, the lower castes are not allowed to use
them. The women are forced to scratch at the sands of the local river Charsa
for a handful of water for their daily needs. The villagers demand their
rightful access to the wells and to the rations and other relief material, but
Santosh refuses to give in. Instead, he instigates the administration against
them for aiding and abetting Naxalites. Time passes; this unjust and feudal
system continues with no respite despite the villagers’ repeated petitions.
Then Jiten discovers a simple way of damming the river when in spate, and
the villagers labour to construct a dam. For once they are acting on their
own initiative, without asking for help or permission, which is seen as a
dangerously incendiary move with potential to subvert the existing power
structures. Santosh, hand in hand with the SDO, oversees the destruction of
the dam. Just as the villagers are celebrating their success, the police attack,
opening fire. In the ensuing melee, 17 people are wounded, including Dhura,
Jiten, and Phulmani. Maghai is shot and fatally wounded but refuses to fall.
The play ends on a dramatic note as Santosh runs in, crying, ‘As the dam
crumbled, the river leapt through, and seemed to snatch Maghai up, raise
him on the crest of its wave, and carry him away’ (Devi 1986: 166).
It is remarkable how the writer wrests human interest and drama from
what could easily be a dry socio-economic treatise on rural power rela-
tions and hierarchy. She succeeds in creating a host of three-dimensional,
engaging characters. Maghai Dom and Phulmani are complex, proud, and
compelling individuals, equally capable of anger, mischief, tenderness, and
dreams. Dhura’s stubborn questioning challenges his father’s more accept-
ing worldview, while retaining a fresh, childlike energy. Santosh too is not a
stereotypical villain; rather, he has a complicated, nuanced relationship with
the other villagers, particularly Maghai. Jatin is well liked for his genuine
involvement in the lives and customs of the people and for his freedom from
caste prejudice; so much so that Maghai dubs him an honorary Dom.
The play also succeeds in exposing the nexus between those who wield
power – the village bigwig, the district administration, the police – and the
many ways in which the poor are kept dependent and suppressed. Largely
in the naturalistic mode, the scenes include impromptu song and dance
sequences, reflecting village customs and other local rituals, including the
rite for water divination.
141
A njum K atyal
Both Aajir and Bayen are plays in a very different register. They describe
age-old rural customs which, under the mantle of religious and sanctioned
tradition, are designed to exploit and oppress. Those who most feel the
weight of this oppression are the poor, the lower caste, and women. The
aajir is a bonded slave whose ancestor has sold his entire lineage into slavery
for a pittance at a time of desperate need, and a bayen is a woman who is
cursed and cast out by the community as an evil spirit, a devourer of chil-
dren. Mahasweta Devi has said that she ‘got the idea for Aajir from a slave
bond executed by a slave who sold himself into slavery, reproduced in the
family history of the Mustafis of Ulo-Birnagar’ (Bandyopadhyay 1986: xiii).
From this factual footnote, she wove a narrative showing how oppression
persists down through the ages, emotionally enslaving the victim. The play
opens with Paatan introducing himself to the audience as an aajir, his only
identity, subsuming all other attributes including his manhood or his rights
as a citizen. Mahasweta locates the tragic story that is about to unfold in
its historical context: Paatan enacts his ancestor Golak who, starving and
despairing as famine rages, feels that the security of food and shelter is pref-
erable to the continuous insecurity he and his dependents face. For the sum
of three rupees, a small fortune to him, he seals the fate of his descendants
with his thumbprint on a bond. Fast forward to Paatan, who has known
no other truth than that of his enslavement, decided generations ago. He
yearns to live as a man, to marry, and father children but has no agency over
his body or his selfhood. Finally, when his desperate bid for freedom fails,
and he is informed that the dreaded bond which sealed his fate crumbled to
dust ages ago and he had all along been free, except in his mind, he cracks
and strangles the person he sees as his oppressor and betrayer. Resigned
to his fate, he gives himself up to the law, with dignity and the pride of a
man who has finally taken control of his own fate. We should note that it is
not just Paatan who is portrayed as a slave to the feudal mindset, but also
the women in the play, in particular Punnashashi, the village ‘prostitute’
whose body is the ground for every male’s lust, and whose symbolic value
as a ritual object (she bears the responsibility of fulfilling the rite which will
make the rains come) is a burden she is forced to bear.
Bayen is another work based on documented fact. Mahasweta Devi
encountered the cruel practice of branding a woman as a bayen in the course
of her travels, and in this play we see how oppressive superstition – disguised
as ‘traditional custom’ – can be, particularly when applied to the lower caste
woman. Chandidasi Gangadasi, a dom by caste, who has inherited the pre-
scribed caste duty of burying dead children, is stigmatised as a bayen and
driven out of her home, forced to abandon a loving husband and infant son.
Her husband, helpless in the face of society’s indictment, feels compelled
to condone her exile. She has to live alone in a hut by the railway tracks,
subsisting on meagre weekly rations provided by the village, forced to drag
a tin canister along behind her to alert people to her presence so that they
142
can protect themselves from her evil miasma. In the course of the play, we
see her simple, affectionate, honest nature, which leads her to accept her fate
as an outcast and finally to sacrifice herself to prevent a manmade railway
disaster which would have resulted in the death of many. Her son, who has
grown into an educated and caring young man, defies the taboo and goes to
meet her and at the end he steps forward to proudly name her, restoring her
identity: ‘My mother . . . the late Chandidasi Gangadasi, sir. Not a Bayen.
She was never a Bayen, my mother’ (Devi 1986: 103).
In both the above plays, the victims are innocent and pure of heart; they
succeed in rising above their victimhood to achieve a dignity in death. Both
works are melodramatic in tone, brutal in the cruelty and injustice they
depict. While Bayen stays largely within the naturalistic mode, Aajir is a
mélange of song, rhyme, and dance, lending it a heightened, other-worldly
feel. To my mind, these plays lack the depth and complexity of the previous
two. Their chief aim seems to be to arouse horror and distaste over such
archaic, exploitative, and superstitious customs. The author’s determination
to create awareness of such unfair practices, however traditional they may
be considered, seems to be the driving force behind these two plays.
Of Urvashi and Johnny, Mahasweta Devi says that it was written ‘during
the Emergency, which is its real setting’. In Samik Bandyopadhyay’s view
(1986: xiii):
Urvashi and Johnny, Mahasweta’s story for the Emergency, finds in

the cancer of the throat a metaphor for the suppression of demo-
cratic rights. It . . . has a density that grows from the ventriloquist’s
artist image and his dream of ‘catching the birds of happiness’. . . .
The shock and pain and utter helplessness into which the Emer-
gency had plunged the Indian sensibility is captured in this strange
story made into a play.
(Bandyopadhyay 1986: xiv–xv)
This is indeed a strange play, symbolic and dark. All the characters, from the
margins and underbelly of the city, are damaged or disabled in some way –
there is Johnny of the cancerous throat, Ramanna his close friend who has
deformed arms, the one-eyed Moti, and the Lame One. The narrative is full
of people of the street: pimps, whores, slum owners, street gangs, and itiner-
ant performers. Sentimental, romantic songs from popular films of a more
idealistic, less oppressive era are the favoured means of expression. Johnny
is terrified of losing his voice, which means that he will no longer be able
to make his beloved Urvashi – the very embodiment of happiness – dance
and sing and thrill the public any more. This is the worst kind of death
to him. His entire identity hinges on his ability to delight his audience.
Without it, he is nothing, nobody. The play ends with the pathos of his
last performance, when Urvashi, unable to flirt and laugh and amuse, ends
143
A njum K atyal
up repeating sadly, in her cracked voice, ‘I’m not well, not well, not well’
(Devi 1986: 80), before abruptly falling silent. It is then that Johnny shows
us that Urvashi is only a marionette, not a human being. She is the artist’s
medium. His ability to spread happiness and to brighten up lives through
her is now over. A cancer has attacked his throat. With this poignant and
powerful extended metaphor of the effect of the Emergency on artistic free-
dom, Mahasweta brings the play to a close.
In an interview she gave a decade after her foray into play writing,
Mahasweta confessed that she stopped writing plays because ‘the theatre
did not take them up ever’ (Bandyopadhyay 1986: xvi). Her motivation
was to reach a wider audience – and when that didn’t happen, she gave up
the genre. It is not as if dramatic works based on her texts have not been
staged: from the famous “Draupadi” of Heisnam Kanhailal, with Dopdi
being played by the inimitable actor Sabitri, to Rudali by Usha Ganguli,
from Feisal Alkazi’s Mother of 1084 in which he changed the ending, to On
Both Sides directed by Mangai, bringing together seven women characters
from Mahasweta’s fiction, there has been no dearth of stage versions based
on her work. She herself saw many of these productions and gave them her
approval. However, her own scripts did not achieve the broad viewing she
hoped for.
Which is not to say they never will. As this essay has attempted to show,
they are worthy of being produced. They offer a range of styles, from the
naturalistic to the stylised, incorporating dialogue which is sung or recited
and dance. Their themes are more relevant than ever before – the suffering
of mothers whose children are imprisoned or killed for protesting against
an unjust state; the struggle over water; the plight of artists whose freedom
of expression is attacked; and the persistence of superstitious beliefs that
perpetrate oppression and exploitation. Mahasweta’s plays may yet find a
place in the theatre world, as she had wanted.
Notes
1 Quoted in Katyal 2017.
2 Samik Bandyopadhyay in conversation with this author, 10 March 2021, Kolkata.
3 Indian People’s Theatre Association, formed in 1943 with the aim of bringing
about a cultural awakening among the people of India, consisted of leading
artistes across the country and left a long-lasting impact on the cultural scene.
4 In India, the Emergency refers to a period from 25 June 1975 to 21 March 1977
when a state of emergency was declared across the country, allowing elections to
be suspended and civil liberties to be suppressed.
5 Mother of 1084, Hajar Churashir Ma in the original Bengali, was first published
in the Puja or Autumn festival issue of the periodical Prasad in October 1973 and
then enlarged into a book published in 1974.
6 ‘When the peasants of Naxalbari in the north of the state took direct action,
in May 1967, to establish their right over the land that they tilled, the urban
144
youth were electrified. The militancy of the Naxalbari peasants struck a chord
with the already agitated urban, especially the Kolkata, youth. In search of an
alternative order they joined, in large numbers, the newly formed political move-
ment that gave a call for an armed revolution’. (Nazes Afroz, text for ‘1968
Global Youth Protests,’ an exhibition presented by Goethe Institut-Max Mueller
Bhavan, Kolkata, in association with Jadavpur University, Centre for Advanced
Study Phase III and the Department of Comparative Literature, 25 February to 2
March 2019). See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_of_1968 (accessed
on 1 April 2019).
7 Low caste ‘untouchable’.
8 Village police chief.
References
Bandyopadhyay, Samik. 1986. “Introduction,” in Samik Bandyopadhyay (trans),
Five Plays by Mahasweta Devi, pp. vii–xv. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Devi, Mahasweta. 1986. Five Plays. Trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay. Kolkata: Seagull
Books.
Katyal, Anjum. January 2017. “The Importance of Being Mahasweta,” Seminar,
689, www.india-seminar.com/2017/689/689_anjum_katyal.htm (accessed on 17
March 2021).
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18
SAHITYA AS KINESIS
Performative Potential in Stage and Screen
Adaptations of Mahasweta Devi’s Works
Benil Biswas
Locating the Works of Mahasweta Devi: An Introduction

Recent studies on politics of identity in India have unravelled the hierarchies
of caste, race, religion, and gender implicit within them. Such issues have
also been neglected in literary, cultural, and performance studies scholarship
in India. The proliferation of writings from various minoritarian perspec-
tives in recent times is perhaps an attempt to familiarise readers with such
neglected knowledge systems and histories. This neglect can be traced back
to the prevalence of certain biases and ideological components in main-
stream history and historiography in India. History written from a specific
perspective creates certain hegemonies. Consequently, the history as availa-
ble for the larger populace is often a singular, grand narrative written under
the tutelage of the one in power, leaving gaps, erasures, and silences in their
representation of the past. It is to fill in these gaps, erasures, and amnesias
that the arts come in. The arts in various forms exist among the daily lives of
the people. They have always countered and protested the telling of a single
story, seeking out those stories that have been suppressed, blacked out, and
made invisible. They also have the potential to disrupt hegemonies of caste,
gender, race, religion, and sexuality. In this context, sahitya, the composite
nomenclature for literary expressions in many Indian languages, attains a
specific meaning, that is ‘togetherness,’ not just in ‘form’ but also ‘content’
and its materialisation (Krishnamoorthy 1985: 66).
This meaning of sahitya as ‘togetherness’ can be seen in the works of
Mahasweta Devi, best known outside the literary and academic world
through the screen adaptations of her works, such as “Sunghursh” (1968),
a period costume drama, directed by HS Rawail, based on Mahasweta
Devi’s historical novel Laili Aasmaner Aina; “Rudaali” (1993), directed by
Kalpana Lajmi and “Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa” (1998) directed by Govind
Nihalani, both based on eponymous novellas; and a few stage adapta-
tions. I argue that not just these few screen and stage adaptations but also
the entire oeuvre of Mahasweta Devi’s works is replete with the material,
146 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-21

S ahitya as K inesis
spatial, and temporal experiences of people from the margins, whose voices
and actions reverberate with possibilities, playing an active role in shaping
our history, yet remaining absent from it. These narratives hinge on indi-
vidual life experiences, especially their encounters with injustice. However,
in many texts by Devi, the central character’s interaction with the collective
brings about an active performative stance. It is this journey from one to
many, from a singularity to plurality, in terms of both voices and actions,
which highlights how ‘theatre/performance thinking’ is intrinsic to Mahas-
weta Devi’s creative expressions. It also necessitates critical attention to her
performative uses of literary devices.
Between Performance and History

The potential of performance and performative use of language in Devi’s
works is not a tangential post-facto reconstruction through discourse analy-
sis. Though her writing is available to us only from the late 1950s, Devi’s
writings, reflections, and interviews frequently mention the lasting impact
of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA)1 in the late 1940s through
her first husband, Bijon Bhattacharya, her second husband Asit Gupta and
her uncle Ritwik Ghatak among others. Ghatak in On the Cultural Front
(1954, 2006) stresses the historical significance of the arts in social move-
ments and also recommends learning and engaging with the then preva-
lent, popular ‘bourgeois’ art, not just to create an alternate art but also for
the purpose of mobilisation and guidance. From these influences, Mahas-
weta Devi developed a familiarity with creative expressions, not necessarily
meant as ‘art for art’s sake,’ but art possessing a performative potential to
question the unjust status-quo and envisage change. We can see this impetus
from the very beginning of her writing career in texts such as Jhansir Rani
(The Queen of Jhansi, 1956),2 an alternative historiography of the life and
times of Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi during 1857, and the novel Aranyer
Adhikar (Right to the Forest, 1979), depicting the life story of Birsa Munda
and the Munda Uprising in the 19th century, which won her Sahitya Aka-
demi Award.
Performative language reflects on matters regarding the connotation and
denotations of language, identity, and the subject’s nature. Performative
utterances do not explicate but perform the action they iterate. The theory
of the performative offers a linguistic and philosophical rationalisation for
the idea that we must concentrate on what literary language does while
focusing on what it says. The performative brings into limelight an active,
world-making use of language, which resembles literary language and helps
us conceive literature as an act or event. Austin (1975) and Derrida (1988)
develop the theory of performativity, and Butler (1988) further applies it to
gender.3 In Mahasweta Devi’s writings, we see this constant self-reflexive
awareness of language; the emergent literature as an act or event unfolds
147
B enil B iswas
and provokes new possibilities. For example, towards the ending of “Drau-
padi” (Devi, 2016a), Dopdi bares her body, inverting the expectation of
Senanayak, and says, ‘Come on, Kounter me’ (Devi 2016a: 190). In Mother
of 1084 (1997), we see Sujata, coming to terms with her son Brati’s radical
world view, against all odds, as a ‘social gest’ (Brecht 1978: 104).4 In both
these cases, there seems to be a nuanced engagement with the dominant
power structure through a process of self-discovery. Similarly, Sanichari in
“Rudali” (1997) finds expression for her repressed feelings through the final
act of cathartic wailing and crying.
This performative usage of language embodying a sense of ‘doing,’ rather
than just ‘saying/showing,’ is evident in Devi’s plays, Mother of 1084, Aajir,
Bayen, Urvashi and Johnny, and Water, which are dramatisations of her
fiction, collected and translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay in Five Plays
(1997). Bandyopadhyay’s introduction to the volume provides an insight
into Mahasweta Devi’s self-reflexivity about her creative expressions, high-
lighting the polyphony intrinsic to her work. She recollects: ‘Once I became a
professional writer, I felt increasingly that a writer should document his own
time and history. The socio-economic history of human development has
always fascinated me’ (Devi, cited in Bandyopadhyay 1997: viii). Therefore,
she chooses to resurrect older epochs in history in their ‘immediate physical-
ity, as if they were nothing less than contemporary’ (Devi, cited in Bandyo-
padhyay 1997: viii). This nuanced investment in documenting history, not
as a reminiscence of the distant past but with echoes in the present, owing to
possibilities in future, reasserts the performative potential in her writings and
vision. According to Performance Studies scholar Diana Taylor and Johnny,
History, like performance, is never for the first time, but it too is
actualised in the present (see Schechner 1985: 36). The bearers of
performance, those who engage in it, are also the bearers of history
who link the layers past-present-future through practice.
(Taylor 2006: 83)
Through their voices and actions, the central characters of Devi’s plays,
Johnny (Urvashi and Johnny), Sujata (Mother of 1084), Sanichari (Rudali),
Chandidasi (Bayen), and Dopdi (Draupadi), not only become bearers of per-
formance but also bearers of history, linking ‘past–present–future’ through
their actions.
Between Theatre Thinking and Theatricality

This sensibility passes on to the readers while they interact with Devi’s
narratives as co-learners, co-creators, and co-bearers of performance and
history. More so when these texts are adapted to stage or screen, where
148
individual narratives are understood, embodied, and internalised through a

process of collective meaning-making in the act of immersive spectatorship
as an assemblage. Initially, Devi’s plays were scarcely performed, perhaps
due to the detailed requirements of the naturalistic settings of her narra-
tives. In fact, this propelled her to stop writing plays. She declares, ‘theatre
didn’t take them up ever, and I stopped writing plays’ (Devi, cited in Ban-
dyopadhyay 1997: xix). Nevertheless, in the same interview, she tells us that
the theatre/performance perspective did not desert her. She unremittingly
devoted herself to the causes of disenfranchised people and, in the process,
documented various folk forms which live, breathe, and thrive among peo-
ple. These living, breathing people’s forms find their way into her narratives,
stories and, of course, plays.
Of late, many of Devi’s plays have been produced by various amateur
and professional theatre directors and groups or have been adapted for the
screen, putting to use the inherent performative potential of her narratives.
For example, in 1992, Usha Ganguli (1945–2020) directed “Rudali” (Devi
and Ganguli 1997), widely acclaimed for its true-to-life delineation of the
struggle of women stuck in the quagmire of societal forces. The women
in this text do not have the privilege to weep over personal tragedies, but,
as professional mourners, need to beat their chest, wail, and cry to mourn
the death of the rich for a living. Subsequently, in 1993, Kalpana Lajmi
(1954–2018) directed Rudaali as a Hindi film. The film was not only com-
mercially successful but also received critical academic attention from vari-
ous quarters (Subramanyam 1996: 34–51). While the story/play by Devi is
spatialised in remote parts of central India, the film is set in a small hamlet
in Rajasthan, portraying graded gender–caste discrimination and the (im)
possibility of expressions from beyond the margin(s).
How should we consider these three renditions – the story by Mahas-
weta Devi, the play by Usha Ganguli, and the film by Kalpana Lajmi – as
an actualisation of the performative potential, where each rendition is a
re-engagement with reality, not a mere representation? Every rendition is
‘as if’ a re-enactment, re-articulation, re-presentation of the events in every
iteration, as the bearers of history through specific experiences depicted in
each of these expressions. If an audience were to experience all these three
versions, one would invariably encounter three different Sanicharis. Not
that these are three different characters, but through these varied enact-
ments, Sanichari goes on to become a sign and a signifier or a ‘function,’
which facilitates an embodied engagement and self-identification possible
for the readers/audience. This embodiment on the part of the readers as
active co-creators of the happenings in Devi’s writings leads us to contem-
plate the apparent ‘theatricality’ that engenders her work. The concept of
‘theatricality’ here must be understood as the inherent theatre of everyday
life and drama. It invites us to examine how Mahasweta Devi acts as a stage
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B enil B iswas
director, developing scenes and narration in her works. Erika Fischer Lichte
defines theatricality as:
[A] particular mode of using signs or as a particular kind of semi-

otic process in which particular signs (human beings and objects of
their environment) are employed as signs of signs – by their produc-
ers, or their recipients. Thus a shift of the dominance within the
semiotic functions determines when theatricality appears.
(Fischer-Lichte 1995: 88–89)
Drawing on Fischer Lichte’s formulation, one can see the actions embod-
ied in the works of Mahasweta Devi within this paradigm of theatricality,
where a sign is employed as a sign of signs. For instance the protagonists
of “Urvashi and Johnny” are initially conceived as ‘signs,’ that is repre-
sentative of the socio-political environment of 1970s’ India. However, when
adapted into Gudia (1997), a Hindi film by Goutam Ghose, these characters
assume newer meanings, representing a different socio-political milieu, that
of Goa and Mumbai, bearing a ‘national’ linguistic register (Hindi). Char-
acters such as Sanichari and Johnny can well be associated with the larger
historical frames of reference involving casteism, colonialism, national poli-
tics, etc., but in her creative practice, Devi personalises the broader cultural
sign into an individual one. For example, the larger national socio-political
environment finds expression through the conversations between the ven-
triloquist Johnny and his talking doll Urvashi, during ‘play within a play’
concerts. Johnny, as an individual, then stands as a ‘sign’ for the society at
large, which transforms into an arena of mass ventriloquism. These meto-
nymic individuated microcosmic experiences guide the readers and the audi-
ence into exploring the macrocosm.
Work/Text/Film as Cultural Performance

Several of Devi’s performative narratives echo with similar minute analyses
of how dominant power/knowledge systems tend to appropriate marginal
voices through visceral acts of violence on either individuals or society at
large. It is also in these performative embodiments of the language’s potential
that characters like Sanichari of “Rudali,” Dopdi Mehjen of “Draupadi,”
or Johnny of “Urvashi and Johnny” find an expression. W. B. Worthen,
underlining the productive relation between authoritarian canonical works
and possibilities of performative texts, writes, ‘It’s not surprising that
Barthes’s opposition between the work (authoritarian, closed, fixed, single,
consumed) and the text (liberating, open, variable, traced by intertexts, per-
formed) proves so useful to contemporary discourse about performance’
(Worthen 2004: 12). This argument provides multifarious possibilities for
reading and understanding a text, encompassing all its manifested signifieds
150
as we have seen in the works of Mahasweta Devi, who is competent in the

transcreation of texts from one genre to another. Worthen rightly argues
that this performative reading of text as one possibility should include both
the probabilities of ‘work’ and ‘text’ mentioned by Barthes earlier. He fur-
ther asserts, ‘Though performance may discover meanings or nuances not
immediately available through “reading” or “criticism,” these meanings are
nonetheless seen as latent potentialities located in the words on the page,
the traces of the authorial work’ (Worthen 2004: 12). This malleable per-
formative potential, traceable in Mahasweta Devi’s plays and other writ-
ings, facilitates and invites adaptions to stage and screen.
One interesting lesson comes from the intersection of postcolonial liter-
ary theory and theatre in Spivak’s translation and analysis of Mahasweta
Devi’s “Draupadi” (Devi in Spivak 1988; Devi 2016). Spivak translates this
incendiary story to show how Draupadi/Dopdi, in and through her final
action, as she is battered and raped, nonetheless, counters her enemy, the
police officer, by laughing in his face (Devi 2016: 189–190). This laughter
shows the limitations of language as a system of power. This expression
went on to become the benchmark of postcolonial criticism, which led to
various re-imaginations and re-articulations, resulting in the proliferation
of a new genre of literature and a more radical form of theatre, where the
action on stage representing rape and the public protest against rape speak
to each other directly. I am referring here to the Manipuri director Kan-
hailal’s production of “Draupadi” (2000), with his wife Sabitri Devi play-
ing the protagonist, which seemed to predict the public protest of women
activists against the Arms Forces Special Powers Act 1958 (AFSPA) in 2004,
when 12 Manipuri women stood naked in front of the Kangla fort, Imphal
and held a banner that said ‘Indian Army Rape Us,’ immediately reminding
us of the final scene from Devi’s play. Through this convergence of theatri-
cal action and public protest, new possibilities of activism were actualised
by various oppressed entities in Manipur and the larger political sphere
involving feminist activists, indigenous groups, and grassroots democratic
forces (Misri 2011: 620). What one needs to keep in mind is that the ‘latent
potentialities’ in the story “Draupadi” find their articulation in the public
sphere, only when the narrative was transformed into theatre by Kanhailal
and Sabitri.
Another significant re-cogitation is the case of Mother of 1084, which
documents the extremely volatile 1970s’ Bengal amidst the Naxal move-
ment, as the embodied personal history of Sujata, mother of Brati, men-
tioned as corpse number 1084 in the title of the work. As in “Rudali” and
“Draupadi,” Devi chooses a ‘Mother’ figure to drive the narrative, where
one represents many. She is the ‘Mother of 1084,’ and it is her journey of
self-discovery, where she comes to terms with the revolutionary worldview
of her child, Brati, who dreamt of an equanimous, alternative world. But
in the process, she also becomes a ‘sign’ for all the 1083 others, who must
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B enil B iswas
have been killed before Brati’s dead body could bear the number 1084. The
pauses, silences, and monologues of Sujata usher us along with her on this
transformative journey, ‘where the personal and the political aspects of a
society get very beautifully blended and expressed,’ as Govind Nihalani says
in an interview (Nihalani 2018) about his 1998 film Hazaar Chaurasi ki
Maa. As in the case of multiple renditions of “Rudali,” Nihalani’s attempt
was also to underline the latent performative potentialities, where Sujata
becomes an archetypal figure, representing the wheel of time and bearer of
history itself. This image is further reified by the end of the film, when we
find ourselves in 1997, face to face with an aged Sujata overseeing a docu-
mentation centre. But history repeats itself, and there is yet another killing
in broad daylight. The film, characterised throughout by an otherwise unob-
trusive, restrained voice of dissent, ends on a note of an active emergent
voice of protest.
In 2010, Santanu Bose directed the play, 1084 ki Maa, at the National
School of Drama, Delhi, bringing together the original novel, its English
translation by Samik Bandyopadhyay, the Hindi version by Shyamanand
Jalan and Avijit Dutt, poems by Nabarun Bhattacharya, and documents
by Charu Majumdar. This polyphony of voices, with visceral noises of the
narrative during police chase sequences, oozing out of the various parts of
the auditorium, and not just the stage, created an immersive experience for
the audience. The performance brochure was designed like a dusty, burnt
government file with red tape on it, as if it was an implicit part of the per-
formance. This physical and material actualisation of information in perfor-
mance was only possible due to the latent performative potentialities in the
narrative structure of Devi’s novel, which in turn provided the audience with
an experiential knowledge about the context of the play. Mahasweta Devi,
in her interview with Naveen Kishore, endorsed this polyphonic reception
of the work by reciting a poem by Nabarun Bhattacharya (Devi 2016b).
Writing as Kinesis: Towards a Conclusion

With ample evidence of performative iterations and potentialities in Mahas-
weta Devi’s work, it will be significant to look at the emerging debates within
performance studies and see how they can help us reinterpret the creative
oeuvre of Mahasweta Devi. ‘Performance,’ according to Conquergood, can
be seen in three modes: mimesis, poiesis, and kinesis (Conquergood 1995:
138).5 He goes on to define ‘performance as kinesis, as movement, motion,
fluidity, fluctuation, all those restless energies that transgress boundaries
and trouble closure’ (Conquergood 1995: 138). Conquergood reiterates
Turner’s emphasis on performance events and processes being central to any
culture (Turner 1982: 93–94), a notion that, according to him, set the stage
for a ‘more politically urgent view of performance’ – that which regards
152
performance as kinesis, or as ‘breaking and remaking’ (Conquergood 1995:

138). In this context, Conquergood invokes Homi K. Bhabha’s usage of
the term ‘performative’ to denote ‘discursive acts that insinuate, interrupt,
interrogate and antagonise powerful master-discourses that he dubs “peda-
gogical” ’ (Bhabha 1994: 146–149, cited in Conquergood 1995: 138). This
idea of the performative being discursive and pedagogical can very well be
true of what transpires in Mahasweta Devi’s life and works, as she asserts,
‘A responsible writer, standing at a turning point in history, has to take a
stand in defence of the exploited. Otherwise, history will never forgive him’
(cited in Bandyopadhyay 1997: x). In her visceral portrayal of rape, murder,
or public lynching, there are elements of mimesis and poiesis, no doubt, but
it is the transformative possibility of kinesis that is more clearly manifest.
Now we understand that all her characters, including Dopdi as “Draupadi,”
Sujata as “Mother of 1084,” and Sanichari as “Rudali,” are in a continuous
process of becoming, ‘breaking and remaking’. They ‘interrupt, interrogate
and antagonise powerful master-discourses,’ which supplement the activism
and quest for justice that Devi endeavoured for throughout her life, activat-
ing a specific meaning of sahitya, that is ‘togetherness’ (Krishnamoorthy
1985: 66). This formulation helps us construe Devi’s vision of ‘sahitya’ itself
as ‘kinesis’. In the process, Devi herself has now become a sign of a sign,
that is an inspirational character in the life narratives and realities of many
individuals.
In conclusion, I would like to mention two such individuals. One is the
noted Bangla Dalit litterateur, Manoranjan Byapari, who in his autobiogra-
phy (2018: 215–228) and many of his interactions, mentions the indelible
contribution of Mahasweta Devi in transforming him from being a rickshaw
puller to becoming an author. Another is Dakxin Bajrange, creative director
of Budhan Theatre, Ahmedabad, who once again acknowledges the pres-
ence of ‘Amma’ (as he affectionately remembers Mahasweta Devi), not just
in his works, but also in the person he has ‘become’ now (Bajrange 2016).
With these and many more such substantiations of Mahasweta Devi’s crea-
tive and social vision in the form of ‘sahitya’ as ‘kinesis,’ that is ‘breaking
and remaking,’ one can only hope, in future, the transformative principle
inherent in her works will find further expression in the visceral and affec-
tive medium of stage and screen, empowering and inspiring many more lives
to strive towards an equanimous and just world.
Notes
1 The Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), created in 1942–43, was the first
national-level theatre movement in India, which brought together writers, singers,
musicians, and theatre artists from various social classes as a cultural response to
calamities like the Bengal famine and World War II. See, https://ipta.in/ (accessed
on 10 June 2021).
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B enil B iswas
2 Jhansir Rani (1956) (Devi 2000) is a reconstruction of the life of Rani Lakshmi
Bai from extensive research of both historical documents (collected mostly by G.
C. Tambe, grandson of the Queen) and folk tales, poetry, and oral tradition.
3 See J. L. Austin’s usage of various speech acts as locutionary and illocutionary
acts. Derrida further intervenes into the idea of performative in language and
proposes that specific usage might foreground possibilities of transformation in
language itself.
4 Brecht defines his concept of gest as follows: ‘Gest is not supposed to mean gestic-
ulation . . . but [a presentation] of overall attitudes’ (1978: 104). Brecht’s theory
of gest has informed several discussions of film, including Gilles Deleuze. See
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert
Galeta (London: The Athlone Press, 1989).
5 See Conquergood’s definition of mimesis and poiesis in the context of perfor-
mance (1992, 1995). Performance as mimesis is inspired by Erving Goffman’s
works that ‘gave currency to the notions of role-playing and impression manage-
ment’ (1992: 84). He notes that ‘the ultimate effect of (the) dramaturgical theory
was to reproduce the Platonic binary opposition between reality and appearance,
and thus sustain an anti-performance prejudice’ (1992: 84). Performance as poie-
sis is inspired by the perception that performance is ‘making not faking’. In other
words, the performance and performative interactions bring about the possibil-
ity of the new. Conquergood recognises the role of Victor Turner in evolving
this view, saying that Turner ‘subversively redefined the fundamental terms of
discussion in ethnography by defining humankind as homo performans, human-
ity as performer, as a culture-inventing, social performing, self-making and self-
transforming creature’ (1992: 84, 1995: 137–138).
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TDR (1988–), 39(4): 137–141, https://doi.org/10.2307/1146488 (accessed on 6
July 2021).
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Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Signature, Event, Context and Other Discussions of the
Performative. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Devi, Mahasweta. 1997. Five Plays. Trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay. Kolkata: Seagull
Books.
———. 2000. The Queen of Jhansi. Trans. Sengupta Sagaree and Mandira Sen-
gupta. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
———. 2016a. “Draupadi,” in Samik Bandyopadhyay and Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak (trans), Bashai Tudu. Calcutta: Thema.
———. 2016b. Talking Writing: Four Conversations with Mahasweta Devi
(Interview by Naveen Kishore). Kolkata: Seagull. YouTube. Uploaded on 14
January 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6bH9B9CMxY (accessed on 25
June 2021).
Devi, Mahasweta and Usha Ganguli. 1997. Rudali: From Fiction to Performance.
Trans. Anjum Katyal. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
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formance]. Imphal: Kalakshetra, Manipur, 14 and 20 April 2000.
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mohan Shetty, Govind Nihalani.
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paper]. Imphal: Kalakshetra, Manipur.
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Literature, 28(105): 65–70, www.jstor.org/stable/24158449 (accessed on 15
June 2021).
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36: 603–625, https://doi.org/10.1086/657487 (accessed on 10 June 2021).
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AkXQ4&t=2s (accessed on 15 June 2021).
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versity of Pennsylvania Press.
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34–51, https://doi.org/10.2307/1225764 (accessed on 6 July 2021).
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Bial (ed.), The Performance Studies Reader, pp. 10–24. London and New York:
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Photo 2.3 Scene from the play “1084 ki Maa,” directed by Santanu Bose, NSD.
Source: National School of Drama, Delhi
156
Section 3
ABLAZE WITH RAGE

The Writer as Activist
Photo 3.1 Mahasweta Devi: The activist.

Source: Bhasha Research and Publications.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-22
19
TRIBAL LANGUAGE AND
LITERATURE
The Need for Recognition
Mahasweta Devi
Translated from Bengali by Maitreya Ghatak
When I was in Chakadoba village in Medinipur District on the occasion

of Sadhu Ram Chand Murmu Day, the well-known poet of the Santhali
language, Saradaprasad Kisku, enlightened me on the dead Santhali littera-
teur who was being felicitated. Sadhu Ram Chand had a high degree of
social awareness and he had tried to enlighten the Santhal people through
his poems, lyrics, and plays. He spoke of the poor people and of the need
for unity amongst the tribals. In those days, there was no printing press
for the Santhali language, nor any magazine or paper where writings in
the language could be published. Sadhu Ram had died an untimely death.
Very few people know today that he had prepared a script for the Santhali
language. . . .
Much of his writing is lying scattered and needs to be put together and
published. There are people who can do it, if a Santhali press is available.
Ideally, the writings should be published in Santhali, with a Bengali version.
We are paying, and will continue to do so, a heavy price today for our age-
old tradition of ignorance and negligence of the tribals. Take the history of
the freedom struggle as it is read by students of history, as well as by others.
In the period between 1757 and 1947, all over India, particularly in eastern
India, several anti-imperialist struggles of the tribal peasants occurred. Yet
they find no mention in books of history. Non-tribal India has not acknowl-
edged these glorious struggles as part of the freedom movement.
In the 1981 census, India had 5,16,28,638 tribals. It is a large number,
yet the history of their struggles is not considered fit for inclusion as part
of Indian history. The many millions of India manage to survive without
knowing about this 51 million. That is why, when a young Santhal woman
asked me why the story of the hanging of Khudiram Bose is found in our
textbooks but no mention is made of all the tribals who had laid down
their lives for the country, I had no answer. The time is long overdue for
us to join the tribals in supporting this demand. The Kheria–Shabar tribals
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-23159
M ahasweta D evi
of Purulia who participated in the freedom movement in 1942 and were

imprisoned, do not get the freedom fighters’ pension even today, with the
probable exception of Kanuram Shabar and Locchu Shabar. Even they do
not get the full pension of Rs 500 or the railway pass for free first class travel
for a year. . . .
Tribals know very little about the various government programmes meant
for them. The Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) is a case in
point. There are innumerable schemes under this project for the develop-
ment of the tribal. But the tribals are not aware of these schemes; nor do the
benefits trickle down to them. This is true all over the country. My sugges-
tion is that in every state, booklets should be published informing the poor
(including the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) of the various govern-
ment schemes meant for them. Shouldn’t they know what their legitimate
dues are? . . .
But the real problem of the tribal is not just that of getting material sup-
port for survival. Mainstream society is carrying on a continuous, shrewd
and systematic assault on his social system, his culture, his very tribal identity
and existence. Think of the type of films which are shown in the local video
parlours in tribal areas or the books which are provided to the rural libraries
in tribal areas of West Bengal. There is nothing there that they can relate to.
My contention is that history should be re-written, acknowledging the
debt of mainstream India to the struggles of the tribals in the British and even
pre-British days. The history of their struggles is not to be found only in writ-
ten scripts but in their songs, dances, folk tales, passed from one generation
to another. So much of it has perished with the people who have died with all
this history carefully protected in the very depths of their hearts. But so much
still exists. For this, one has to go to the older people. The present genera-
tion knows very little because they were never told. And the people who had
started the hul, ulgulan or the mulkui1 struggles have been forced for the last
200 years to move away from the areas where these struggles started.
In this context, when one reads in the Gazetteer of India, ‘the tribals form
the bedrock of the people of this country’ or that ‘they laid the foundation
of Indian civilization,’ one wonders what sort of deadly game the main-
stream, the administration and the whole social system are playing with
several crores of people.
The paths of the tribals and the mainstream run at a parallel. The country
is paying a heavy price for this and will continue to do so unless it changes
its attitude.
In West Bengal, there are several state-sponsored literary awards but none
in the name of a tribal, nor specifically for a work about any aspect of tribal
life. At the state level, a literary award of, say, Rs 10,000 every year should
be declared. The award should go to a tribal, writing on any aspect of tribal
life in Bengali or a tribal language. One has to remember that in West B engal
today, the Santhals, despite many constraints, write and publish in their
160
T ribal L anguage and L iterature
own language. But the Lodhas and Kherias speak in their version of the Ben-
gali language. In the abad2 areas of the South 24 Parganas district, among
the Oraons, Mundas and Bedias, there is a declining use of their own lan-
guage. In the tea-garden areas of north Bengal, there are people speaking
Hindi, Sadri, Mundari, Lohar, Gorait, Chikbaraik and Baraik. However,
among many tribal groups other than the Santhals, either the original tribal
language doesn’t exist because they have been in this state for ages, or it is
little used. Considering this, the award should not be confined only to tribal
languages. Even English should be accepted, keeping in mind that excellent
work by Nityananda Hembram, Austric Civilisation of India. In Bortika,
people from several tribal groups, with or without formal education, write
and write quite well. . . .
The government should also provide publication support to those who
write or publish in Santhali or any other tribal language. Government grants
and patronage go to so many people and publications. Why should not
a part of it come to the tribals? Why should not the District Information
and Culture Department give advertisements to magazines published in any
tribal language? Similarly, at the national level, the Sahitya Akademi should
declare an award for literary work in a tribal language.
And, finally, the question of official recognition to language. The Santhali
language is yet to be recognised. The data for the following table is from
the 1971 census, because even at the time of writing, the government has
not made public the data on the numerical strength of various tribal groups.
Even then, this table is good enough to indicate which languages should get
recognition:
Language Number Speaking Recognised?
1 Bhojpuri 1,43,40,564 Yes

2 Chhatisgarhi 66,93,445 No
3 Magdhi 66,38,495 No
4 Maithili 61,21,912 No
5 Marwari 47,14,094 No
6 Santhali 36,93,558 No
7 Kashmiri 24,21,760 Yes
8 Rajasthani 20,93,557 No
9 Gondi 15,48,070 No
10 Konkanese 15,22,684 No
11 Dogri 12,98,856 No
12 Gurkhali/Nepali 12,86,824 No
13 Pahari 12,69,651 No
14 Bhili 12,50,312 No
15 Kurukh/Oraon 12,40,395 No
16 Kumauni 12,34,939 No
17 Garhwali 12,27,151 No
18 Sindhi 12,04,678 Yes
161
M ahasweta D evi
The table clearly shows that there are several linguistic groups which
are relatively larger in size than Sindhi and Kashmiri, yet have not been
recognised. The issue of recognising these languages is closely linked to
their overall development and their literature. . . . And just recognition is
not enough. It should be followed by a literary award in that language. For
the country as a whole, there should be another Akademi Award for a liter-
ary work by a tribal on the tribals, whether in his own language or in the
language of the state where he lives. That is the type of positive step which
should be taken.
In West Bengal, there are several state-sponsored literary awards in the
name of well-known literary figures. It is time to have a literary award in
the name of Sadhu Ram Chand Murmu. It should be open not only to the
Santhals but to the other tribal groups of West Bengal as well. The Santhals
know that Sadhu Ram Chand Murmu is esteemed by all the tribals and
recognition of him would be recognition for all the tribals. The issues raised
Photo 3.2 Mahasweta Devi and the tribal universe.

162
T ribal L anguage and L iterature
here exercise the minds of the tribals as well and they should have the final
say over any decision taken on them. The point is, a beginning has to be
made and made now.
From Dust on the Road: Activist Writings, Seagull, 1997
Notes
1 Uprising for land led by Munda (tribal) chieftains.
2 Cultivated, inhabited.
163
20
EUCALYPTUS
Why?
Mahasweta Devi
‘Eucalyptus is a myrtaceous genus of trees, mostly Australian. Most of them

secrete resinous gums, whence they are called gum trees’ (Webster’s Dic-
tionary). Stebbing’s The Forests of India (1926) has only a few words for
eucalyptus. The genus is also referred to as an experiment in new plantation.
In the 1961 District Gazetteer of Palamau and Singbhum, in the chapters
on forests, there is not a single reference to eucalyptus. Nor in a handbook
prepared and published by the Government of West Bengal does one come
across the name now deified by union and state governments. The destruc-
tion of natural forests and the plantation of eucalyptus is quite a recent
affair. The eucalyptus policy and the insane and ruthless new forest bill are
closely linked.
Forests consist of trees, plants, creepers, shrubs, bushes and undergrowth
of grass and lesser plants. A lot has been written about sal forests but almost
all Indian trees have a social and economic relevance to the immediate soci-
ety. In the Bouddha Jatakas we come across a story – Jeevaka, Gautama
Buddha’s physician, was once sent to a forest by his teacher to collect plants,
which have no use for mankind. Jeevaka came back after a long search
and said that he had failed to find any such plant. In the book Common
Trees published by the National Book Trust, H. Santappu has discussed 36
trees and plants. Kadam, ‘in Bombay forests, is considered after teak, one
of the five most valuable timber trees.’ It has medicinal properties as well.
The flame of the forest or the palash serves mankind with lac, gum, seed,
leaf and firewood, and due to its adaptability to dry, sandy and hilly areas
is a good species for the regeneration of poor soil. The mowa has so many
economic uses that in the proposed Jharkhand area of West Bengal it is
justifiably known as Kalpataru or the divine tree. Lodha brides are first mar-
ried to the mowa tree, then to the groom, who has to get married first to a
mango tree. Toon, bhendi, tamarind, kusum, jackfruit, ironwood, gliricide,
amaltas, purple bauhinis, silk cotton, kendu, mussaenda, the tree of heaven,
all have economic uses and a mixed forest sustains the immediate popu-
lace. Not all of them are tribals. In the forest areas, tribals and non-tribals,
all the poor people, somehow make a living from the forest. We, in India,
164 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-24

E ucalyptus
know very little about the economic uses of our trees. We know about the
traditional uses only. Any advanced country (other than India) in 36 years,
would have undertaken extensive research on the subject and, with a sensi-
ble forest policy, would have made maximum use of the knowledge.
Take the case of Jhargram and Purulia of West Bengal. A carefully grown
forest of sal, palash, kendu, piasal, wild jamun, jackfruit, amla, plum and
other species would have provided the region with food, fuel and various
means of livelihood. Such a forest would help life to flourish and, impor-
tantly, the soil-moisture would be retained. Only such a forest justifies the
term ‘social forestry’ because it sustains the neighbouring rural society.
And, from the not-so-old District Gazetteers of Bihar, we find that the
government’s forest policy was not always aimed at the total destruction
of natural species. The 1961 Gazetteer on Singbhum states that sal was the
principal forest product of that district. Only a small quantity of simul and
other softwood species were supplied to WIMCO. The Palamau Gazetteer
stated that sal sometimes constituted 50 per cent of the crop and stressed the
importance of bamboo cultivation, as it was in great demand at the paper
mills. There is not a single reference to eucalyptus in the Gazetteers of the
two districts mainly dependent upon forest revenue. Today, with finance
from Sweden, Singbhum is felling natural forests and planting eucalyptus.
WIMCO needs eucalyptus for the matchbox industry. I was shocked to
see Palamau robbed of the magnificent bamboos, palash, kusum, sidha,
shisham and sal, and newly clothed in eucalyptus. But it is still possible to
come across real forests in Palamau and Singbhum here and there. In the
Bankura, Purulia and Medinipur districts of West Bengal, it is all eucalyp-
tus. Our villagers have been robbed of food, fuel and means of survival
because of the state’s social forestry policy. One cannot eat the leaf, bark or
fruit of eucalyptus. Eucalyptus does not offer shelter from sun and rain. But
protest against eucalyptus, in West Bengal, is interpreted as the influence of
Jharkhandi propaganda.
Why this sudden forest-departmental frenzy for eucalyptus? Well, euca-
lyptus means matchboxes, rayon, furniture, medicine. Which class benefits
from factories, workshops, plants and markets connected with various euca-
lyptus products? Definitely not the poor and the downtrodden. The forest is
meant for society and society is sustained by the forest. I have not heard of
a Ho from Singbhum, or a Parhayiya from Palamau or a Lodha or Santhal
from West Bengal who has gone in for big capital investment in eucalyptus
products. Social forestry for which society? Not for the poor and the down-
trodden. For the rich, then? It must be so. But at what national cost?
Eucalyptus was introduced to India in the 1840s from Australia. It could
be seen in the big gardens of the well-to-do as a decorative tree. No country
in the world really went in for eucalyptus plantation as it was not a safe
tree to play with. As a full-grown eucalyptus consumes 80 gallons of water
a day, it is not good for dry soil but beneficial for marshy land, and for the
165
M ahasweta D evi
desert, where the sandy layer has already been exposed. A sturdy species,
eucalyptus will grow in any type of soil. The chief of Terai forests, Nainital
division, admitted in 1975 that wherever eucalyptus plantations came up,
the tubewells went dry and water-levels of the wells fell. He had also noted
that the forest floor in a eucalyptus plantation was devoid of undergrowth.
According to experts, eucalyptus trees were to be uprooted if the river or
stream nearby went dry.
According to ecologists of Bombay, the eucalyptus hazard was affecting
the ecological balance of the Terai, where natural forests had been felled to
make way for the eucalyptus. During the summer, the hot winds blowing
from the plains got no resistance from the eucalyptus, and hit the snowlines.
Previously they would absorb the moisture of the Terais. As a result the
Pindari glacier is already receding. Nainital and Mussourie are not so cold
anymore. In 1982, a world-renowned specialist on the subject had visited
the Dehradun Forest Research Institute and expressed his dismay at seeing
eucalyptus plantations between Dehradun and Rishikesh. He said that it
was senseless to fell fruit and fuel-yielding trees to plant eucalyptus. Euca-
lyptus would suck the soil dry. If any tree in India needed uprooting, it was
eucalyptus.
When I was touring the faraway regions of Purulia, a soil conservationist
confided that the extensive eucalyptus plantations were consuming what-
ever little water the Purulia soil had. That no undergrowth covers a eucalyp-
tus plantation-floor is very apparent. Nature’s process of creation also gets
hampered, as the strong smell of eucalyptus repels flying insects like bees,
butterflies, etc., causing pollination stoppage. A eucalyptus forest does not
encourage or harbour wildlife of small animals and birds. I am concerned
with the India I know. My India is of the poor, starving and helpless people.
Most of them are landless and the few who have land are happy to be able
to make the most of given resources. To cover Purulia, Bankura, Medinipur,
Singbhum and Palamau with eucalyptus will rob my India of drinking and
irrigation water. These are the areas where there is a chronic water scarcity.
The water consumption of a eucalyptus tree is equal to that of 10 sal
trees. Its slim trunk and narrow leaves are incapable of resisting wind. Nor
can it offer shade. So the upper level of soil, which conserves water and
nitrogen salt, gets eroded due to direct exposure to the sun and wind. The
sandy sub-level gets exposed. During the monsoons this sand gets carried
down to the river beds. Thus the rivers and streams of the dry areas are get-
ting filled with sand, and denudation of vegetation on the banks is causing
the widening of the river bed. Such rivers flood easily, causing havoc to the
countryside.
It is downright hypocrisy to destroy the natural habitat of wildlife, to
plant eucalyptus and yet to publicise India’s great concern for the protection
166
E ucalyptus
of wildlife. An impartial and objective survey by a team of experts will

prove that:
(a) eucalyptus plantation is a threat to India’s store of subsoil water-reserve

which is already diminishing;
(b) it is a threat to the country’s ecological and atmospheric balance;
(c) eucalyptus plantation on the Himalayan foothills should be cut down
and uprooted to protect the snowlines from the hot winds blowing from
the plains;
(d) rivers, streams, wells, tanks and tubewells in the eucalyptus area are
drying up; and
(e) it is monstrous to plant eucalyptus in the drought-prone regions of West
Bengal, Bihar and elsewhere in India.
Such a team should also bring out who the beneficiaries from eucalyptus
are and who the losers. Will eucalyptus sustain India’s starving millions?
How? Most of the bonded labourers of Palamau do not have rights over
homestead land, though Bihar passed the land reform bill in 1952. The
Kheria-Shabars of West Bengal are constantly being hounded by the forest
guards and the police and regularly evicted from homesteads. The Lodhas
of Medinipur lead a threatened existence. The Santhals of West Bengal are
constantly on the move in search of work. The Birhors and Parhayiyas live
like paupers in West Bengal and Bihar. In my India, children of seven years
are hired out as child-labourers just for a meal. Will eucalyptus help them?
Are these people going to operate rayon, plastic or matchbox industries?
Will they own and operate paper mills, or open furniture shops? We know
the answer. Then for whom are we sacrificing our Himalayas, our mon-
soons, our agricultural fields, our people?
An anti-eucalyptus movement on a national scale seems to be the only
answer. Since the eucalyptus-oriented forest policy and the abominable for-
est bill are closely linked together, such a movement should thwart and ulti-
mately defeat both.
From Dust on the Roads: Activist Writings, Seagull, 1997
Reference
Stebbing, E. P. 1926. The Forests of India. Vol. 1. London: John Lane.
167
21
‘PALAMAU IS A MIRROR
OF INDIA’
Mahasweta Devi
Translated from Bengali by Ipshita Chanda
The stories and novels I wrote between 1976–1990 are very important to
me. By then I had already published Hajar Churashir Ma (Mother of 1084),
but had not written enough about caste and class oppression and exploita-
tion. My reputation largely stands on certain works, of which the four sto-
ries in this collection, written in the 80s, form a major part.
I believe in documentation. After reading my work, the reader should face
the truth of facts, and feel duly ashamed of the true face of India. To fully
understand these stories, one must have a knowledge of agricultural econ-
omy and land relations; because caste and class exploitation and the resist-
ance of the exploited ones are rooted in India’s land system. I say ‘India,’
though the location of these stories is Palamau. Palamau is a mirror of India.
For the benefit of the reader, let me explain the land-system I am critical of. In
1947 came independence. Systematic and thorough land reform by the Govern-
ment, redistributing rural and urban land above the land ceiling to landless and
marginal farmers, could have saved India from lop-sided development. This
was not done. Only in two states, Kerala and West Bengal, was this system
implemented and, to some extent, successful. The Government of India allowed
the feudal land-system to remain unchanged in the rest of India. The upper-caste
landowners are still as feudal as they were, abiding by values which are against
women and the so-called lower castes. For the last five decades, one India has
remained basically feudal, while the other has remained a victim of class and
caste oppression. ‘Land is not yours by right, land belongs to the privileged’.
Belchi, Pipra, Arwal, Jehanabad – these names bespeak countless instances of
land eviction of the poor, and brutal caste killings. In Andhra Pradesh, land
belongs to different Raja or Zamindar agencies. That is why, since Telengana,
there has been an ongoing violent people’s resistance movement there.
Everything is for the upper classes. I, too, belong to that class. We had
every opportunity to benefit from a good education, to be introduced to the
world of art, literature and culture.
I saw with my own eyes the brutalities of the existing land-system. In one
of my stories, Douloti, there is a character, Crooked Nagesia. I saw this
168 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-25

‘ P alamau I s a M irror of I ndia ’
man, whose right side, from arm to ankle, was deformed. Why? Because
he was a debt-bonded labourer. And, in the month of May, his malik made
him lift a paddy-laden cart to take to the village market. He fell and his right
side was crushed under the heavy cart. I asked the malik, ‘Why not use bull-
ocks?’ He answered, ‘If a bullock dies in this heat, I lose a thousand rupees.
He is just a bonded labourer. His life is of no value’.
So the sole purpose of my writing is to expose the many faces of the
exploiting agencies: The feudal-minded landowner, his henchmen, the so-
called religious head of the administrative system, all of whom, as a com-
bined force, are out for lower-caste blood.
That I have based my writings on truth, and not on fiction, is substan-
tiated by the harijan killings and caste wars in Bihar, UP, MP, and other
places. Read reports on Jehanabad and read “Seeds.” “Salt” goes even
deeper, unearthing more of the root. The elephant and the tribal, both are
expendable to the system. “Shishu” (Little Ones) was born of tribal experi-
ence. My experience keeps me perpetually angry and makes me ruthlessly
unforgiving towards the exploiters, or the exploiting system. That the main-
stream remains totally oblivious of the tribal situation furthers that burning
anger. And, in 1997, I find, in a page torn from The Geography of Hunger
by the founder of the Nutrition Institute of Brazil, D. Castro, that my story
bears out what he published in 1952. Chronic malnutrition has the result
of stunting human and animal bodies. Pygmy horses found on Shetland
Isle were exported to America for sale as dwarf-horses. But nutritious fod-
der helped these horses grow, and within three generations they were big
and strong. The anthropologist Emil Tordey found tiny pygmies in equato-
rial Africa. Transferred to agriculturally rich areas, with a different climate,
they slowly changed into normal-sized human beings. What I wrote in “Lit-
tle Ones” is correct. Starvation over generations can reduce ordinary-sized
human beings to pygmies. Of course, the starving Aagariyas are savagely
angry at a system under which some people eat three meals a day while they
are forced to starve! For I believe in anger, in justified violence, and so peel
the mask off the face of the India which is projected by the Government, to
expose its naked brutality, savagery, and caste and class exploitation; and
place this India, a hydra-headed monster, before a people’s court, the people
being the oppressed millions.
I have not written these stories to please my readers. If they get under the
skin of these stories and feel as the writer feels, that will be reward enough.
Incidentally, “Seeds,” “Little Ones” and “Salt” also feature my experiments
with a language which is brutal, lethal at times. This was needed. These
stories, written in the 80s, are becoming hideous contemporary realities
every day in India. Whatever is written in these stories is continuing una-
bated. So where is the time for sleep? The situation demands immediate
response and action.
From Bitter Soil: Stories by Mahasweta Devi, Seagull, 1998
169
22
THE ADIVASI MAHASWETA
Ganesh N. Devy
Do I know Mahasweta Devi? Perhaps, I do. Perhaps not.

In the early 1980s, I had launched a journal of literary translations and
was keen to have a Mahasweta Devi story for it. I wrote to her, and she sent
her own translation of “Death of Jagmohan, the Elephant” and “Seeds.”
The manuscripts looked uninviting: close type in the smallest possible font
size on sheets smudged with blue carbon. The stories were great, for their
authentic realism and sharpness of political analysis. I knew that she had
written about the kind of India that is mine.
After they were published, I sent her two money orders of Rs 50 each as
honorarium. She promptly returned the money requesting that it be used
as ‘donation for whatever work you are doing’. In the years that followed,
I never met her at literary gatherings, not even in Calcutta where she lived.
Once I was in Calcutta on a literary call. When I asked friends about the
where-abouts of Bortika, which I thought was the name of a locality, they
were quick to point out that Mahasweta did not like academics. I was clue-
less as to how I could get to see her.
In the mid-90s, I decided to give up academic life and enter the world of
the adivasis. The organisation founded for this purpose was called ‘Bhasha’
to represent the ‘voice of the adivasis.’ Since the work was to be in remote
adivasi villages, my colleagues felt that we should institute an annual lecture
on adivasis in Baroda. We decided to name it after Verrier Elwin.
Every time we started short-listing speakers for the Elwin lecture, Mahas-
weta Devi’s name would come up first. But I had no idea how to get such
a renowned person to Baroda, or even whether she would be interested to
give a lecture. The Jnanpith Award and the Magsaysay Award given to her
in 1996–1997 only made things more difficult for me. Nevertheless, I sent
her a letter of invitation. She did not respond.
In January 1998, I was at the India International Centre in Delhi to meet
Chadrashekhar Kambar. I ran into Dinesh Mishra who offered to introduce
me to Mahasweta Devi. We went up to her room and as introduction, he
said some kind words about me. She looked at me once and said that she
170 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-26

T he A divasi M ahasweta
would accept the invitation to Baroda, but gave no date. She then looked up
again. I knew that my time with her was up.
In February 1998, Professor Amiya Dev invited me to Vidyasagar Univer-
sity, Midnapur for a seminar. I travelled to Bengal, this time with a team of
adivasi writers and story-tellers. I was unaware till we reached the univer-
sity that Mahasweta Devi was to speak at the seminar. It was the first time
that I heard her. I did not follow all what she said, because she looked dis-
turbed, speaking with pain and anger. We requested Amiya Dev to arrange
a meeting with her, but since she was to leave for Calcutta the same evening,
we were given only fifteen minutes. I barely managed to introduce my col-
leagues such as Bhagwandas Patel, the great folk-lorist and the celebrated
Marathi writer, Laxman Gaikwad. She did, however, give a definite date for
the Elwin lecture in Baroda.
The Elwin lecture was to be in March. Mahasweta Devi chose to speak on
the ‘Denotified Tribes of India.’ Our practice was to combine the Elwin lec-
ture with a major seminar. That year we had more than 50 adivasi delegates
from all over India for the seminar. I had earlier fixed to take them to an
island in the Narmada, some 90 km south of Baroda, the same day Mahas-
weta was to arrive. Since I could not receive her at the Ahmedabad airport,
115 km north of Baroda, I requested my activist friend, Ajay Dandekar and
Tridip Suhrud, friend and former student, to do so and bring her to Baroda.
I returned from the island quite late. They reached Baroda even later in
the night. I had asked them to dine en route, before dropping her at the guest
house where she was to stay. Throughout their journey from Ahmedabad to
Baroda, I kept receiving calls from them that Mahasweta seemed upset, that
she was refusing to eat. So I suggested they bring her home. My wife was not
in Baroda, and neither had I eaten nor did I know if there was food at home.
When Ajay and Tridip arrived, they showed clear signs of some strain. I had
no idea how to greet her and so I asked, ‘Do you have your own teeth?’ I do
not think anybody had ever asked her anything so rude. My intention was
to figure out if she would be able to chew the few slices of hardened bread
that I was planning to offer her with some pickle and onion.
On hearing my question she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that
my neighbours, waiting behind the windows to have a glimpse of this celeb-
rity, came out in curiosity. We had an impromptu meeting across the fenc-
ing; she spoke to each one of them with great affection. They rushed into
their kitchens, cooked and brought daal and rice for her. She ate. We talked.
I made endless cups of tea for her. She offered to stay in my simple house.
When I apologised for its simplicity, she said, ‘This is luxury for me. You
should see my house in Calcutta’.
I asked her why she had decided to call it Bortika. She laughed again. She
said, ‘You have no brains, it is not the name of my house, it is the journal
that I bring out’. I poured more tea for her. By now, our other colleagues
171
G anesh N . D evy
whom I had packed off for the night in the two small rooms upstairs, joined
us. She started telling us about herself, beginning with the famous ‘non-
vegetarian cow,’ about her father and mother, her childhood, the brief stay
in Santiniketan, her very special views on Rabindranath Tagore and Bengal,
and how she started work as a roving journalist, bringing to light the condi-
tions of bonded labour and adivasis.
She spoke at length about Palamau, about her adventures collecting mate-
rial on Laxmi Bai of Jhansi, about how she lost the Jnanpith award cheque
given to her by Nelson Mandela. We all knew that she had found our gang
of writer-activists a company close to her heart. She told me how, when
I went to see her at the IIC, she had thought that I was a zamindar’s son
because I was wearing a clean shirt. By the time the clock struck four, our
friendship was sealed. She was 73, I was 48, the youngest of my colleagues
was barely 23. We knew we were all together.
Her Elwin lecture was deeply moving. She had no written script. She
spoke of the civilisational graces of the adivasis, of how our society had
mindlessly destroyed the culture of our great continent, and how the inno-
cents had been brutalised. She described the context in which the infamous
Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 was introduced, the process of denotification in
1952 and the plight of the nomadic communities in India ever since. The
DNTs (Denotified Tribals) are human beings too, she said. She then narrated
the gruesome episode of the custodial death of Budhan Sabar in Purulia in
February, a day before we first met her at the Vidyasagar University.
The term ‘spell-bound’ is inadequate to capture the effect she had on her
audience. The utter simplicity of her bearing, the sincerity conveyed through
her body-language and her direct style, defeating all grammar, had completely
shattered the audience. Here was a no-pretence, no-rhetoric, no-nonsense
person, whose compassion and clarity were an invitation for action. Perhaps
Mahatma Gandhi alone, among great Indians, spoke like her.
The next morning, several of my young students and colleagues came
home to meet and listen to her. Some of them brought food, which we shared.
In the afternoon, I asked her if she was prepared to trek out to Tejgadh, a
good 90 km from Baroda. She was more than willing to undertake the jour-
ney. That afternoon I took her to show the location of the Adivasi Academy
in Tejgadh and the 12,000 year old rock painting in the Koraj hill close by.
We then trooped off to a stream meeting the Orsang river, and all of us,
Mahasweta included, had a dip. She was only 73. She said, ‘I have not been
here before but I have seen this rock-painting a long time back. I have seen
the Pithora painted in Nagin Rathwa’s house a long time back. Read my
“Pterodactyl.” I recognise this voice. It is beyond time’. She added, ‘Do you
know about the Saora paintings? They no longer have figures in the same
form, but the adivasi memory never forgets’. I knew that yet again Mahas-
weta Devi had found in Tejgadh the timeless voice and the indestructible
memory that have made the adivasis what they are. This discovery was the
172
beginning of a long journey for both of us. The next day, in Baroda, we
formed the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group, the DNT-
RAG. The day she left Baroda, I fractured my foot.
Even before the plaster was removed, I was with Mahasweta Devi again,
this time in Hyderabad, from where we travelled to Warangal. Malayalam
novelist, P. Sachidanandan and literary scholar, Jaidev were with us. Mahas-
weta Devi spoke of her activist life; I about her literary work. We returned
to Hyderabad to hold a press conference and address a gathering of activists
on the DNT question. We then went to Bombay where, along with Laxman
Gaikwad, we met the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra. He was keen
that Mahasweta Devi address the Marathi Literary Conference.
She spoke to him about human rights violations in Bombay. I had by now
observed that she spared no one, in particular snobs, ministers, insincere
journalists and literary aspirants. During that meeting, I was informed that
my teacher, the Kannada fiction writer Shantinath Desai had passed away
the previous day. I wanted to be with his family. Mahasweta Devi declared
that she would brave the overnight road journey 300 km to Kolhapur.
We travelled; she remained absorbed watching the red sky, typical of the
Western Ghats, through the long hours of sunset. She also told Laxman
and me how she had once decided to release an ‘army’ of young monkeys
near Khandala. This was when she lived in Bombay with her husband, who
played a prominent role in the IPTA movement and had a brush with the
world of Hindi cinema. She talked of the singer Hemanta Kumar Mukherjee
with the same ease as she did about Ernest Hemingway and Arthur Miller,
about Madhubala as of Sadat Hasan Manto, all her great favourites.
Mahasweta, more a woman of film-songs than of the raagas, of laughter
than long-faced pontification, is closer to that which reveals than decorates
and conceals. And yet she is detached from everything, completely. You can-
not please her by praise or by providing her with creature comforts. She is
almost not there when one thinks she is very much there.
Soon we found ourselves together in Delhi. This time the National Human
Rights Commission had responded to our letter about the DNT issue. The
Commission appointed a committee to prepare a report. We visited Delhi on
several occasions in order to complete the report. Every trip meant meeting
more people, addressing press conferences, campaigning with greater energy.
We met the Election Commission, the Census authorities, the home minister,
the welfare minister, former prime ministers, MPs, journalists, addressing
gatherings at press clubs, university hostels, colleges and institutions.
In between these trips we were in Maharashtra, making long overnight
journeys to places like Ahmednagar, Yavatmal, Latur, Sholapur, Dhulia,
Jalgaon and Baramati. At these places we met with the Pardhis, Wadars,
Bhamtes, Bairagis and Kaikadis. We went to police stations to lodge com-
plaints of rape, torture and humiliation, often against those whose job it
was to protect people. We visited sites of old and fresh atrocities.
173
G anesh N . D evy
Mahasweta brought to those poor and harassed people a boundless com-

passion, which they instantly understood though could they neither speak
her language nor she theirs. She has a strange ability to communicate with
the silenced, her best speech reserved for those to whom no one has spoken.
Between visits to Delhi and travels in Maharashtra, she made frequent
trips to Gujarat. Baroda became her second home, Tejgadh her sacred grove
for communion with the adivasis. ‘In Tejgadh alone,’ she said, ‘my bones
will find rest. Ganesh, you will understand, I am tired of it all, this praise,
this deification. I hate it’. In Gujarat, she was all over, in the villages of Pan-
chamahals with the poet Kanji Patel, at the mournful ex-settlement of the
DNTs in Chharanagar, Ahmedabad, in Khedbrahma to meet the singers of
the Garasia-Bhil Mahabharata.
When Budhan was killed in police custody in Purulia, Mahasweta Devi
had filed a case in the Calcutta High Court. The judgment ordered compen-
sation to Budhan’s widow, Shyamali. By the time this judgment was deliv-
ered by Justice Ruma Paul, Mahasweta Devi and I had already started our
work at Chharanagar. We established a library there, for which she donated
the amount received by her as the first Yasmin award.
The Chhara boys and girls, whose parents had been branded as thieves
by the rest of the world, found in her a great pillar of support and strength.
They started calling her ‘Amma,’ mother, as thousands of adivasis in India
had done. They composed a play on the life and death of Budhan and per-
formed it before her during the first national convention of the DNTs held
in Chharanagar on 31 August 1998. In the play she was depicted as a char-
acter who pleads for the dignity and rights of the DNTs in the Calcutta High
Court. She cried as she watched the agony of the branded speak through
the play.
Mahasweta Devi discovered for herself three places of rest in Gujarat:
Tejgadh with its timeless memory and the mysterious voice of the adivasis;
Chharanagar, with its intricate imagination of Indian criminality and spir-
ituality; and Bhupen Khakhar’s house with its ‘forensic’ approach to senti-
mentality. Bhupen had long been a friend, and I thought she would take to
him gracefully as a friend’s friend. Their first encounter was not pleasant.
She scolded him for not engaging in direct social activism. Bhupen with his
typical humour, said, ‘Ganesh Devy is an activist. I paint’.
But soon they were friends, as profound as friendship has ever been.
I knew that both belonged to a different league, akin to Gandhi and Tagore.
Every time they were together she would sing for him a Suraiya or a Noor-
jahan number, but mostly ‘Moray baal-pan-ke saathi’ and Bhupen would
sing for her a few Gujarati bhajans. Both sang with a fullness of their selves.
She never failed to remind him that art is nothing if not ‘forensic.’ Bhupen
read out his stories such as “Phoren Soap” and “Maganbhai’s Glue.” They
were happy in this togetherness, which both knew meant nothing to them
because it was unreal.
174
When Bhupen passed away in 2003, Mahasweta Devi did not cry. She
said, ‘Among your friends he was the only real one, all others are superficial.
He was Bhupen . . ’.
On a Sunday morning in January 2001, we were watching the Ahmedabad
news on TV; suddenly we saw the newsreader abandon his desk and run
out of the studio. In another couple of seconds, our own house in Baroda
started shaking violently. We all ran out of the house shouting, ‘It’s an earth-
quake’. The great quake had hit Gujarat. The next day we went through
Ahmedabad. Everywhere there were collapsed and collapsing houses. She
returned to Calcutta and started writing public appeals for help. For over a
month she kept sending relief material.
The following year Gujarat was struck by a greater, this time man-
made, tragedy. The riots in Gujarat erupted on the last day of February. By
March 2, Mahasweta Devi had faxed a letter to the President asking for an
inquiry by the CBI. In a week’s time she was in Gujarat, when the cities were
still under curfew. I will never forget the expression on her face when she
spoke to the inmates of the Shah Alam relief camp. A Muslim woman who
had seen 18 members of her family, relatives and neighbours killed before
her eyes, was talking to Mahasweta Devi. I had to hold her as she fainted in
anger and shock. She visited Gujarat twice during March and April 2002,
speaking to small gatherings of peace-keepers and writers about the need
for understanding, but I noticed that the idea of being in Gujarat no longer
appealed to her. Her subsequent visits were mainly to spend a few quiet days
with Surekha and me.
The days we spend together are very special for all three of us. When
together, Mahasweta Devi becomes our mother, friend and child, in turn.
She narrates stories that we are unable to read because they have yet to be
translated into English. She speaks of her life and times, of experiences that
she will be unable to include in the autobiography on which she has been
working. She is with us as if she has always been with us, closer than a
mother, sister or friend. It is difficult for me to believe that such a relation-
ship can really exist. Yet, I know that she lives on a different plane, that
Mahasweta Devi is not accessible to anyone.
Halfway through a perfectly normal breakfast, served after her medica-
tion, all of a sudden she exclaims, ‘Ganesh – land, land is the root cause of
it all. Give them land and everything will be “halright.” Oh, this wretched
“hestablishment.” ’ As I pour another cup of black tea for her, I ask, ‘Do you
remember our visit to the ex-minister’s farmhouse?’ She then tells Surekha
how she saw women’s undergarments of various fashion in the toilet of the
‘hhhonourable ex-minister’ when she was taken there by mistake by his
attendants, and how ‘mightily he frowned’. But even before we had finished
laughing, she remarks in utmost pain, ‘This woman’s body is a curse!’ Then
she turns to me and remarks, ‘You will not know, because you are not politi-
cal’. The very next moment she is focusing on her cup of tea.
175
G anesh N . D evy
I have often wondered about the source of her strength, the literary influ-
ences that have shaped her powerful style of writing, the political philos-
ophies that have gone into the making of her ideology. She confesses to
having no influences, except that she mentions her uncle, the film-maker
Ritwik Ghatak, with a great sense of pride. I am often amazed how someone
like her, slated to be a middle-class housewife, has managed to transcend so
many prisons to become what she is. What is the source of her remarkable
memory, the frightening economy of her words, that great simplicity which
having distributed life between the necessary and the unnecessary, shuns all
that is unnecessary? Is she an adivasi taken to literature, or a writer drawn
to the adivasis?
Do I know Mahasweta Devi? Perhaps, perhaps not.
From Seminar, 540 (2004)
Photo 3.3 Mahasweta Devi with Ganesh N. Devy.

176
23
HAUNTED LANDSCAPES
Mahasweta Devi and the Anthropocene
Mary Louisa Cappelli
Mahasweta Devi’s countryside is full of ghosts of ‘nightmarish memory’

that continue to haunt the present with ‘the past of a people,’ a spectral
landscape where tribal people, soil, water, flora and fauna are entangled in
a traumatic multispecies relationship of ‘a slow and inevitable death’ (Devi
1997a: 89). Writer-activist Devi provides alternative geological worlds to
exhume the ghostly presences that testify to the murderous crimes against
nature that for some might have remained invisible to the eye (Nixon 2013).
Readers are called upon to witness the destructive human activity of the
Anthropocene that has wreaked havoc on India’s ecosystems and her tribal
peoples. Devi’s interdisciplinary approach of linking fiction, non-fiction,
politics, geology, and historical ecology produces multispecies scholarship,
making crucial connections between the past, present, and future in an
urgent platform to reimagine the Anthropocene. She unearths both animate
and inanimate cells of the biosphere, giving voice to the disposable bodies
and ravaged landscapes that haunt its horizons. Devi forces her readers to
question humanity’s place in our multispecies world – to question centuries
of exploitative cultivation, political corruption and capitalism’s subjugation
of nature. I argue that Mahasweta Devi’s essays, “A Countryside Slowly
Dying,” “Eucalyptus: Why?,” “Land Grabbing among Tribals in West
Bengal” as well as the short stories “Paddy Seeds” and “The Hunt” offer a
multidisciplinary place-based geography for reading otherwise to show why
we must listen to the ghosts that inhabit the landscape and hold the forest’s
ecological memory – paying close attention to the historical imposition of
monstrous human activity.
Mahasweta Devi interrogates similar environmental conflicts in both her
rhetorical prose and her imaginative fiction, deploying both discourses as
tools for social change. In Devi’s opinion article, “A Countryside Slowly
Dying,” (1997a) written for Economic and Political Weekly in 1983, read-
ers are called to answer the rhetorical question: ‘Who can save the country-
side from a slow and inevitable death?’ (89). In Singbhum, Alliance Cement
Company (ACC) is ‘ruining crops’ and ‘vegetation’ and littering the fields
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-27177
M ary L ouisa C appelli
with ‘accumulated cement dust’ (Devi 1997a: 82). ACC operates ‘17 cement
manufacturing units’ and ‘over 90 ready mix concrete plants,’ which have
been discharging large amounts of silicose and carbon emissions into India’s
atmosphere for over 80 years (ACC Limited 2021). ‘Human, cattle, and
plant life’ suffer from ACC’s landmark pioneering vision (Devi 1997a: 87).
Devi describes the ACC’s environment presence as one of ‘savage indiffer-
ence’ where cattle limp to death from tuberculosis and trees are ghostlike,
‘their leaves hanging listless’ – suffocating from industrial residue (Devi
1997a: 82).
Here, we witness how the subordination of the biosphere to the power
of resource predators creates death worlds and ghastly landscapes – what
Achille Mbembe refers to as a form of necropolitics where powerful compa-
nies like ACC are privileged over the powerless allowing corporate entities
to misappropriate rainwater and generate death across every crevice and
cranny of the environment (Mbembe 2019). ACC’s environmental imposi-
tions not only usurp resources, but also displace people in an illegal manner,
under the auspices of ‘law when a company needs expansion’ (Devi 1997a:
86). The root cause of the socio-economic peripheralisation of the tribal
groups in India can be attributed to the alienation of tribal people from their
traditional land and resources – a topic taken up by Devi in “Land Aliena-
tion Among Tribals.” In her 1989 article written for the journal Bortika,
and later republished in Dust on the Road, Devi reveals how land has been
purchased ‘in the name of people who do not exist’ in a convoluted bed of
corruption’ (Devi 1997c: 106). Devi indicts ‘officials and the police them-
selves’ as well as ‘political parties’ who ‘remained silent spectators’ and
work in collusion with the Forest Department to desecrate the landscape
(Devi 1997c: 111).
In “Eucalyptus: Why?,” Devi (1997b) provides another rhetorical space
to examine how India’s forests and sustainable livelihoods have been
usurped by monocrop plantation of eucalyptus trees. Aware of the life-
affirming forces of biodiversity, Devi observes how ‘a mixed forest sustains
the immediate populace’ by providing food sovereignty and representing the
historical evolution of species over time (91). Monoculture tree production
interferes with the biodiversity of healthy ecosystems by depleting water
tables, discharging pesticides and agrochemicals into the water sources, and
displacing people from their lands and livelihoods. Today, exploitative agri-
businesses threaten biodiversity as more than ‘100 species of plants and
animals disappear a day’ (World Wildlife Fund 2018). In 1983, Devi warned
of the ecological disaster of monocrop production, providing a valuable
resource for understanding the importance of re-visioning liveable futures
and healthy symbiotic entanglements in the Anthropocene. Since the 1980s,
Devi’s steadfast resistance discourse on the monstrosity of monocultures
enables her readers to rethink human activity for profit and its negative
178
H aunted L andscapes
impact on multispecies life and cross-species interactions (Swanson et al.

2017). Unfortunately, she died before she was able to hear the Karnataka
2017 ban and see her arduous campaign bear fruit. In 2019, Justice Ravi
Malimath stayed the course to maintain the ban on eucalyptus cultivation
in spite of continued objection by agri-business cultivators.
Devi further appeals to the moral and ethical sensibilities of her readers
by calling upon her imaginative faculties to fictionalise similar contentious
ecological trends in India. In “Paddy Seeds,” Devi (1990) provides a nar-
rative place of ‘analytical categories’ to better understand man’s destructive
impositions on the environment (Rohse 2019: 55). Devi’s interdisciplinary
storytelling is in effect what Donna Haraway refers to as a ‘worlding,’ a
practice of ‘theorising and storytelling that is rooted in historical materiality
of meetings between humans and nonhumans’ (Haraway 2017: M23). In
Devi’s “Singbhum,” she asks readers to venture beyond newsflash headlines
so that hearts can open and truly feel the human loss and suffering that
result from damaged ecosystems. In her ecological narrative activism, she
chronicles human despair, rage, and ultimate revolt against the monsters
that ravage India’s forest and peoples.
In Singbhum, land is confiscated without any compensation. Landown-
ers are then employed as slave laborers ‘at the factory for years with 8–10
days a month’ (Devi 1997a: 86). Social corruption seeps into every aspect
of the landscape, exploiting its fragility and dredging its natural resources.
Devi shows (not tells) how vulnerable peoples and their ecosystems ‘suffer
the yoke of political marginalisation, economic and environmental stran-
gulation’ (Saro-Wiwa 1995: 111). In so doing, the pathos of her narrative
awakens our senses. For in “Paddy Seeds,” the landscape is not neutral; it
communicates Devi’s political positioning. In this story, Dulan Ganju and
his family live on a ‘sun-baked and bone-dry’ barren landscape of a ‘few
solitary cactuses’ where ‘no grass grows’ (Devi 1990: 158). The rocks and
paddy seeds harbour secrets; they are both witness and accomplice testify-
ing to the corruption and murder of Karan, Asrafi, Bulaki, Mohar, Paras,
Mahuban, Dhatua, and Lachhman Singh. Devi’s complex arrangement of
human and nonhuman spirits compels us to notice our surroundings – ‘the
magic of the forces, human and nonhuman that shape the atmosphere, bio-
sphere, lithosphere’ (Bubandt 2017: G137).
Devi sets her story during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency Rule – the contro-
versial period between June 1975 and February 1977 when political dissent
was censored, political foes imprisoned and civil liberties suspended. Influ-
enced by the Bhoodan movement of ‘wealth redistribution by moral persua-
sion,’ landowner Lachhman Singh parcels out ‘bits of uncultivable, barren,
and stony wasteland’ to Dulan Ganju in order to yield an indebted bond
of non-monetary compensation and ‘lifelong allegiance’ (Devi 1990: 162).
One component of compensation is a matter of improving one’s sense of
179
self-perception as a compassionate member of the community. Unlike other

recipients who upon receiving a stretch of cropless nothingness immediately
sold it back to the moneylender or mortgaged it back to the landlord for a
loan, Dulan keeps his land (Devi 1990: 164). He receives legal documenta-
tion and then acquires loan money and paddy seed to feed his family. As
most tribals and rural peasants struggle to exist amidst the rich upper-caste
landlords, farmers, and moneylenders, Dulan’s plight is written in the land-
scape and ‘stamped by the special characteristics of the region’ (Devi 1990:
170). Released prisoner Karan who challenges the caste system and fights
for an equitable wage and fair treatment by the landlords is one of first to
become part of Dulan’s unearthly landscape. With Lachhman Singh’s gun
pointed at Dulan and the jackals and wolves lying in wait, he is forced
to bury both Karan and his brother Bulaki on his land. And so Dulan’s
‘lifelong’ indebtedness begins as he now sets up a watch-post to guard the
earth’s secrets – a place where people are burned and huts razed for speak-
ing up (Devi 1990: 162).
Devi questions: ‘Things were that simple for the Lachhman Singh’s of this
world?’ (Devi 1990: 168). Sadly, as India slowly crouches to modernity,
her narrative responds with a resounding yes. In Devi’s multispecies world,
the rotting flesh and bones of dead dogs and dead human bodies fertilise
and make the flora fauna grow. Asrafi’s body and 11 other laborers join the
landscape. Four-legged animals are enlisted to bear the weight of four dis-
posable bodies. The bodies are tossed into the monsoon-softened soil, which
later produces aloe and lantana plants as all life emerges ‘from relations
with others’ (Mathews 2017: M151). For Devi, the landscape bears wit-
ness. As Zalasiewicz (2010) suggests, every pebble tells a myriad of stories;
‘every pebble is full of ghosts’ of the past providing the historical memory
and traumatic ‘evidence of what can be seen, measured, analysed, com-
pared’ (86). Devi writes: ‘The unbelievably green and healthy thorn bushes,
greeted each morning by the sun, thrive as silent evidence for the murder
of untouchable laborers in a remote neglected area somewhere in southeast
Bihar in the days of the Emergency’ (Devi 1990: 164).
Eventually, even Dulan’s son Dhatua rages and resists against inequitable
conditions and the unfair labour wage. ‘How can you expect us to go home
with fifteen rupees for fifteen days of work? You owe us eighteen rupees
and twelve annas’ (Devi 1990: 177). Dhatua too will be disappeared into
the earth. Dulan will get his revenge by deploying a rock to pound Lach-
man Singh to death. Birds and animals will move some of the rock and eat
away at Lachman’s face leaving their residue mixed together in the earth.
Detritivores will finish the cycle by converting his decomposing body to
inorganic nutrients for other plants to use. The rocks, the golden paddy,
and the earth, once an accomplice, will now hold the historical trauma for
many centuries. The bodies will nourish the earth and later become seeds
180
for the people to plant. ‘The atmosphere was charged with the past of peo-
ple who record everything in their minds’ (Devi 1997a: 88). And so, the
ghosts of the Anthropocene survive within the biosphere, they toss and turn
against gluttonous land grabbers, mono-crop agriculturalists, and resource
predators.
In “The Hunt,” Devi (1995) gets her due revenge against the horrifying
resource monsters who clear the Sal forests in Koruda village where once
‘life was wild’ with ‘Sal tree plantations’ and ‘animals in the forest’ (12).
In this village, once upon a time, tribal peoples used Sal trees for myriad
purposes ranging from medicinal remedies for skin diseases, epilepsy, and
chlorosis, and the leaves for bowls and preparing rice cakes. The Sal tree
held a cultural and spiritual significance for adivasis as the Buddha was
born under the Sal tree, and he ‘looked to adivasi communities as a model
for the kind of society he wished to advocate’ (Payat 2013). Ironically, the
Sal tree is also a symbol of the impermanence of life. Devi chronicles the
impermanence of a healthy forest ecosystem by describing the effects of
deforestation, describing the ‘blasted stones’ that cover ravine beds and
trains that wind up the hill to Tohri for ‘coal halt(s)’ (Devi 1995: 2). Trucks
fuelled by the far-reaching grip of global capitalism chug up and down,
carrying felled Sal logs to the split sawmills, leaving the forest ‘empty, life
wasted, and drained’ (Devi 1995: 1). It is no wonder that biracial, 18-year-
old Mary Oraon wants to hunt down and destroy the key Anthropocene
beast and forest predator. Tehsildar Singh, a contractual tree extractor, rep-
resents a direct threat to all sentient creatures living in the virgin forests.
Aware that anthropogenic factors negatively affect the ‘livelihoods of the
population living in and around Sal forests,’ Devi indicts Tehsildar and
all the global, national, and local capitalists of the world (Gautman and
Devoe 2006: 79).
Devi charges Tehsildar with environmental ecocide, deploying the image
of the ‘virgin’ Mary to hold him accountable for his crimes against human-
ity and his sins against the forest and its tribal peoples. There is no mercy for
Tehsildar just as there has been no mercy for the adivasis and their lands. In
a systematic motion as if she is mechanically chopping down a tree, ‘Mary
lifts the machete, lowers it, lifts, lowers’ (Devi 1995: 16). She then throws
Tehsildar and covers him with ‘stone after stone’ until the ‘hyenas and leop-
ards’ come at night to finish the job (Devi 1995: 17). Tehsildar will join
Lachhman Singh, Dhatua, Karan, and the thousands of other bodies that
tumble and decompose into the forest’s ecological memory. Monsters tum-
ble onto ghosts, ghosts onto monsters – joining past, present, and future in
its ghastly embrace. The landscape will grow, die, and grow again in a cyclic
process of interrelationships between its multiple actors.
Sadly, between 1950 and 1990, approximately 8.54 million tribals
accounting for 40 per cent of the total 21 million were displaced by such
181
development projects. India continues to suffer extreme levels of poverty

with 36 per cent of the population without the bare necessities of life.
The great majority of those suffering (75 per cent) live in the rural areas
(Eswarappa 2017: 196). As in Devi’s fiction, when people protest against
the state’s failure to protect the rights of Dalits and tribal communities,
they too are sometimes made to disappear. Access to land, food, and water
is essential for rural and tribal populations, as it is essential for sustain-
able survival. It is also critical for cultural identity and ‘spiritual well-being’
(Biswas and Pal 2021: 199). After years of advocating for India’s Scheduled
Tribes, in 2006, Devi finally saw the Recognition of Forest Rights Section 3
(1) (i) that granted Scheduled Tribes and other Forest Dwellers legal com-
munity rights and individual rights to safeguard community forest resources
(Tribal Cultural Heritage 2020). Forest Rights Section 5 also gave Forest
Dwellers general control to protect forests and its wildlife. For Devi and
other forest village communities, this is a small victory against the glut-
tonous resource monsters of the Anthropocene who annually consume
12 million acres of earth’s forest and appropriate one quarter of the earth’s
photosynthetic production.
Devi’s multiple discourses awaken the ghosts and monsters enshrouded in
the forests and exhume them to assert that they cannot remain hidden, that
they exist, that they are real, and that society must assume responsibility
for the frightful wreckage of human activity and reimagine a way to move
forward into the Ecocene.
With Devi gone, who will carry the torch to tell these stories?
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son, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet,
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———. 1995. “The Hunt,” in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (trans), Imaginary Maps,
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183
Photo 3.4 Mahasweta Devi: In tune with the landscape.

Source: Ina Puri.
184
Section 4
PERSONAL GLIMPSES
A Life in Words
Photo 4.1 Mahasweta Devi with her sisters.

Source: Ina Puri.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-28
24
OUR SANTINIKETAN
Mahasweta Devi
Translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty
The rains in Santiniketan were even more glorious. In Baharampur, the rain
came down on green fields. But that red soil of Birbhum was parched and
hot, the earth mother lying on a bed of fire in an agony of thirst. The leaves
on the trees wilted, and by ten in the morning, the sun grew blazing hot.
And then came a deep rumbling, followed by an endless succession of dark
clouds. We got to witness the monsoon come rushing in. Filling the horizon,
torrents of rain, rushing towards us, like an advancing army of soldiers
brandishing their spears.
And after that first shower, the fragrance of damp earth, filling the heart
with solace.
As soon as the downpour began, a tide of red water descended on
the Kopai. And the Mastermoshais would rush to the river, drag us into
the water, and remain with us to ensure that we did not drown. Donning
the damp clothes left on the rivershore, letting the garments dry out on our
bodies – that was how Santiniketan could mould our physique, to make it
as resilient as the earth.
Indeed, those habits, of drenching oneself in the rain, of plunging into the
water upon seeing a river – they have persisted to this day. Nowadays one
doesn’t get to encounter rivers so frequently. It’s rivers like the Kopai that
I know best.
Do rivers have family traits? Yes, they do. Rivers that descend from the
mountains to flow through the plains have a certain character. And rivers
that flow over uneven, undulating, rough, stony, gravelly soil have a differ-
ent behaviour pattern. That is why I once named a piece of writing “Ganga-
Jamuna-Dulang-Chaka.” I went to Purulia in the autumn of my life. The
rivers there, such as Kumari-Chaka-Kshintowa-Kansai, are like the Kopai in
nature. The last time I plunged about in a river was in Gujarat, in the waters
of the Orsang, which also bears a family likeness to the Kopai.
Santiniketan taught us to recognise the unique glory of each separate
season. . . .
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-29187
M ahasweta D evi
Sometime between ’36 and ’38, Cheena Bhavana was built. Those were
the times when the construction was under way. They stored water in a
tank, to be used for the building work.
One day, Tejes da took us there.
‘Look, look! Look at the tadpoles! There, there, those creatures with tails,
swimming about – they’re tadpoles. When they become frogs, their tails will
fall off’.
‘Are frogs of any use?’ asked Jolly, her face a picture of innocence.
‘In the world of nature, every creature has a role. Frogs live on mosquito
eggs and larvae. They provide therapeutic treatment for malaria, do you
understand?’
‘And then?’
‘Snakes will swallow the frogs. And the frogs will try to escape’.
‘Snakes are so scary!’
‘Why? Why do you say that! Frogs are food for snakes, that’s why they
consume them. In the world of animals, no creature kills another without
reason. But humans will kill anybody’.
Now, with every passing day, I see how humans destroy everything.
Through the agency of humans, so many species of trees, vines, shrubs and
grasses have vanished from the face of the earth – so many species of for-
est life! Aquatic creatures and fish, so many species of birds have become
extinct, lost forever. Their numbers are countless, and they will never be
seen again.
Rabindranath was born in 1861. In his 39th year, we entered the 20th cen-
tury. At the end of the same century, I write this book. In these 199 years, a
great calamity has befallen the natural world, at every level – in the world,
in India, in every region of India. Today, using science and technology, it
may be possible to build an edifice 300 stories high. But the balance of
nature cannot be restored.
Santiniketan had taught us to love the spirit of life. For the spirit of life
has spread its welcome everywhere.
From Our Santiniketan, Seagull, 2022
188
25
TALKING WRITING
Conversations With Mahasweta Devi
Naveen Kishore
1
Naveen Kishore (NK). The natural way in which the writing just appears
to happen . . . Is that really how it happens? Do you, for example have to
do lots of rewriting?
Mahasweta Devi (MD). I don’t rewrite. I’ve never rewritten, very little.
Hardly ever.
NK. Do you like reading what you’ve written, after you’ve written it and
then saying, hey, this is ok.
MD. Perhaps not right at the outset. It happens sometimes. . . . About the
writing, the ideas arrive like this – I was going to Samik’s house, directing
the rickshaw-wallah with motions of my hands as it is my habit: right, left.
While I was doing this, I arrived at Samik’s house and said think of two
hands as if they are wringing the neck of the air. Bashai Tudu emerged from
that.
NK. Don’t you feel lost sometimes? Because I get the feeling that you are
haunted by so many ghosts and characters and people – I suppose all of us
are. But with you it is slightly different, because they are almost like entire
scenarios of books that you have done.
MD. They’ve become part of my system. I’ve been able to get a glimpse
of a vast human society – tribal and non-tribal, all of them. Also because
I wrote for newspapers – investigative sort of writing. I often say that my
world is divided between two things – the needful and the needless. I am
interested only in the former. I don’t have much use for the needless. And
there was a time, the amount of household chores that I did, you’d be
astounded. The heaps of clothes that I washed, the amount that I cooked,
the utensils that I scrubbed and washed! I’ve done all that.
NK . . . . Where are you the happiest?
MD. Me? I love going places. I was happiest on my trips to Palamau,
Purulia, or any tribal area. But over the years I find that I’m happiest when
I come back to my house and sit at my table.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-30189
N aveen K ishore
NK. I used to like your old house a lot.

MD. I used to like that a lot. . . . That area wasn’t so crowded in those
days. It used to be a small house surrounded by coconut groves. Snakes, civet
cats, squirrels were daily visitors. Plenty of birds. And that big, big water
tank where everyday I would go and swim. I would love it. At that time
I began to understand . . . It was there . . . When I left Bijan of course . . .
I was carried away by Asit, my second husband. But that it would lead to
a divorce, I hadn’t envisaged that. Secondly, I don’t know – I haven’t jux-
taposed – I haven’t really thought about it, that if my husband had liked
some other woman very much, whether that would lead to a break-up of
our marriage or not. This was the late 50s/early 60s. I don’t know what he
would have done. When I saw that it had happened, I left. Do not think
that I did not bleed for it. Inside, something was very empty. More over
my son Bappa; my concern was that he was a teenager and would have to
live in that locality, go to the same school all his life. It seemed that I had
jeopardised everything. Not that I was not a loving mother. Perhaps . . .
I don’t know what created this barrier, this void inside me. Something I was
not getting. Love, attention, physical satisfaction – I don’t know what. And
another thing that haunted me for many many years is that physically I was
very attractive. I had been conscious of it from the time that I was a teen-
ager. Over-attention, this and that. That was also there. But since I married
him, I was determined to make this marriage a success. At that time, all of
us were taken up with Communist ideals and believed that revolution was
waiting behind the lamp-post. But we had to go forward and usher it in. The
frustration of those times was total, it was not just mine, many felt that way.
And all of us suffered the frustration. But I didn’t become – what shall I say –
a frustrated person who doesn’t do anything. I was determined to live, I had
that. Marrying Asit was alright. It led to that. I came to live at their house,
which was very different. But – this loneliness surrounded me somehow –
I tried very hard and I created a baffle wall around me. And through my
writing I could be myself. Asit thought that my writing was quite mundane
and I didn’t know enough. But I used to read a lot, and travelled a lot. And
during my marriage to Asit we started going to Palamau. We went there
many times.
NK. Work with the tribals?
MD. Yes, that was the time when I was interested in tribal life so
much . . .
NK. Was he also involved?
MD. No. no. I hadn’t started work among the tribals as yet. Not while
I was with him. I left that house, I left him, in 1975. When I left Asit in
1975, from the time I left him what I thought was fantastic was that I was
no longer accountable to anyone about when I’m coming home, about what
I’m doing, and so on.
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T alking W riting
NK. Sort of left him for yourself, in a way. That was when you moved to
that house near Ballygunge station?
MD. Seeing that house Sohag (the actress) had said, mashi, what a horrid
bathroom! But I told her, it is not something you will understand. All my
life I’ve lived in so many houses. This is my house, this is my room, this is
my bathroom. In this place, I can be myself. That was a very great release.
A very great freedom. . . .
None of them are alive today. Bijan died in 1978; Asit died when I do
not know; Nirmal died last year. All that is gone. In February 2002, Nirmal
died.
NK. You’ve written through all of this.
MD. I’ve written all along, Naveen. I’ve written through it all. In the 80s
I felt most fulfilled. That was the time from 1977–78 through the 80s, it’s
unthinkable how much I wrote. Aranyer Adhikar (Their Right to the Forest)
I wrote earlier. It was serialised in Betar Jagat. I was talking about Mother of
1084. That was in 1973. I was known as a writer who writes in cine maga-
zines. No one said that my writing was particularly remarkable. About the
Naxalites, often my son Bappa . . . Bappa was very involved mentally. . . .
Even now, as I skip through the pages of the old issues of Bortika, I notice
how Bappa had, from the very beginning, started contributing poems and
stories.
NK. How old was he?
MD. His first poem came out when he was eighteen or something. . . .
‘The father who refuses to identify the body of his dead son, I hate him. The
brothers and friends who were still shamelessly acting normal, I hate them.
The poets and the clerks, the educated intelligentsia, who engineer this bru-
tal killing on the streets, I hate them. This bloodsoaked slaughterhouse is
not my country. This ongoing butchery is not my country’.
NK. He didn’t have a problem, i.e., he wasn’t in awe of the fact that he is
Mahasweta’s son? The usual tensions?
MD. No none of those usual tensions, but he was very sad and broken
inside, not so much for what has happened between father and mother, but
because I left him. It was always there. So, Naveen, at the fag end of my life,
I’m very happy coming near him.
2
NK. You don’t actually give the impression of being the kind of person
who researches a lot. I know though that you do keep your notebooks and
collect things. For years you’ve been collecting words . . .
MD. Yes I keep them. For years I’ve been collecting words. Whenever
I come across an interesting word or phrase, I note it down.
NK. And then they find their way into stories.
191
N aveen K ishore
MD. The subject of my stories, the people – they use those very words.
My editor told me the other day: You have used so many sorts of words. No
other Bengali writer does. So a glossary has to be created of all the words
that you’ve used. Another thing I have believed is that I write something,
and you alone understand it, it does not serve my purpose. It has to reach
the common people. Common readers. That’s why I write. For mass circula-
tion. Many of us face this difficulty nowadays. That we can’t communicate
with the people anymore. Those who don’t understand anything, those who
move with the times. They don’t understand what I mean. . . .
NK. I seem to remember that you came in for a lot of criticism from
within the writer community when you started to write.
MD. Oh yes! Within the writer’s community there was a lot of resistance.
Even my father’s friends – senior people said: Mahasweta? What could she
possibly write? It’s just reportage! Things like that. But I had vowed that
I would make writing my profession, by which I would survive. I’ve had to
pay a very heavy price, for which I’m mighty proud. I knew the writer com-
munity, all of them, but there wasn’t too much of a rapport with them. And
now there’s none whatsoever.
NK. Now even I’ve noticed.
MD. Absolutely very little contact . . . I think that in desperation, I will
write a story for the pujas, in which I am being condemned as a witch. I’m a
tribal woman. And I’m surrounded by tribals of the present generation who
don’t know how things were done in old times. They have decided that I’m
a witch. Ultimately they kill and bury her. . . . I’m going to write it – I’m a
witch, I’m going to be killed or I’m a dowry victim. I know that I’ll be burnt.
NK. You’ve never given the impression that you would be emotionally
agonising over a relationship . . . because there’s this feeling that you are
detached from all this. Whenever I used to catch a hint of it, I would be sur-
prised, yet there used to be a completely different Mahasweta in the stories.
MD. There are stories where I’ve written about my family – my father,
my brothers. It is fun reading them, but those are true stories. I came from
a very unconventional family. My mother was different. . . . She never said
no to me. Ever. Once she had said: No one understands my daughter. It is
very easy to swim with the tide but she is always swimming against it. I am
still doing that.
NK. Would you like to tell us about getting the news of Gandhi’s death?
MD. That was 1948. I was married . . . and I was carrying Bappa at that
time. It was January. We were living as a joint family with Bijan’s brothers
and sisters, his father and mother. Their house was not that big. At night
we would cook for ourselves. Not me alone, my sisters-in-law as well and
my mother-in-law. But that evening we were supposed to have gone out
somewhere, probably to a film or something. . . . Suddenly . . . strangely . . .
Calcutta . . . the noise and hubbub . . . all of it began to stop. A hush
descended. Only the radio could be heard – radio was the only thing around
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T alking W riting
then – then we heard – they said it repeatedly – Mahatma Gandhi was shot
at this afternoon. He died shortly afterwards. They kept repeating it. And all
around there was this stillness. All of us were very worried about who killed
him, a Hindu or a Muslim.
NK. Did they announce that as well?
MD. Much, much later. We anticipated that this was not information
that would be given out immediately. But long before the next day came
and he was cremated, the news came, that someone called Nathuram Godse
had killed him and that he’d been caught. . . . Everybody was looking for a
direction for what to do.
NK. It cut across parties, ideologies . . .
MD. Everybody. So many of the slum dwellers and others were weeping.
I was also weeping, because it was such a shock. . . . And not many years
before that in 1945, I had observed him very closely. He had gone to San-
tiniketan and stayed there for seven days. Saw him very closely then. I saw
him again in Calcutta, in 1946 when he had come to Beliaghata.
NK. It is interesting how in those times – in Russia, in Europe – all over
the world, the stature of the people in politics, art – isn’t that lacking some-
how? . . .
MD. The courage is missing. That stature is missing. There’s no one like
that anymore. And Gandhi was different. I’ll tell you what he was like.
When he went to Santiniketan, I don’t know how long ago he’d been there
last – he had been there when Tagore was alive. And after many years he had
returned! He stepped down from the car, he still recalled all the people who
cooked in the kitchen and asked how they were by name: You are Bhola.
Where is Hari? How are you? Asked after their sons and daughters. And his
smile was so beautiful! Shining.
NK. Had you begun to write at that time?
MD. Yes, but without mentioning my name. In between I had written a
little book about two years earlier – Our Santiniketan. That was about my
school days at Santiniketan – 1936–38. When we gained Independence, the
Communist Party had a slogan: ‘This freedom is untrue. Remember that.
Remember that’. At that time, we were not aware of when the Communist
Party was modifying its policy, or of how directives were being imposed
from Russia. At the time when Independence arrived – 15 August 1947 –
even before that, Calcutta was bathed in blood.
NK. Everywhere – in Lahore . . . and other places too.
MD. Everywhere. All over India. But all of Calcutta was on the streets,
there was jubilation all around. Independence was here. After the first days
of excitement, we learnt to hate that independence. After that – suddenly –
the policy changed. It was withdrawn. And a new understanding was
reached with Nehru: for a lasting peace, for a lasting democracy. But sur-
veillance was on. . . .
NK. There is this sense of betrayal at various levels across Party lines. . . .
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N aveen K ishore
MD. Now so many people feel like that. . . . They are disillusioned, dis-
appointed. . . . That level of frustration didn’t set in for me because I never
worked according to Party doctrine . . . Not only did I not stop working,
I expanded my areas of work. That’s what saved me. I’m a survivor. . . .
NK. For somebody who doesn’t let anger or despair or depression get to
you, what made you want to take your own life?
MD. That was a time when . . . Even before that this was during a par-
ticularly rough patch in my life with Bijan. I tried taking sleeping pills.
Then I was really in – I thought I was in love with Asit. I thought – easy
solution. When I was in hospital, I had repeatedly asked for Asit. So he was
brought to the hospital, and went back. Poor man! Even he thought that it
was his moral duty to marry me. Anyway, at the time that I’m talking of –
Asit had happened – but that was the time when I was absolutely blank
with despair being separated from my son Nabarun. Then I did it really
seriously. But I came out of that. Disillusionment or the sense of pessimism
doesn’t affect me. I don’t believe in it. And I don’t think many people have
survived it. . . .
3
NK. We’ve touched upon it over the last few days – this business of soli-
tude, inviting solitude as a precondition to writing, and whether solitude
can exist in the middle of chaos.
MD. It can . . .
I’ve been practising it for a long time. I’ve worked it out. During my sec-
ond marriage, I taught myself to be alone. No one enters that solitude. No
entry to everything, no sound, no chirping of birds – nothing.
NK. This thing about communication – I say something; you hear it and
say something else. . . .
MD. Often you feel that an instant communication has been built. You don’t
have to pretend, don’t have to invent words. Or gestures. I’m searching for
people like that all the time. To whom I can talk. I don’t have any close friends.
NK. What do we want from close friends?
MD. Nothing. To sit together. To talk a little. Someone who doesn’t
admire me. Oh what work you have been doing. How well you write and
things like that. Just to be human beings. . . .
NK. You don’t want good people around you.
MD. Can’t stand good people. There’s always the terror that Naveen
will suddenly become a good person one day. What then? You stay as
you are. The best thing is, that we can communicate even without talk-
ing. I like it. . . . I want to get back the feel of the 80s. It is unthinkable
how nearly every night I was writing something unique, something major.
And there was so much of research going into what I was writing. Like
Bashai Tudu.
194
T alking W riting
NK. But somehow your research is not really visible and yet we know that
your books – whether it is Queen of Jhansi or Chotti Munda – the tremen-
dous amount of research that goes into it. . . .
MD. I have never done academic research, though I read a lot on any
subject. About Chotti – I have seen how all of them are named after rivers.
There aren’t that many rivers there, though. What will happen after this? . . .
He doesn’t know what will happen after that. After the names of the rivers
are all used up, how shall they name their boys? . . .
NK. That day is not very far away.
MD. No. They are joining all the rivers. . . . Joining them, selling them.
Rivers are drying up. All over India, a calamity everywhere, an immense
darkness is descending on us. . . . Chotti Munda is my best work among the
novels. There is an epic quality to it, bringing Chotti to modern times. . . .
. . . There is an interesting story I wrote about 20 years ago. It was called
“Akla” [“You’re alone”]. There is a little boy, whose parents have gone out
and who is all alone at home. He has nothing to do, has finished his home-
work, he is watching TV. Suddenly next to him comes and sits a little boy.
The boy asks him ‘Who are you?’ The little boy answers, ‘I’m Akla; I came
because you were alone’.
‘Where have you come from?’
‘This time though the television antennae. Just before this I was consoling
the fairy atop the Victoria Memorial. She is very short tempered. Often she
gets angry at the way Calcutta is changing. So I consoled her’.
After that Akla stories were so popular. Satyajit [Ray] loved it. He used to
love all my children’s stories; stories about dacoits and so forth.
The one that I’m writing now, I say, ‘As I write, it is summer. Suddenly
I hear somebody sniffling with cold. I switch on the big light and find Akla
sitting there; he has caught a cold. He looks exactly the same, still wears
those shorts, no shirt, the same mop of hair on his head. He has a bag beside
him, in which there is something which is moving.
Akla, where have you been all this time?
He says, “What can I do? Did you ever think of me?”
But you look exactly the same!
He says, “Naturally. You are the one who created me in your story.
I didn’t even exist before that. And after that, you haven’t thought of me!”
I feel very guilty about it. Nothing happens unless you know how to
dream’. This is the story – the Establishment is out to destroy, by remote
control, all the brain cells that induce dreams. But some dreams manage to
escape. I am after those dreams that have escaped from jail. . . . The right to
dream is what allows mankind to survive. . . . The right to dream should be
the first fundamental right. The right to dream . . .
From Talking Writing: Four Conversations with Mahasweta Devi
(video interview), Seagull, 2004
195
26
‘TO FIND ME, READ MY WORK’
Dialogues With Mahasweta Devi
Radha Chakravarty
I
Radha Chakravarty (RC): Who is the implied reader in your work?
Mahasweta Devi (MD): I write for the general reader, the common reader.
I always say I am an Indian writer because I have been translated into many
regional languages. When I won the Jnanpith award, they wrote: ‘We are
overwhelmed by the response of writers, as well as the common people, to
the announcement of the 32nd Jnanpith award’. I received so many letters
from all over India at the time. The Adivasi Sahitya Parishad in Bombay
wrote to me, and so did the Praja Sahiti, Vishkhapatnam. From the tribal
regions of West Bengal and Bihar, I received letters one after another.
RC: How does translation affect the reception of your work?
MD: Translation is always done by one who is bilingual and the reception
has been great from 1978 onwards. Of course, Hindi translation encouraged
other regional translations. In the Hindi region, in Hindi, Telugu, Malay-
alam, my books have run into several editions. When I went to America
in 1990, I went as a distinguished Fulbright Lecturer, visited universities
where my books are well known. I received a very good reception from stu-
dents and teachers. This introduction to the western world has been possible
because Gayatri Spivak translated and wrote extremely competent essays as
forewords to the stories and novels.
RC: Would you describe yourself as a feminist writer?
MD: No.
RC: What is your attitude towards feminism in India?
MD: I cannot answer. I am a writer and I write of a society where many,
many people live below the poverty line. There, men, women, children, all
are exploited as a class. I write of class exploitation, class resistance.
RC: Does gender make a difference within this framework of class
exploitation?
MD: No. I don’t believe in this. Why highlight a woman in a family where
her husband and son are equally exploited? Of course, women suffer greater
humiliation on account of their bodies. But if you examine society, you will
196 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-31

‘ T o F ind M e , R ead M y W ork ’
realise that men, women, boys, girls, all suffer exploitation and oppression
on account of class. They suffer deprivation on account of class.
RC: But you are often described as a woman writer.
MD: We should reject the label ‘woman writer.’ A writer is a writer. After
all, you don’t say woman doctor, woman engineer, woman singer. They say
Mahasweta Devi writes like a man. But I simply write like myself, in my
own way.
RC: Your stories are often about people who are victimised, yet your
characters show a remarkable capacity for resistance. What makes their
resistance possible?
MD: Class struggle can be of many kinds. That is what I write about.
I believe in Marxism. I believe in class struggle. But I am not a theorist.
I don’t read theory – Gramsci and all those theorists. I have seen these things
in real life. I write what I feel compelled to write. From my writings, people
draw all sorts of conclusions about my politics.
RC: What is the relationship between your writing and activism?
MD: The British Government had labelled some tribes in India as crimi-
nal. Afterwards, the British left India, but they left this idea embedded in
the minds of the Indian people and the Indian government. I have fought a
solitary battle against this, all across the country. In different places, I have
led movements.
I edit a journal, Bortika, which has nothing to do with literature. Tribals
and other people of low literacy write, and I publish writing about their life.
For this, the Seagull book about my activist writings, and the forewords to
the book, will explain everything. In my case, editing Bortika, writing col-
umns for newspapers and journals, creative writing, my personal life and
relationships, my activism, each sustains the other. You cannot demarcate one
from the other. They are not separate watertight compartments, but a whole.
Kolkata, 8 August 1999
****
II
RC: Which literary figures inspired you to write?
MD: My father was a famous writer. In our family, everyone loved books.
My paternal grandfather was passionate about learning, and my maternal
grandfather was editor of the journal Pratibha, published by the Bangiya
Sahitya Parishad. My grandmother was a voracious reader. There was a huge
collection of books and journals at home, and a literary atmosphere where
reading and writing came naturally to us. I got to read all sorts of books,
including Bengali classics, and many books by international writers. And
when I studied at Santiniketan, Rabindranath was alive. We had a literary
society there. In my book Amader Santiniketan I have written about these
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R adha C hakravarty
things. Later, Kabikankan Mukundaram Chakrabarti left a profound impres-

sion on me, with his use of oral traditions, extraordinary vocabulary, and use
of colloquial language. His work was a tremendous inspiration for me.
RC: You are well acquainted with the Bengali literary tradition. Who
according to you are the important literary figures?
MD: Mukundaram Chakrabarti. Tarasankar, a great favourite in my
childhood home. He was fond of me, would place his hand on my head
to give me his blessings. I read Ranjanikanta Mitra, Trailokyanath Muk-
hopadhyay, Bankimchandra. Manik Bandyopadhyay, Bimal Bhattacharya,
Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay and several others were visitors to our house in
the 1940s. I recall attending Jyotirindra Nandy’s cremation.
RC: What would you say about the women writers of Bengal who pre-
ceded you?
MD: Lila Majumdar, Ashapurna Devi, Pratibha Basu, Bani Roy – they were
writing long before me. And before them, Shailabala Ghoshjaya, Anurupa
Devi, Jyotirmoyee Devi. In the mid-70s, I had taken up the initiative to felicitate
the living Bengali women writers, including Sita Devi, Shanta Devi, Shailabala
Ghoshjaya. So many decades later, their achievement has still not been prop-
erly acknowledged. Women of earlier times had limited access to education.
They lived in domestic confinement, so that was the world they wrote about.
It is not surprising that we don’t find much mention of women writers during
those times. A male dominated society is responsible for this. It is important for
women to step out and get familiar with the world outside domesticity.
Among the contemporary writers I find the work of Joya Mitra and
Alpana Ghosh promising.
RC: Which modern Indian writers do you consider significant?
MD: I don’t get much time to read contemporary writers. Much of my
reading consists of testimonies, archival material, historical records, offi-
cial documents. That is my specialisation, so I must keep myself abreast
of such things. But I like the writings of Harishankar Parsai, Srilal Shukla
who writes in Hindi, Namvar Singh as a critic. The poetry of Ashok Vajpeyi
and Kedarnath Singh appeals to me. Other important writers are Bhisham
Sahni, Qurratulain Haider, Krishna Sobti, Ajit Kaur, U. R Ananthamurthy,
Anandam who writes in Malayalam, M.T. Vasudevan Nair. I read these
books in translation. With Amitav Ghosh I share a deep friendship. Arund-
hati Roy’s God of Small Things is an extraordinary work. And Vikram Seth,
Upamanyu Chatterjee . . . Taslima Nasrin is a fearless writer. A different
kind of book is The Land of Naked People by Madhusree Mukherjee. It is
about the people of the Andamans. I feel like translating that book.
RC: Places mean a lot to you. What are your memories of Dhaka?
MD: My early memories are of staying with my maternal grandfather at
Zindabahar Lane. Before that, my father was posted in Dhaka as a govern-
ment servant. We lived in a house very near Ramna Maidan, in the Kayettuli
area. In 1936, my father was transferred to Kolkata.
198
In 1996, I met Akhtaruzzman Elias for the first time. An outstanding

writer. A mighty writer. Chilekothar Sepai and Khwabnama are remark-
able books. I was a writer, he was a writer and to date, to me the most
important person is a writer who uses the pen. The day I received the
Jnanpith, Akhtaruzzaman told me, ‘Didi, I have received the award – ami
paisi’. I still remember, when Akhtaruzzaman was taken to hospital, he
talked to me from the mobile phone of my cousin Aroma, who was very
close to him. He died of cancer. In 1996, I stayed in Dhaka. In 1998, I vis-
ited Dhaka for Nazrul’s birth centenary. This time, I have been to Rajshahi
for a short trip. I met Hasan Azizul Haq. We visited the tribal revolt centre
at Nacholi.
RC: What about Santiniketan?
MD: I went to Santiniketan in 1936 as a student in Class 5, and studied
there till 1938. Tagore was alive, and creatively so. In those three years he
was composing his dance dramas – “Chitrangada,” “Chandalika,” “Tasher
Desh.” Those were good years. Tagore is extremely important, very rele-
vant. We cannot do without him. Tagore said his biggest contribution would
be his songs. This has proved to be true. West Bengal and Bangladesh can’t
do without Tagore. The national songs of both countries are composed by
Tagore. And his educational ideas – he welcomed students from the rest of
the world. They learned Bengali, which was the medium of instruction.
Increasingly, Tagore becomes more relevant for today’s world. From my
childhood, we were taught to care for nature, not to break a single leaf or
flower from a tree. Protecting nature, recognising that all creatures had a
right to live – this was taught in Santiniketan. Now, in 2009, there is global
warming, the planet Earth is endangered. Tagore’s teachings are doubly rel-
evant today.
RC: And Kolkata?
MD: Read Andharmanik. In the 18th century, unable to pay his dues to
the Maratha Bargis, the Delhi Badshah had directed them to Bengal as a
place from where he got a lot of his revenue. But the British, French and
Dutch were already there. The French at Chandannagore, the Dutch at
Serampore. Bengal was ravaged by the Bargis, who resorted to looting and
terror, but the Nawab of Bengal was strong. The Bargi riders couldn’t ford
the big rivers of Bengal. The professionals from Murshidabad fled across the
river Padma. It was a large exodus. Murshidabad grew weak, while Kolkata
developed. Kolkata is very important for people’s history.
RC: History is very important for you.
MD: The most important thing for me is history. Even if I write about
today, the narrative must be placed in history – be it tribal or main-
stream history – or it doesn’t remain relevant. I write fiction, but through
the medium of history. I don’t glean history from books, but from living
amongst the people. I look for people’s history in the space between the
lines, in popular lore and oral traditions. And when I write about the past,
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R adha C hakravarty
I’m also writing about the present. If you look at our past, you realise that
some things haven’t changed, even in today’s world.
RC: And myth, folklore, orality?
MD: Read The Queen of Jhansi. How the people saw her is very impor-
tant. The people’s version of things is very important to me. The search
is for what links myth to history. Think of “Arjun,” “Bhismer Pipasha,”
“Pindadaan.”
RC: There seems to be a kind of myth making, a visionary dimension to
your writing. Some of your characters have names like Draupadi or Jashoda
that recall ancient myths. I’m also thinking of figures like Bashai Tudu, who
are painted as larger than life, almost superhuman.
MD: Such characters exist. They are very real, but we have forgotten to
see them.
RC: What about “Pterodactyl”? What is the purpose of introducing a
prehistoric figure into a contemporary situation? Is this another kind of
myth-making?
MD: These situations are drawn from life. Dulan Ganju in “Seed” is an
example. The Sabars in Purulia – Sagar Sabar was old, now he is dead –
their situation is real.
Photo 4.2 Mahasweta Devi with Radha Chakravarty in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Source: Radha Chakravarty.
200
RC: Motherhood in your fiction raises the question about the relationship
between private and public worlds. How do you view this relationship?
MD: I have a lot of stories about mothers. Read “Hun Maha,” “Sanjh
Baisakhi,” “Mayer Murti,” “Kanai Bairagir Ma,” “Jaminabotir Ma.” Read
these texts.
RC: Which of your own works is your favourite?
MD: Andharmanik. Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon o Mrityu. Bibek
Bidai Pala. “Dewana Khoi Mala,” “Ghaatak” . . . To find me, read my
work . . .
Dhaka, 2 February 2009
201
27
FAMILY REMINISCENCES
I AM TRULY AMAZED
Soma Mukhopadhyay
Mahasweta Devi was born on 14 January 1926. Her father was Manish
Ghatak, a preserver of trees, and her mother was Dharitri Debi. This writer,
recognised at both national and international levels, has today reached
90 years of age. The rise of this acclaimed author is, it seems, inextricably
linked very closely to her long life’s journey as a writer. She earned both
fame and infamy, which inevitably created for her an incomparable status
as a legend.
Mahasweta Devi’s maternal and paternal families belonged to divided
Bengal’s Pabna zila, Bharenga village. Her maternal uncle, the famous sculp-
tor, Sankho Choudhuri had mentioned in his memoirs, Smriti Bismriti, that
they called themselves ‘people of a country broken by rivers.’ In the area
washed by the river Padma, as soon as the monsoons broke, the banks of the
river would begin to collapse and break. As a result, overnight, one had to
gather all available resources and, with every member of the family, relocate
to relatively higher areas and set up house again. The name Bharenga, how-
ever, remained unchanged, even as the names of these places evolved: Sona
Bharenga, Old Bharenga, New Bharenga. It was in this New Bharenga that
the Ghatak family resided. Mahasweta Devi’s grandfather, Suresh Chandra
Ghatak, was an extremely meritorious student. In his career, too, he had been
very successful. Later in life, he had built his own home in Rajshahi. How-
ever, his family and relatives continued to stay in the New Bharenga village –
his mother, two sisters-in-law, all dependents. His career demanded that he
be transferred to innumerable places – Chattagram (Chittagong), Sreehatto,
Mymensingh, Jessore, Thakurgaon, and Dhaka. He was even stationed in
202 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-32

F amily R eminiscences
Barasat as an SDO for a short period. Our father, Manish Ghatak, actually
studied in a school there till class eight. Among Suresh Chandra’s sons and
daughters, his eldest son Manish Ghatak first joined the Income Tax Depart-
ment. Later, he worked as an Income Tax Advisor. He too had a transferable
job. One of his official assignments brought him to the headquarters of the
zila called Baharampur. At first, they lived in a rented place. Later, in 1963,
he bought land there and built a house. In 1979, on the 27th of December,
he passed away there itself.
Mahasweta Devi’s student days were spent first in Dhaka, later in Medin-
ipur, and then at Santiniketan. From there, she came to Kolkata’s Beltala
School and was admitted in class eight. She passed her Intermediate from
Jogamaya Debi College and graduated with BA Honours in English from
Visva Bharati University in the year 1946. In that sense, her connection to
Baharampur was negligible. There were, of course, family ties. There were
plenty of comings and goings. In fact, Mahasweta Devi’s marriage to Bijon
Bhattacharya took place in Baharampur itself. Their son, Nabarun, too,
was born in Baharampur. It was actually when Mahasweta Devi became
well known as an author and had become involved in various social activi-
ties and organisations that she began to participate regularly in the cultural
events of Baharampur. In 1981, she organised a very successful Book Fair
there after her father Manish Ghatak’s death. The journal he established,
Bortika, was published for quite some time by Mahasweta Devi from Baha-
rampur itself. Later, she transferred it to Kolkata. . . .
Mahasweta Devi had never thought that she would make a living out of
her writing. Due to family necessities she had to take up a job. As Bijonbabu
was an active Communist Party member, that job too was lost. She worked
against a leave vacancy in Ramesh Mitra School for a year. I have heard that
she had always been keen to become independent. When studying for her
IA, she had begun a business in coloured soap, which she continued for some
time. With the money she earned, she bought ma an enormous floor mat,
with which, once at the end of every year, while travelling from Baharampur
to Santiniketan, a rather big and unwieldy roll of bedding was tied up.
When Nabarun was a baby, she wrote stories for the paper Sachitra Bharat,
under the pseudonym of Sumitra Devi. She earned Rs. 10/- per story. Having
changed houses in multiple locations, around the year 1951 or 1952, Didi
came to Bijonbabu’s rented house in Padmapukur Road. From that house,
Didi ultimately became a full-time author. It was there that she prepared
herself for her participation in the Jaipur History Congress; her extensive
tours of Jhansi, Gwalior, and all the surrounding areas; and the composi-
tion of her novel Jhansir Rani after collecting countless folklore. She read
innumerable books on the background of the Sepoy Mutiny, written in both
Marathi and English. When required, she took the help of scholars familiar
with the Marathi language. Whenever I read Mahasweta Devi’s writings,
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S oma M ukhopadhyay
this quality in her work as an author always attracts me. Whatever she
wrote about, she always prepared herself for it. When she wrote historical
works, like Amrita Sanchoi and Andharmanik, she tried to gather ‘behind
the scenes’ information on all her historic research with almost uncalled-for
interest. Yet, with equal interest, before writing the story “Stanadayini,”
I have heard that, with deep concentration, she gathered information about
cancer in minute detail from a specialist doctor. One thing I have seen in
Didi’s life repeatedly – just when life was at its most cruel or beset with
the thorniest problems, when permanent happiness and peace were con-
stantly being disrupted, that is when the depths of Didi’s mind remained the
most steady and unperturbed. At those times, she would be possibly busy
preparing for her next book and reading up histories, geographies, Census
Reports, or National-Governance-related papers in great detail. She would
probably be writing novels or stories such as Andharmanik (the first and
possibly the only Bengali novel written with the background of the Bargi
attack), Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon o Mrityu, “Draupadi,” “Stana-
dayini,” or “H.F. 37: Ekti Reportage.”
Our Baba Manish Ghatak was a renowned writer of the Kallol era. He
was a poet. However, talent is possibly not always hereditary. The atmos-
phere at home was free and open. There was plenty of readings of good
books and listening to songs. Amateur singing, painting pictures, and a bit
of writing was something all of us brothers and sisters indulged in. How-
ever, that was about all. To write for a living, with great power and influ-
ence, was something only Didi was able to do. In 1968, Didi qualified her
MA in English privately, from Calcutta University, and took up a lecturer’s
job in a college. By 1980, she had left even that job. This was because the
world of her writings was no more confined to her home. She had travelled
all over West Bengal, in the villages and interiors, to see with her own eyes
where and how ordinary people lived. She wrote stories like Behula’s. She
toured the Palamau region in Bihar extensively. To counter the long exist-
ing exploitation and torment practiced on the tribals of that region, she had
set up the Bandhua Mukti Morcha. She wrote stories like “Moul Adhikar
o Bhikhari Dusad,” “Noon,” “Sangrakshan,” and “Jagamohaner Mrityu.”
An author in the final judgement remains an author only. Her achievement
should be evaluated in the context of her entire body of work. Discussing
an author’s personal life here is totally undesirable. It is good to see that
many researchers today follow this practice. The path traversed by Mahas-
weta to reach the position she holds today was certainly not a smooth one.
Didi’s struggle was, as it is, a two-way one. Just as she was forced to give
up intense ties in her personal life, so also, even in the literary world, from
the very beginning, the newcomer, this young woman writer, was not given
her own space easily. Showered with honours such as the Sahitya Akademi,
204
Jnanpith, Magsaysay, and numerous other awards, Mahasweta, whose

writings have been translated into almost all Indian languages and many
European ones as well, achieved everything through her own efforts.
With the burden of advancing age and mainly due to health reasons, it can
be said that her pen has almost come to a stop. The same human being who
assayed the role of deliverer from all problems in the family, who actively
participated in social agitations, and took to the streets against political
deprivation, has today become almost immobile– that is the truth. Whether
one likes it or not, one has to accept it.
From Samakaler Jiyan Kathi, Special Issue on Mahasweta Devi,

January–June 2015
[The late author of this essay was Mahasweta Devi’s sister.]
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S oma M ukhopadhyay
II
BABA, MA, OUR HOME
Soma Mukhopadhyay
. . . In the Bharenga village in Pabna zila, presently in Bangladesh (where

our Ma and Baba both had their ancestral homes), the feeling was that ‘We
are the people of a country broken by rivers, kind of vagabonds of the riv-
ers’ . . . After Baba became a permanent resident of Baharampur, some of
us stayed in a rented house there belonging to Chitta babu, in a wonderful
area known as Laldighi. The area till then had not been completely swal-
lowed up by the city. On the western side was the huge Laldighi, and on the
east were two enormous dighis or lakes used by the washermen as a laundry
area, after which came an open space. On the northern or southern sides
were mango and litchi orchards and a pond. At that time, the locality did
not have too much habitation. As soon as the sun set, one could hear the
call of jackals. During storms, we picked mangoes, and at dawn we picked
fragrant shiuli flowers from the ground. Our childhood and youth were
wonderfully spent there. . . .
Ma went to all the village fairs that took place in and around the town
of Baharampur. She was very keen to see the jatras, the open-stage theat-
rical performances – on top of which she had a craze for reading. Even
today, when I think of Ma’s amazing command over Bangla and Eng-
lish language and literature, in spite of not having attended school ever
in her life, I am left speechless. Ma knew most of her favourite poems by
heart. All of them were very long ones. She was also very choosy about
what to read. Apart from Rabindranath, she loved the poetry of Bhawal
and Gobindadas. She also never hesitated in clearly voicing her likes and
dislikes.
. . . Reading Bengali was already a habit, but with Baba’s enthusiasm, Ma
became quite an expert in the English language as well. Her favourite author
was Pearl Buck. Ma translated quite a few of her works. In my own personal
collection, there is a bound edition of the journal Masik Basumati, possibly
of the year 1952, in which Ma had translated one of Pearl Buck’s writings,
as Naya Sadak. In spite of managing the complications and risks of house-
hold duties, and my Baba’s many whimsicalities, Ma had actually built up
a world for herself, which was exclusively her own. Apart from her own
206
studies, she also indulged in critical discussions on other writings. Two of

her notebooks are with me. Baba had bound them in sepia-coloured cloth,
on top of which in golden colours was written – ‘Kheyal Khata’ (Notebook
of Whimsical Thoughts). I have seen that the first compositions were writ-
ten by dipping a pen in an inkpot. Later, Baba bought her an expensive pen,
whose case was kept in the almirah of our house for a long time. Written
towards the middle of the notebook were the lines:
So many words lie within

The heart of a writer.
Do they all finally reveal
Themselves in the writing ink?
In your heart and your home
There is a buzzing
Bringing that buzz forth into
The voice of the writer.
I can imagine Ma staying up nights, after the children had gone to sleep, to
write in the light of a lantern. But surely the act of sending compositions to
some publications must have been Baba’s doing.
In the year 1959, due to the enterprise of Mejodada, our second brother,
whose broken health and fate had always embarrassed him, we were able
to purchase ten kathas of land in our Laldighi locality itself . . . Finally we
had our own home. . . .
In spite of the storms that occurred, even with the problems related
to Baba’s alcoholism, causing incidents and rumours to shock this small
mofussil town, we enjoyed an impossibly beautiful experience all our lives.
Just as we neither ever saw Baba and Ma agree on anything, in the same
way nor did we ever see cracks appearing in their mutual dependence on
each other. . . .
The housework, or rather the house itself, is normally managed by women.
For us, exactly the opposite was the case. Our household ran smoothly due to
Baba’s clever management. There were excesses, no doubt. This was because
Baba could never think of anything on a small scale. . . .
Only my younger sister and I now remain to remember the old stories. . . .
All others have taken their leave. No, the land–house–garden, all have
merged with the mists in the sky.
From Aksharekha, 11(1), September 2018
207
S oma M ukhopadhyay
Photo 4.3 Mahasweta Devi as a child with her parents and sister Mitul.
Source: Ina Puri.
208
III
THE DIDI I HAVE KNOWN
Sari Lahiri
Didi was the eldest of all the siblings, and I was the youngest. In between,
there had been of course many other brothers and sisters. I say ‘had been,’
because four brothers and one sister are no more – we are only four
sisters left.
As far back as I can consciously recall, Didi was always there. Didi’s
arrival meant that the house would immediately come alive with hilarity
and activity. There would be songs, hustle and bustle. We would be fed our
meals together, while a little discipline was instilled in us. Then again, there
was the sitting on the terrace at night, listening to stories of Jim Corbett and
Man Singh, the Dacoit of Chambal. Whatever I learnt, I heard about it first
from Didi. From her very childhood, Didi showed indomitable courage. She
had an almost inhuman capacity for work along with a liveliness of disposi-
tion. Looking at her today, it is truly difficult to imagine that she is the same
person. She has done so much for so many people that if one sits down to
estimate her contributions, the list will be as long as the epic Mahabharat.
In our house from our childhood itself, there was an atmosphere of study
and learning. My grandmother (who today would have been 106 years
old) had never had any regular school education. Yet her command over
both English and Bangla was extraordinary. Even in many adverse circum-
stances, she used to read out innumerable stories to the three of us. We
didn’t understand English then, so she would translate the English to Bangla
when reading to us. If we took our doubts to Baba, he would explain things
very simply and beautifully. But having to bear the responsibilities of such
a big household, he had very little time. Didi was the first born of my par-
ents and, likewise, the first granddaughter of our paternal and maternal
grandparents. Our paternal and maternal grandparents were all lovers of
learning. Didi had seen them all in their mature, advanced years. Yet none
of them appeared to be old men or women. Hence, I don’t think any other
brother or sister got the same amount of companionship and mentoring
that Didi got from them. When we visited Kolkata from Baharampur, Didi
would take the three of us (Sari, Buri, and Bappa [Nabarun]) to so many
places that we could not keep count – inside Victoria, the zoo, the circus, the
museum. I don’t remember having gone to the museum ever again. Keep-
ing us happy, too, seemed to be one of Didi’s responsibilities. Actually, the
difference in age between Didi and me was so great that we became friends
only much later. In my childhood, I didn’t understand why Ma would be so
209
SARI LAHIRI
happy whenever Didi visited. Later, I realised that with so many children,
my ever-busy Ma actually got a chance to escape and rest for a while when
Didi was around.
In the last 10 years, I have had the privilege to travel within the country
and abroad as Didi’s ‘companion.’ As a consequence, I was able to spend
a lot of time with her, which was impossible in Kolkata. While we were
abroad together, Didi frankly shared with me a variety of incidents in her
life. If one were to consider these with a cool head, you would wonder if
they were possible at all. Life’s complexities, the tensions of oscillating rela-
tionships, battling to survive on her own from a very young age – Didi was
all this and more. Attacks and counter attacks – nothing could either create
hindrances in her life or suppress her irrepressible spirit. That was the stuff
my Didi was made of. Today when I look at my Didi, I feel a lot of pain.
She keeps holding my hand, strokes my cheeks, and smiles a little. It feels
as though she wants to say something, yet can’t, and she just stares blankly.
When will she be released from this condition? None of us know. Stay well
Didi and continue to love us, stroking us gently, in this way.
[The author of this essay is Mahasweta Devi’s younger sister.]
From Samakaler Jiyan Kathi, Special Issue on Mahasweta Devi,
January–June 2015
210
IV
MY MOTHER
Nabarun Bhattacharya
Ma’s first book was Jhansir Rani (The Queen of Jhansi). I used to feel great
anger towards this book. The reason being that to write this book, Ma had
to leave home for many days and go to Jhansi, Gwalior – one could say she
had to move around extensively from village to village in Bundelkhand.
During the times of Daku Man Singh, it was inevitable that even she fell into
the hands of the dacoit. That, of course, is another story. Before this, I had
never had to stay without Ma. The day Ma returned, accompanying Baba
to the Howrah station, I had asked him: ‘Achchha, will Ma cook today?’
As soon as holidays commenced, going with Ma to Baharampur was
routine, a matter of great joy. A beggar with a repulsive face would get on
to the Lalgola Passenger train. I used to be unusually scared of him. This
reminds me of another scary story. We used to stay at Padmapukur then.
It was evening. Baba had not returned. Those days, evenings in Kolkata
were very desolate and deserted. Suddenly seeing a black, burnt face at
the window, Ma and I had been extremely frightened. It did not take long
to dispel the fear either. The man had been an electrician. He had been
burnt in an accident and become disabled. Since then, he had begun going
around begging from door to door. I experienced many things for the first
time with my mother. For example, visiting the seaside. Baba was then in
Bombay on film work. The year was 1952, which meant I was then 4 years
old. Ma and I closed up our Kolkata house for a long period of time and
went away to Bombay. I had never undertaken such a long train jour-
ney before. After which, our taxi turned a corner, and the sea was before
me with one white sail boat. In the same way, I saw the zoo, museum,
Park Circus, Gaurer Maath, and Fort William. Ma got a temporary job.
Though an ordinary one, it was in the Romesh Mitra Girls School. Like a
drake amidst the herons, I too got admitted to the girls’ school. One day
after school, I mistook another lady for my Ma and ran behind her. I really
thought I had got lost.
Ma called herself a professional writer. Rightly so, yet how one became
such a writer was something so difficult to understand. How many obstacles
she had to face and how many insults she had to bear were things I saw with
my own eyes. From Shyambazar’s Mohanlal Street to Tollygunge, and then
Padmapukur – having had to frequently change houses resulted in the three
of us never having a comfortable well-to-do life. But there was no shortage
211
N A B A R U N B H AT TA C H A RYA
of happiness. That was another era. The undivided Communist Party was
then one great activist family, who never knew how to lock themselves up
for their selfish pleasure in a prison of their own. They managed to achieve
this in spite of having to face thousands of hurdles in order to survive in
those days. Baba’s film stories or screenplay writing gave him an income
which was never steady. At that time, even for very little money, Ma had to
knock on the doors of several publishers, under the pseudonym of Sumitra
Debi. Ma had to write short stories, which she had no desire to write, for
a magazine called Sachitra Bharat. From lighting the clay oven to cooking,
from washing clothes to teaching me, she had to do everything. If one recalls
the cost of living in those days, we are certainly much better off today, but
those days were more healthy, carefree, and full of joy. That to enjoy life
one had to spend money was something that never occurred to us. What
I learnt in those days, in which every second and minute were involved with
Ma and Baba, was the greatest good fortune of my life. I remember going to
Jadubabu’s bazar and buying cracked eggs because they were cheaper. Once
in six to nine months, when chicken curry was cooked, that taste lingered
for a long time. The Tebhaga-Telengana issue was still smouldering. The
full-time party worker Mejo Kaku had gone missing. Fights, struggles, bul-
lets, pictures of martyrs printed in Swadhinota. Today’s worthless broiler
times are not comparable in any way. We did not even have a radio. But
we had songs. Ma sang very well – songs of Atulprosad, old film songs
of Rabindranath. She does so even now – Hemango Biswas, Jyotirindra
Maitra, Binoy Roy, Umar Sheikh – we heard so many songs at home.
Ma called herself a ravenous reader. She had inculcated this habit in me.
For a kite to fly, a good trajectory needs to be fixed, after which one doesn’t
need to look. The kite flies on its own. I was an abnormally naughty, confused
boy, a kind of daredevil, and yet with all that, my passion for reading was
also limitless. If I had not been caught in the world of storybooks, it is difficult
to say what would have happened. One evening, Ma, on returning home,
saw a crowd on the road. The reason was that on the third-floor roof, hav-
ing jumped over the wall, on a narrow open parapet, I was walking around,
trying to catch a kite. That parapet was also moss-ridden and quite fragile.
What happened after this is easy to guess. A merciless walloping. I had caused
many such heart-stopping incidents. Now I really feel regret. Whatever. Let
me return to the topic of storybooks. From Thakumar Jhhuli to Aam Anthir
Bhenpu, from Juthpati-Chitragreeb to Lal-Kalo, from Hemen Ray to Jaya-
Sura’s story – the beginnings of my reading literature are connected unfail-
ingly to Ma. Even today, while talking to Ma, our ordinary interests keep
coming up – the old books we had read, the stories in the Argosy magazine,
books on hunting, crime-thrillers, and so many similar topics.
212
I have written this sitting in front of Ma herself. The disorderly turmoil

over her being awarded the Jnanpith is on. However, there is one reason we
are both in anxiety and apprehension. The reason being that Akhtaruzza-
man Elias, a favourite writer and friend of us both, is very, very unwell. On
this occasion, let us all pray for his speedy recovery.
[The late author of this essay was Mahasweta Devi’s son.]

From Sangbad Pratidin, 4 January 1994
213
INA PURI
MAHASWETA DEVI: THE ‘MASHI’ WHO WROTE FEARLESSLY

ABOUT CASTE, CLASS, AND PATRIARCHY
Ina Puri
. . . Mashi in our mother’s accounts is a very different person from the one
we knew and loved in our growing up years. They were nine brothers and
sisters and the family lived in a house with a rambling garden where the lit-
tle children played while the older ones busied themselves with studies and
school. Ma, Konchi, and her younger brother Falgoo were inseparable and
got into trouble constantly because my mother was extremely mischievous
and thought of pranks that led to further trouble, often scolding, and com-
plaints from irate neighbours. Mahasweta was the eldest and away most of
the time because she studied at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, which suited the
children just fine but when she came home for her holidays, their wild days
spent doing what they pleased came to an abrupt end, so they often tried to
find novel ways to avoid her. Mashi’s account of these days were somewhat
different, like the time she couldn’t find the younger siblings anywhere till a
hushed whisper and muffled giggle led her to a tar drum outside the house
where the two had sought a secure hiding place. She had dragged them
out, two little creatures, completely black from head to toe, dripping with
tar and scrubbed them so hard that they were without eyebrows for weeks
afterwards.
As children we eagerly looked forward to our vacations in Baharampur
where my grandparents, Dharitri Debi and Manish Ghatak lived. The house
with its maze of rooms, passages, and niches had books everywhere and
many an hour was spent reading from my grandfather’s vast collection,
where we first had our encounter with Doctor Doolittle or Miss Marple.
Freed from school, we otherwise ran amuck and wild till we heard Mashi’s
unmistakable voice ordering us homewards. We dared not disobey her, she
was an authority we respected but mostly worshipped.
Her son Nabarun was the first in our generation but we didn’t see much
of him in our childhood years, since he lived with his father, Bijon Bhat-
tacharya. Amongst the cousins present I was therefore eldest, followed by
a brood of cousin brothers and sisters. To keep us occupied when evening
descended and the neighbourhood grew silent, interrupted with the occa-
sional hooting of an owl, Mashi told us stories. Suddenly, the atmosphere
transformed and her voice brought alive a Malay coolie who lost his arm
and haunted the rooms of a doctor, whispering to him: ‘Doctor, what have
you done to my arm?’ Or the sahib who called his long-departed pet dog
every night and the spirit of the animal appeared without fail when he heard
214
his master whistle or then that secret cemetery in Bombay, where a young
Anglo-Indian woman stood every night, hailing a taxi to take her home.
Mahasweta was so brilliant at her storytelling skills that the world seemed
to recede, only her voice remained, now a Malay youth; then again, a sahib
with his heavily accented Bengali or a lost young woman desperately calling
for a cab.
Without realising it, we had huddled closer to each other, our mothers
and grandparents too drawn to our circle gradually, loth to leave the room.
There were occasions she told us funny anecdotes, a little tweaked, of family
members and their cow called Nyadosh, who chewed paper instead of grass
and went for the occasional stroll to the terrace, going clippity clop over the
staircase, to stand there and gaze up at the moon.
Mashi also told us hilarious incidents concerning the eccentricities of her
father and how her mother found ways to handle his idiosyncrasies. This
included an occasion when he planted an entire rose garden in their pots to
impress his disbelieving wife that he had been successful in creating a Per-
sian garden with fragrant flowers almost overnight, when the fact was that
he had got the hapless gardeners to place the flowers in their pots into the
soil. Gradually, we grew up and visits became infrequent to the house called
Dharitri, in Laldighi.
In our own lives there was the turmoil of our parents’ separation and my
brother and I had to spend months in the homes of our uncles and aunts.
We were a little awkward when it came to staying with Mashi who was
then married to Asit Gupta and lived in a two-storied house on Bipin Pal
Road, Calcutta. We need not have worried, however. Within days we had
been made to feel at home and in the evenings Mashi sat us down, told us
stories, now different stories of the famous Jim Corbett and the man-eater of
Rudraprayag or then, other stories of braveness and valour that we listened
to, riveted, till it was time for bed. Yet later, as adolescents, the stories had
become real life incidents, and we learnt about the Naxal movement from
Mashi when she visited us, often very upset at things she had witnessed
first-hand that very day. Long before Shyamanand Jalan had directed and
staged “Haazar Chaurasi kee Maa” we had heard of the real-life mother
whose name might or might not have been Sujata. By this time, we had
started reading Mashi’s books ourselves and were getting to know her liter-
ary world, far removed from our own. Mashi had started editing the quar-
terly Bortika after my grandfather’s death and through its pages we read of
the marginalised people’s grass root level issues, of the landless labourers,
and their struggles, especially in eastern India. Mashi’s political activism had
now given her a new standing in a world where few had ventured before
and she now became their Ma, a fiercely outspoken leader who would write
fearlessly about caste, class, and patriarchy taking her subjects from life of
the subaltern. Aranyer Adhikar (The Rights of the Forest) is a brilliantly
215
INA PURI
researched historical novel about the Munda Insurrection of 1899–1900,

where she explores a narrative that is literary Bengali, bureaucratic Bengali
and tribal Bengali. Her iconic stature of a Devi happened as she experi-
mented with historical fiction, researching every angle she represented in
fiction. . . .
One afternoon, after a long conversation, I had asked Mashi if she would
allow me to work on Breast Stories as a curatorial project, with artists and
filmmakers. She had agreed and to make it formal wrote me a letter of
consent. . . .
Later, I had met with Amar Kanwar in connection to my project regarding
Breast Stories, already aware that his work “The Lightning Testimonies”
as an audio-visual narrative had addressed the subject of exploitation and
violence in his films, almost philosophically. . . . Kanwar’s “Lightning Tes-
timonies” had included a section on “Draupadi,” but the idea had been to
collaborate with artists on the other stories too, from Breast Stories. Maybe
the time has come to restart the project, maybe it was our turn to tell Mahas-
weta Devi’s stories through diverse mediums, to a wider audience.
From Outlook, 30 September 2021

[The author of this essay is Mahasweta Devi’s niece.]
216
28
SHOBOR MOTHER MAHASWETA
DEVI
Ranjit Kumar Das (Lodha)

Having lost the Mother of all Shobors, Mahasweta Devi, the Lodha-Shobors
are orphaned.
Shobor Mother Mahasweta Devi is no more in our midst. On 28 July 2016,
as the news of the passing of this social worker and writer spread all over
the country, the primitive communities and the extremely poor people were
especially grief-stricken. The Lodha-Shobor settlements in the villages of
West Medinipur even observed the nightly ritual of abstaining from cook-
ing, following a death in the family.
To write about this large-hearted, compassionate, and extremely helpful
person is impossible for me. However, it is because I had the good fortune of
being born in to a Lodha household that I was able to interact closely with
this well-known personality, Mahasweta Devi, and had the opportunity to
work with her as well. Hence, I will only offer to the readers a few incidents
that occurred while we were wayfarers together.
Towards the beginning of 1970, Mahasweta Devi first entered the then
undivided Medinipur zila’s Jhargram Mohkumay, guided by Sri Par-
mananda Singh (resident of Kuchladari, Police Station Sankrail). She used
to roam about among the Munda and Tharuia tenants, settled on both sides
of the banks of the Dulong and Subarnarekha rivers, in her zeal to know
about their lifestyle and means of livelihood. I remember very clearly, on a
winter morning, how she questioned an old Adivasi woman, standing on
the shores of the river. ‘Tell me why this river was named Subarnarekha?’
The old woman was startled. Later, she said, ‘I have heard from my father-
in-law that gold could be found in this river’. Mahasweta Devi patted her
on her back.
Towards the end of the year 1970, she had been shocked to see the liv-
ing conditions of the Lodha-Shobors of Nayagram – their clothes, shabby
shacks, and the wild potatoes they ate. Not having any rice, they survived
by eating these potatoes and bulbous turnips. On hearing at the end of
1980 that people of the Lodha tribe were being killed in the Sindhui-Patina
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-33217
R anjit K umar D as ( L odha )
village, Mahasweta Devi had rushed there after registering her protest at the
Jhargram SDO’s office, asking him to take charge. Immediately on seeing
her, the SDO of Jhargram said, ‘You will not go to Sindhui, I cannot ensure
your safety’. She replied: ‘You will not have to give me security, but give
protection to the families of the killed. Even if I am killed at the hands of the
Adivasis, I will go’. That very day, she boarded a bus and went and stood
by the families of the victims, giving them a sense of security. Once, she had
come to the Sorposor village of Jhargram, just the day before the Makar
festival was held on the winter solstice. After completing her work, she was
unable to return to Jhargram that evening. She spent the night at the house
of my paternal uncle-in-law, Naren Bhakta in Sorposor village. The Lodhas
had only one vegetable – batipura. In a big silver bowl, along with all other
ingredients, it was placed in a clay oven. Water was brought by dipping into
the lotus pond. With that one vegetable dish, Mahasweta Devi finished eat-
ing all the rice with great enjoyment. To sleep on, there was one jute mat and
one kantha cover. The pillow was made of straw, and the bed was placed
under the jute mat. She slept on that bed quite happily. At midnight, I saw
her singing Tushu songs along with the Lodha women. These were night-
long invocation songs addressed to the folk deity Tushu. The women were
sitting in a circle with a winter bonfire at the centre. One of these Tushu
songs was later sung by her for Kolkata residents at the Nandan Theatre.
If she stayed at the Lodha village, the women of Lodha would collect her
bath water from the well and store it, but Mahasweta Devi would not bathe
in that water. The Lodha women bathed in the pond. Didi would also bathe
in the pond and swim. Since the Lodha women could not afford soap, they
used the slime in the pond to untangle their sticky hair. Didi too applied the
same slime to her head. She had written in the newspapers once, that her
hair remained so light, flying gently in the breeze, that bacteria could not
nest at the roots of her hair. The Lodha women applied pickled fruit, fleshy
fruit ground with unripe turmeric into a paste mixed with mustard oil, all
over their bodies. Mahasweta Devi too applied this oil all over her body,
saying this would prevent pimples from appearing on her skin.
In 1996, the forest beat officer Akhilbandhu Das was hit on the head by
some wood cutters and injured. While on my bicycle, if I too spotted such
beat officers, I rescued them and admitted them in the hospital. When the
Sankrail Police Station officer filed the charge sheet in court, my name, along
with four other Lodha rescuers’ names, was on the charge sheet as well, and
Section 307 of the Indian Penal Code was in force. A warrant was issued in
our names.
While absconding from the law, I informed Mahasweta Devi of the entire
incident through a letter that I posted. On 4 August 1997, police arrested
me and put me in prison. On 5 August 1997, in the newspaper Aaj Kaal, an
article was published, titled “50 years of Independence and the Lodhas.” On
that day, my bail plea was filed in court. Reading this article by Mahasweta
218
S hobor M other M ahasweta D evi
Devi, the Judge released me unconditionally on bail in the Medinipur Court.

The next day all the others were released on bail.
Our Lodha Mother’s article was so sharp and powerful that not just bail,
but immediately, on orders from respected Minister Shri Buddhadeb Bhat-
tacharya, all the five Lodha names were deleted from the charge sheet, and
we were set free by the Jhargram Court.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of my school, Kultikri S.C. High
School, the responsibility of delivering the invitation card to Mahasweta
Devi was placed on my shoulders by my master-moshai, Shri Pankaj Kumar
Pradhan sir. With the invitation, Prahlad da (Bhakta) and I went to Bally-
gunge. We climbed the iron spiral staircase. Hearing our voices, Didi came
and stood at the door. She asked us to enter and, dusting her own bed,
invited us to sit on it. When we were to return home, Didi placed hats
made of palmyra leaves on our heads, hand-crafted by the Purulia Kheria
Shobors. She said, ‘I have asked Tushar Talukdar (the current Police Com-
missioner) and his staff to arrange a sale of varied Lodha handicrafts in the
offices of the police themselves. You all too must make handicrafts. Work
for national and tribal welfare, I am with you’.
I have been to many powerful people, but no one allowed me to sit on
their own bed, yet Mahasweta Devi gave me a place on her own bed. If we
had any problem, she talked to us for hours on end, made phone calls, and
wrote letters. Who will we go to now?
The last time I saw her alive was on 6 December 2015 at her Golf Green
address, Flat No. 1/1 PH.I (Nabarun da’s family flat). From the pond on
my land, I had taken a few magur or catfish. I also carried some vegetables.
Seeing these, Didi was delighted. She had hugged me. I could not meet her
after that. The last time I finally saw her was on 29 July 2016 at Rabindra
Sadan. Having lost Mahasweta Devi, we have been orphaned. Which great
person is there now to come forward and stand beside us? Do you know
why Lodha-Shobors are still forest dwellers even today?
Aksharekha, Special Issue on Mahasweta Devi, 11(1),

September 2018
219
29
SMALL BIG THINGS
Anand (P. Sachidanandan)
On a pleasantly cool December evening in 1997, Mahasweta Devi and

I stepped out of her rented house in Ballygunge Station Road and walked
to the Howrah Station. At the station, we boarded a second-class sleeper
coach of a train going to Purulia. No one seemed to have recognised her
on our way or in the station. The same was the case with the passengers in
the coach. But, as the journey went, all along the route, wherever the train
halted, a large number of people appeared at our windows in the platform.
They had come to meet Mahasweta Devi after getting news that she was
travelling in the train. This continued late into the night. After some time,
someone in our cubicle called me and asked privately who this lady was.
My first impulse was to say Hajar Churashir Ma, but I did not say it. I just
said her name. That didn’t make any difference to him. Then I added that
the person sitting next to him was an important citizen, a social worker and
writer. Then too he blinked. Later when I told Mahasweta Devi about this,
she laughed in her natural way and signalled towards the window, as if ask-
ing what about those people.
The next day noon we reached Purulia. What I witnessed the next few
days could be explained as the utter absence of what we call government
in that area. There were no proper roads or good houses, no sign of educa-
tional or health activities. Twenty years of communist rule had passed by.
Things may not change, but we cannot leave things like that, that was the
reply she gave to my comments.
It was with this positive attitude that this lady took on life. The Paschim
Banga Kheria Sabar Kalyan Samiti was one of the symbols of this attitude
of hers. I do not have to explain more about this Samiti or of her other crea-
tions. I was looking at a people who were and still are stamped as criminals;
now living, talking, singing and working like any one of us.
It was after her visit to Palamau district in Bihar in the 60s where she
witnessed the appalling conditions of life in rural areas that the big turn
in her life happened, she told me. She was herself going through a difficult
period then, after her break with her husband Bijon Bhattacharya. ‘I was
living alone in a southern suburb in a small house, all alone, with a big
220 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-34

S mall B ig T hings
15th century tank in the front,’ she wrote in one of her several letters to me.
‘Trees, paddy fields, coconut groves, birds, squirrels, mongooses abound-
ing. The part time maid left in the evening. Jackals howled. Owls screeched.
I would read till 1 a.m. and would flash the torch to see if any snake has
crawled in. The area was a snake kingdom. Had killed a few, even one
vicious wild cat once. But I don’t like killing. And my heart was all broken
as I had to leave Nabarun behind. Pining for him, once I tried to commit
suicide. Details some other day. When I came to, I found Nabarun holding
my hands. He told me, Ma, live, don’t die . . ’.
She plunged into life. On one side the social work and on the other, lit-
erature. Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon o Mrityu belonged to this period.
She kept pressing me to translate this novel, one of her favourites, into
Malayalam. I was hesitant because of my lack of proficiency in Bengali. In
the end it came out well. And for me what an experience it was!
Starting with the work among the bonded laborers, her activities ramified
in all directions. Not just Sabars, all sets of people would reach her small
house in Ballygunge Station Road. Not only developmental schemes, she
would take up even problems of individuals. She would personally go to
the police and the ministers. Delhi, Bengal, Maharashtra or Gujarat, I have
not seen any officer treating her with arrogance. She had a peculiar knack to
awaken their conscience. To make them feel that, we the so-called civilised
people are equally responsible for the mistakes that the poor people make.
‘I and you belong to that section (class) who have benefitted from independ-
ence. So it is our duty to do our utmost towards self-atonement,’ she wrote
to me once.
It was some 20 years ago in Bangladesh that we first met. We were in a
delegation sent by the Sahitya Akademi. We in India were recovering from
the wounds of an Emergency, political assassinations, communal riots and
massacres, and groping through the twilight of uncertainties. And Bang-
ladesh, after its birth through violence and fire, and later massacres, mili-
tary coups and dictatorships, was experimenting with a fragile democracy.
Mahasweta Devi was very well known there. She took me to an unusual
friend, Akhtaruzzaman Elias, who was then in the terminal stages of cancer.
The author of Chilekothar Sepai and Khwabnama was in an extremely jubi-
lant mood and thrilled to see us, in spite of the pain and suffering he was
going through. He lived only a few more days after that. After we left, she
stayed back a few more days in Bangladesh, visiting her grandfather’s crum-
bling house in Rajshahi, and a remote tribal area, ‘where, about a thousand
tribals awaited me. What have I done for them? Nothing. They never saw
me. But the name was more than enough. It is a fearsome burden too and
I find it too heavy,’ she wrote.
Those days she used to visit Delhi very often. Less for literary assign-
ments, more for pursuing the schemes she had taken up and for getting
money sanctioned for them. She would sit in the government offices and
221
A nand ( P . S achidanandan )
write letters in running hand and submit them then and there. Then visits
to the Human Rights Commission, Census Commission and so on. The
Human Rights Commission constituted a committee to look into the mat-
ters of denotified tribes, at her insistence. I have not seen an officer or min-
ister facing her without doing enough home work. Her aim was to extract
something material at every visit and she always did it. She would go and
speak at any meeting. She would use her fame for getting things she wanted.
Fame is not for fame, she would say, it is for extracting benefits.
A few months before her death I met her at her residence at Golf Green.
She was practically confined to her house. Her face lit up upon seeing me.
We talked of many things. She enquired about everyone in my family, even
about my little grand-daughter, whom she has never met. She did not say
anything about her own family, which was shrinking. As I left her I won-
dered about the turbulent life that lay behind her. Two marriages, two
divorces, one suicide attempt. Then breaking the walls of her house and
barging into the world outside. Valley of death, she used to call the world
around us. How she tried to infuse life into that valley!
Once while she was talking in a meeting, someone posed a question about
bringing the adivasis to the mainstream. Are you talking about bringing the
ocean to a small stream? she challenged. Your mainstream is only a stream
however main it is. What lies beyond is a sea, quiet on the outside but boil-
ing inside . . .
I come back to our conversation in the train to Purulia. The crowd that
waited outside at the train windows, was that sea. Even those who crowded
around her in the remote village of Bangladesh which she had never visited
since the Partition of the country. Then of course there is a small section
who we call intellectuals, writers, and such who knew her. What we call
the mainstream is the mass lying between the two, the mankind that is the
source of all injustices, cruelties, selfishness, and blank indifference. How
far had she succeeded in waking up that blind and deaf community through
her works and action?
We may further ask: how better is the society she left behind from what
she took and started with? How far has it changed? Two things come to
my mind: One: There is a story Mahasweta Devi used to tell me in the 90s
when I met her first. It is about a girl, Chuni Kotal, who was born in the
Lodha tribe in Jhadgram in Purulia district. Lodhas used to be dacoits once.
People of mainstream used to fear them and hunt them like wild animals.
Chuni had to face extreme trials and tribulations to get through school.
With Mahasweta Devi’s constant encouragement and assistance, she com-
pleted her degree and got admission for post-graduation in anthropology
in the North Bengal University. There she fell prey to all kinds of harass-
ments and discriminations. Her colleagues played tricks on her, trapped her,
tortured her. At last, one day, she quietly walked out of the hostel room,
went to her husband’s place and hanged herself. All this happened in the
222
S mall B ig T hings
80s. Now in the second decade of the 21st century we still hear about Rohit
Vemula, Najib and others. Flogging, burning, lynching, rape, honour kill-
ing, the pages of newspapers appear and disappear . . .
Two: In 1996 Dhaka, writers of two countries, after tiding over streams
of blood, met in an unsure atmosphere of peace. All the discussions and
talks of the meet were shadowed by these. We feared the past and feared the
dark nights that may visit again. Hasn’t that night descended over Dhaka
now? And in our own country too? Is such a meet possible in Dhaka now?
It is no longer a simple task for an ordinary citizen to live peacefully, he has
to thread his way through the predator police of the government as well as
the moral police, fanatics, goons, and even the lawyers who are supposed to
fight for his rights, but come out to kick and beat the justice seekers.
This is not to say that the efforts of Mahasweta Devi and others have been
futile. In fact, values of certain deeds are not to be judged by the scales of
success and defeat, but by the very deeds themselves. In the dark hours of
despondency, a poem of old days quietly and unexpectedly enters from the
wings and fills the stage. A poem most of us have studied in primary classes,
of Alfred Henry Miles:
I cannot do the big things

That I should like to do
To make the earth forever fair,
The sky forever blue.
But I can do small things
That help to make it sweet
Tho’ clouds arise and fill the skies
And tempests beat.
I cannot stay the raindrops
That tumble from the skies
But I can wipe the tears away
From baby’s pretty eyes.
From Indian Literature,
LXIII(5), No. 313, September–
October 2019
223
30
MAHASWETA DEVI
A Legend Who Lived on Her Own Terms
Anita Agnihotri
I remember that winding iron staircase. Bone-chilling to the touch. The Bal-
lygunge Station Road house. Trying to climb those stairs, it was said, some
had even rolled down back to the ground. I promised myself to brave the
impish smile playing on Mahasweta Devi’s lips, as she would recall those
incidents while watching me. So, I had climbed up very quickly along with
the young translator-editor, Sarmishtha Dutta Gupta. Stories written by
women were being translated and published in a collection. Mahasweta
Devi’s story “Noon” (“Salt”) had been selected and translated by Sarm-
ishtha. Now the author’s permission was required. I was aware that my
contemporary writers Amar Mitra, Swapnamoy Chakraborty, Nalini Bera,
and others went to meet Mahasweta Devi quite often and received plenti-
ful love. But what if Mahasweta Devi refused an unknown young woman?
Unless one asked her for the first time, who would get her to agree? Of all
the contemporary writers, for the first time in my life, I was about to visit
the home of the one who had always been my role model. I was, needless to
say, full of excitement and anticipation.
I had seen and met Mahasweta Devi before – but at meetings and confer-
ences. In the subsequent literary period, writers and artists were engaged in
writing books for the neo-literates of Bengal. In this enterprise, Mahasweta
Devi was at the forefront. For this event, I too had written one book – Rat-
tan Masterer Pathshala. Meanwhile, workshops were being held for sex-
workers. In the name of supervising this difficult section of society, several
of us writers used to go along with social workers. There too, Mahasweta
Devi came close to the people as a public intellectual fighting for their rights.
She would be available whenever required. Mahasweta Devi did not use
soft and soothing language. When a new young writer addressed her as a
mother-figure, she was not pleased at all. I never found her trying to soften
or sugar-coat her words at any gathering or function. What made her spe-
cial was her ability to stay as true to herself and her character as possible,
whatever the circumstances.
224 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-35

M ahasweta D evi
That day, I had carried the typed permission letter in my hand. Holding
it out to her, I said, ‘Please sign this’. I saw that she showed little curios-
ity regarding the publisher of the collection. She then began to discuss the
original Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and the proposed amendment that
had been placed in Parliament at that time. Afterwards, she asked me to
prepare a detailed note and bring it to her. With the note, I again climbed up
that spiral staircase. Of course, subsequently, I visited many times without
any specific reason. She had told Sarmishtha to come later with the English
translation of her stories. Afterwards, I heard that she had carefully listened
and made some changes. Later, while Sarmishtha was editing a collection
of her stories in English translation, Mahasweta Devi had very carefully
explained to her the intricacies of using local words.
Actually, that immediate involvement in the Land Acquisition Act
expresses Mahasweta Devi’s keen consciousness of reality. For any social
or humane work, she had an extraordinary ability to engage with everyone,
known or unknown. Later, on visiting her Golf Green or Ajoynagar houses,
I have seen, how a lot of her time was spent in various sorts of liaison work.
Sometimes she would be calling the hospital Superintendent regarding the
admission of some patient who had come from the village. At others, she
would be calling the police station for the release of some innocent Adivasi
youth stuck in the lockup. She acted without hesitation. In fact, she made
such requests with authority. She told me these are our legitimate rights.
The government offices are for us, after all. Why should she not get work
done by them?
She was as enthusiastic about my writing as she was in her demands
from the government that I served in one of my roles. Giving me 30 copies
of Bortika, she said: ‘Sell these’. Tongue-tied as I mostly was, who would
I approach? I bought them all myself, deposited the money, and distributed
the copies to worthy readers. When I had left Kolkata and was working in
Orissa as Secretary in the Ministry of Handloom and Handicrafts, a national
exhibition was to be held in Kolkata. Since the livelihood and income of the
weavers were linked to this, I was taking a lot of care. I invited Mahasweta
Devi to inaugurate the exhibition. The Chief Guest is customarily gifted a
handwoven silk saree by the State Co-operative Society. Mahaswetadi said:
‘Give me 10 sarees of a coarse weave’. The very low-priced sarees woven by
the handloom weavers of Japatsinghpura were delivered to her office. All
these would go into her distribution accounts. She had asked to meet Satish
Agnihotri, my life partner. When the two of us visited her Golf Green house,
she was very happy. After chatting over tea, she showed him the handle of
a bag. ‘This is torn and needs to be repaired’. She showed me a cot in the
drawing room. ‘It would be good if I could get two bedspreads for it’. This
was her way of trying to involve us in her work. If we could not help at the
grassroots level, she would pointedly draw attention to other ways in which
225
A nita A gnihotri
we could contribute. The next time, when we brought her a new bag, her
face had lit up with genuine joy. The owner of the torn bag must have also
gone back happy with the new one.
Her writings had begun to agitate young writers like us, right after Hajar
Churashir Ma was published. Just as the readers of this novel discovered a
new Mahasweta, she herself seemed to have finally found her true identity as
a writer. The first edition of the novel is not so much about the awakening of
the politics of the left, as about the sharp, rising pain in a mother’s breast. In
the wounds of personal life, the separation from one’s child, in all these dark
recesses, Mahasweta had searched for her own way forward. Her interest in
the history of the folktales of Bengal had already been noted. Now she was
searching for the root causes of the Adivasi Rebellion. She began travelling,
and, after collecting the history of the people, wrote her stories. One by one
came – Aranyer Adhikar, Chotti Munda Ebong tar Teer, Bashai Tudu Upa-
khyan, and many other unforgettable narratives. Even “Noon,” “Bayen,”
and “Draupadi,” which appeared later, showcased Mahasweta Devi to a
world readership.
However, much before Hajar Churashir Ma, Mahasweta Bhattacharya’s
quest for history had begun. It was as though she loved to place the country
in the palm of her hand and look at it from all angles. She herself has said
that in order to understand her writing fully, the fiction written before the
1970s had to be read as well. Laili Aasmaner Aina, Timir Lagan, Amrita
Sanchoi, etc., writings with very ordinary dramatic elements, conceal within
them the origins of the powerful flow that would emanate from the pen of
the later Mahasweta Devi. Jhansir Rani, published in 1956, will of course
remain forever a unique novel by any measure. She had this original ability
to weave unwritten history into history. For those of us who knew Mahas-
weta Devi from her Hajar Churashir Ma, Chotti Munda Ebong tar Teer,
or her collection of stories, her early writings had already sounded a soul-
stirring voice from India, from which her Kolkata-centric city romances had
diverted our attention.
Later on, in the border regions of Bengal, she had begun work among the
most marginalised Adivasi Lodha-Shobor tribes and was using the might
of her pen to fight for their rights. She had put together her own group of
social work volunteers. It is my personal view that if she hadn’t got directly
involved in social work, Mahasweta would have been able to compose and
invent much more as a writer. But all her life, she only did whatever she
wanted to do. Literature was replaced by the responsibilities of a social
worker. In her personal relations, too, the freedom of her heart got more
importance than the bindings of society. That is exactly what Mahasweta
Devi was like.
However, she demonstrated that writing was neither a desk-bound activ-
ity, nor divorced from human contact. That writing could never be complete
226
M ahasweta D evi
without closeness to humanity is an awareness she was able to infuse into all
the contemporary young writers.
Her search for the roots of the forgotten and undocumented history of
the Adivasi society, and her personal involvement in their lives, had indeed
intertwined. From this bonding of the two emerged her essence as a writer
and attracted readers to her work.
As a writer, Mahasweta Devi was extremely courageous from the very
beginning. What the reader might think or find appealing were not ques-
tions that mattered to her. Nor was she concerned about where her writ-
ings were being published. Betar Jagat, Prasad, and Nabo Kallol were the
kind of magazines in which her outstanding writings were published. In her
youth, she had to write because she needed money. She has herself acknowl-
edged this. In her early writings, critics could find nothing unique. Yet the
strength hidden within these stories was totally her own. To all the young
writers who spend their youth lamenting, waiting in vain for a call to write
a novella in a big commercial paper, Mahasweta Bhattacharya, the spirited
young woman, should be a role model. Mahasweta had taught us that a
writer’s freedom had to be earned totally by the writer himself/herself.
I have seen this independent spirit in her other work as well. After the hei-
nous Godhra incident in Gujarat, riots began in Ahmedabad and thousands
of people of the minority communities lost their lives and property because
of the callousness of the government. Much before any announcement of
aid was made by any section of the government, I heard that Mahasweta
Devi was already on her way by train, carrying some dry rations and five
thousand rupees, which she had collected. On hearing this, my first thought
was that this would be merely a drop in the ocean. But Mahasweta Devi was
unwilling to wait to collect more money. For her, to reach the people as fast
as possible was more necessary. Later, I heard, this money and dry rations
were the first outside aid to reach the endangered city.
Unlike other writers such as Pratibha Basu, Nabaneeta Deb Sen, and writ-
ers of the present generation, Mahasweta Devi rarely wrote about her own
personal life. To young writers like me, she had never expressed any regrets,
even when relating stories very close to her heart. It was as if she came
before us as a social entity from head to toe. After she passed away, some-
one close to her had written that her son Nabarun never enjoyed a mother’s
love. On hearing this, I was torn apart with pain. A mother’s love cannot be
shown publicly by splitting open one’s heart. I have never heard of any such
questions being asked regarding a father’s love. In a tribute from an aged
publisher known to me, he mentions having seen Mahasweta in the dark-
ness of an evening, standing in a lane of College Street, crying profusely for
her son. I did not see this myself. However, what I discovered was a mother’s
heart which was always full of extreme pride regarding Nabarun’s prose
style and compositions and the Bhashabondhon journal which he edited.
227
A nita A gnihotri
The measure of these emotions cannot be gauged by any weighing scales.

Even if a woman writer conquers the world on the strength of her brilliance
and talent, in the eyes of the society she still has to pass the test of being a
responsible wife and mother. The practice of gender discrimination is still
being carried on, even by the community of writers.
Even at the peak of her national and international fame, honoured with
the Magsaysay and Jnanpith awards, the English translations of her work
acclaimed by readers in different parts of the world, Mahasweta Devi had
spared her valuable time to visit the Roopkala Kendra at my earnest and sin-
cere invitation. In this new centre for the production of films connected with
social awareness and upliftment, I, as a founder-director along with my col-
leagues, was then working in multiple capacities and through various medi-
ums. At our invitation, Mahasweta Devi, along with her friend Rajlakshmi
Devi, had sat and watched a documentary film on her life. She had read out
her own poems and even spent some hours in an animated discussion with
the director and students. I never saw her manifest any consciousness of her
own fame and immense influence on society.
After leaving the Roopkala Kendra and work-life in Bengal, I had visited
the Golf Green house when I went to Kolkata. After I touched her feet, she
had hugged me and said, the dusty smell in your hair, if washed well, will
go away. But this is not a smell I want to wash away. Who knew this better
than Mahasweta Devi herself?
In the last phase of her life, possibly caused mainly by anxiety and rebel-
lious feelings, she had moved away from the Left ideology and involved her-
self in a different kind of politics. This became evident soon after her famous
Nandigram episode. Her decision alienated her old friends and readers.
The association with new friends could not however fill this gap. But no
circumstances have succeeded in uprooting from our minds the image of
Mahasweta Devi, writer of writers. The mystic mantra of understanding
and recognising India, which I gained from her, is what motivates my pre-
sent endeavours even today. While touring drought-stricken Marathwada;
poverty-stricken, naxal-infested Chhattisgarh; and the Gond villages along
the banks of the rapidly flowing Gadchiroli river, I can feel that Mahasweta
Devi still remains a living presence, providing shade like a large shirish rain-
tree over the dusty aroma that lingers around my head.
228
31
‘EVERY DREAM HAS THE RIGHT
TO LIVE’
Dakxin Bajrange
On 21 August 2016, the ashes of Mahasweta Devi were buried at the Adi-
vasi Academy in Tejgadh, Gujarat, a tree was planted there, and a monu-
ment constructed, where people can read Mahasweta Devi’s words: ‘Every
dream has the right to live.’
To be buried at the Adivasi Academy was her wish, expressed to Ganesh
N. Devy, noted literary critic and tribal rights activist. The transcript
of the conversation was published by Matrubhumi on 28 July 2016, around
the time when Amma had to be hospitalised after her health took a turn for
the worse. An excerpt:
Amma in disappointment, ‘What does our country do? Nothing.

Nobody got anything after our Independence. Nothing’.
‘What do you think about death?’ Devy asks Amma. . . .
‘As far as I am concerned, I want to live forever. I will live through
my writings. After my death. That’s why I have asked you not to
cremate me. I have no belief in being cremated and turned to ashes.
I want to be somewhere. I would love to be buried in Purulia, but
they are such old-fashioned Hindus there, that they won’t allow it.
So, Tejgadh is the best option for me and I feel I should be buried
here. What I want is for a Mahua tree to be planted above me.
I nurse an affection for the Mahua . . . the tree will help me survive,’
says Amma. . . .
‘You can’t go into the river; the earth is the ultimate giver and
receiver. Let the earth receive us, keep and eat us.’
(Bajrange 2016)
Amma did not want to die. She wanted to live forever. Even after death, she
wanted to dedicate her body to mother earth. On the Mahua tree planted
over her grave, she wanted birds to rest, to play, and eat its fruits and for
the Adivasis to come and take the Mahua flowers to make daru (alcohol)
and eat the fruits.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-36229
D akxin B ajrange
But she will live, not just through the Mahua tree that will hug the sky
and the birds, or her writings; she will live in my memory and of others
she inspired. When I saw Mahasweta Devi for the first time in 1998, I was
around 25 years old – a young man. She was 72 years old and full of energy,
working for the invisible people – the most marginalised population of India
called the Denotified Tribes. I heard the term ‘Denotified Tribe’ for the first
time from her, even though as a member of the Chhara tribe, I fell into this
governmental category, which referred to those tribes who were listed as
‘criminal tribes’ by the colonial authorities and who, after India’s independ-
ence, were denotified and their ‘born criminal’ status rescinded. But these
tribes continue to be ostracised socially, viewed as people who are prone to
criminality, and brutally repressed by the police and other state authorities.
By talking to me about Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs) in other
states, she planted a seed in my mind: there was work to be done, not only
for my own community but also for DNTs across India. She was instru-
mental in changing lives of DNTs across India through something called
the Budhan Theatre, which spawned a movement for dignity. The journey
of community theatre within the DNT community in India, which parallels
Budhan Theatre’s history, began in 1998.
When Amma visited Chharanagar for the first time in 1998, the local
police were scared that she would be robbed if she entered our locality. Her
celebrity status meant that she was detained for nearly an hour to convince
her to turn back. But still, she came to see us. We didn’t even know who she
was at the time! After she came, it seemed that the world slowly ‘discov-
ered’ Chharanagar. Ganesh N. Devy and Mahasweta Devi started a small
library in Chharanagar, Ahmedabad, with the help of the young members
of the Chhara community. Meanwhile, the judgement of the Calcutta High
Court about the killing of Budhan Sabar appeared in the inaugural issue of
the quarterly magazine called Budhan, which also sought to memorialise
the death of this innocent tribal. Belonging to the denotified ‘Sabar’ tribe
of West Bengal, Budhan was brutally beaten up by police officials and then
sent to judicial custody, where he died due to severe injuries. The court
judgement came, soon after, that Budhan had died because of the torture he
had endured in police custody. This judgement was remarkable because for
the first time, people from denotified tribes felt they could trust the Indian
judiciary.
The young members of the Chhara community, with the encouragement
of Amma and Devy, came together in the small library and started rehears-
ing a street-play based on Budhan’s murder. I was assigned the task of writ-
ing the play. The killing had resonances in my community’s daily encounter
with the legal system and judiciary. We had no money for props, lights,
costumes, make-up, and even space, to stage a play. We only had our bodies
and voices to express ourselves.
230
‘ E very D ream H as the R ight to L ive ’
Once when Amma visited Chharanagar Library, I asked, ‘Amma, please

tell us what to do for the DNT cause?’ And she said ‘DNT ke mele karo
(Organise cultural melas of DNTs). Ask your audience after every perfor-
mance, “Are we second class citizens?” ’ When she spoke about DNTs, she
sounded like a mother who was fighting for her children’s rights. This is
why the people began to call her ‘Amma’ – not just a ‘Hajar Churashir Ma’
(mother of 1084) but a mother figure for 60 million people of the country.
She worked tirelessly, travelling to negotiate with government bodies, filing
police cases against atrocities committed against DNTs in Maharashtra and
West Bengal and speaking at numerous public forums to inspire thousands
to work on the DNT issue.
Kolkata-based filmmaker Joshy Joseph, who was filming a documentary
on Amma’s life, came with her to Baroda. During the interview, he asked her
what she thought about Budhan Theatre. She said:
I have worked, I believe, with Denotified Tribes, for many years,

and I have never found such a strategic fight. Time makes us act
[at the] right [time] and Dakxin and all [the rest] are following the
[right] time. They have education and exposure, and they are city-
dwellers, so they can do what others cannot. Kolkata-based theatre
practitioners like Badal Sircar are city-based theatrewalas but the
Budhan theatrewalas are working from their own experiences, so it
is more powerful and political.
Today, Budhan Theatre is not a just a small community theatre; it has

become a social movement for the Denotified Tribes and Nomadic Tribes.
Actors from the theatre group have become spokespersons, activists,
scholars, writers, and social leaders for the cause, leading the movement
successfully.
Amma wanted us to liberate people through theatre – to bring out the
anguish, the insults, the anger, but non-violently – creating the space in our
heart to feel another’s pain and, in doing so, developing a form of social
leadership that was nurturing rather than aggressive. Analysing Budhan
Theatre performances from this perspective, I feel theatre is an event, a
process, a challenge, and an attempt to conjure change, be it social, politi-
cal, economic, or personal. We ripped off the colonial mask of historically
imposed criminality and discovered that we were the nomad entertainers
of the 19th century, who had only their bodies and voices to entertain the
people on the streets, jungles, mountains, and villages in India.
Through performances, Budhan Theatre created a movement built on
arousing awareness among spectators about the atrocities DNTs faced.
While performing real-life suffering has become a kind of social movement,
we see it going even further and becoming a revolutionary fight for the
231
D akxin B ajrange
implementation of the DNTs’ constitutional rights. In this way, Budhan

Theatre is quite in line with what Amma and Devy had envisioned.
Amma’s planted seeds have now become trees, which are able to produce
more seeds to empower the DNTs of India. Amma dared us to dream, to
speak, to express our anguish, love, art, songs, struggle for constitutional
guarantee and demand for equality, justice, and dignity because she firmly
believed that ‘Every dream has the right to live.’
References
Bajrange, Dakxin. 28 July 2016. “Mahasweta Devi Amma – a Rebellious
Energy,” Mathrubhumi, https://english.mathrubhumi.com/features/literature/
mahasweta-devi-amma-a-rebellious-energy-english-news-1.1237152 (accessed
on 4 November 2021).
Photo 4.4 From the Bengali film “Mahananda,” inspired by Mahasweta Devi’s life
and work.
Source: Arindam Sil.
232
MAHASWETA DEVI: A BIO-
CHRONOLOGY
14 January 1926 Mahasweta Devi was born in Dhaka at 15 Zindaba-

har Lane in the home of her maternal grandfather, a lawyer. She
belonged to a privileged middle-class family with a high intellectual
and cultural profile. Her grandparents were active in the reformist
movement inspired by Ram Mohun Roy and Ishwarchandra Vid-
yasagar. Her father was the famous poet Manish Chandra Ghatak
(1902–1979), who belonged to a group of realist writers exploring
the seamier side of life in India. Her mother, Dharitri Devi (1908–
1984), was a writer and social worker who translated Pearl S. Buck
and promoted literacy among underprivileged children. The larger
family included many illustrious cultural figures, such as cinematog-
rapher Sudhish Ghatak, film personality Ritwik Ghatak, sculptor
Sankho Chowdhury, and journalist Sachin Chowdhury.
Mahasweta, the eldest of nine children, taught herself to read at a
very early age. She began her formal studies at the Eden Montessori
in Dhaka but received most of her education in West Bengal. The
children were brought up to love books, music, art, and cinema. She
read widely and became familiar with Balzac, Chekov, and Dickens,
as well as Bengali classics including the 16th-century Chandiman-
gal by Mukundaram Chakravarti, known as Kavikankan. These
works awakened her interest in history and fiction. Alongside, her
social awareness began to develop, as she accompanied the women
of her family on their mission to spread literacy among the poor.
Her father, an income tax officer of the government of India, had
a transferable job, involving frequent changes of place. Hence, the
children’s schooling was often interrupted.
1935 Completed elementary education at Medinipur Missionary Girls’
School in West Bengal.
1936–1938 Studied in the school at Santiniketan, when Rabindranath
Tagore was a living presence there. In her memoirs, Our Santini-
ketan, she describes this as the most important formative experience
in her life, which moulded her personality and shaped her values.
233
R adha C hakravarty
Through her exposure to a diverse community of students and teach-

ers, she learned to think of herself as an Indian and a citizen of the
world, rather than simply a Bengali. She also learned the importance
of harmony between human and natural worlds and the value of
cooperation and coexistence in a heterogeneous environment. These
ideals would stay with her for life.
1939 Mahasweta’s first publication was an essay on Tagore’s memoirs
Chhelebela (Boyhood Days), written when she was 13. It appeared
in the children’s magazine Rangmashal, edited by Khagendranath
Mitra.
1938–1944 The family lived in Kolkata. In 1939, Mahasweta moved to
Beltola School in Kolkata. In 1942, she completed her Matriculation
and subsequently joined Ashutosh College (1943–44). At this time,
trouble broke out in Kolkata, with the Bengal Famine (1942–44)
and the rise of the Quit India movement (1942). The British perse-
cution of nationalists caused great violence. Those arrested included
Mahasweta’s uncle Sankho Chowdhury. This period was a turning
point in Mahasweta’s life, arousing a social and political awareness
that shattered her cocooned middle-class existence. In 1943, she
joined the Girls’ Student Association and worked for famine relief.
She also took up party work, but never joined the Communist Party.
Photo 5.1 Mahasweta (extreme L) with her father Manish Ghatak and sisters (L to R)
Sari, Konchi, and Soma.
Source: Ina Puri.
234
M ahasweta D evi : A B io - C hronology
1944 Moved to Rangpur. Participated in cultural programmes organised

by Bharatiya Gananatya Sangha. Later, she returned to Santiniketan
as a BA student.
1946 Graduated with high honours in BA (Hons) English from Visva-
Bharati. Enrolled for MA (English) at Calcutta University, her stud-
ies were interrupted when violent communal riots between Hindus
and Muslims broke out in 1946. At the time, the Tebhaga movement
was in full swing, across Bengal.
1947 1947 was the year of Independence, after the British left India. The
Partition divided many families, including Mahasweta’s own. Part
of her family still lives in Bangladesh, formerly known as East Paki-
stan. Although her own family was not adversely affected in mate-
rial terms, she witnessed the plight of uprooted migrants, especially
those from minority communities and socio-economically disadvan-
taged backgrounds. In the same year, against her family’s wishes,
she married Bijon Bhattacharya, playwright, actor, founder of
the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), and member of the
Communist Party of India (CPI). She acted, sang, and danced in the
role of Kalaboti in Bijon’s play “Jiyankanya.” In the radio version
of the play, she sang with the famous Rabindrasangeet exponent
Debabrata Biswas. She was pregnant at the time.
1948 After briefly living with Bijon’s parents, the couple moved to a sepa-
rate home, a single-room unit in the outskirts of Kolkata. Their son,
Nabarun, was born the same year. He would grow up to become a
famous writer. Life at this time was difficult for Bijon and Mahas-
weta as they faced financial hardship and struggled to survive.
Because of his affiliation with the Communist Party, Bijon found it
hard to get a job. Ritwik Ghatak offered tremendous moral support
to Mahasweta in these times of scarcity.
1948–50 Taught at Padmapukur School, and at Ramesh Mitra Balika
Bidyalaya (1948–49). In 1949, she was offered a clerical post in the
Income Tax Department but was dissuaded from accepting it as it
would be seen as demeaning for Manish Ghatak’s daughter. Subse-
quently, she joined the Post and Telegraph Department as a UDC
in the Postal Audit section of the Central Government. In 1950, she
was dismissed from her job on suspicion of being a communist, after
someone planted books by Marx, Engels, and Lenin in her office
drawer. Yet she had maintained a distance from the Communist Party,
despite being married to Bijon. In 1949, both Mahasweta and Bijon
developed tuberculosis, probably on account of their deficient diet.
To supplement their meagre income, she began to publish features
and stories in Sachitra Bharat under the pseudonym Sumitra Devi.
1951–1957 Battled poverty, supplemented the family income by selling
detergent soap and coloured powders, and offering private tuitions.
235
R adha C hakravarty
She describes this period as a phase when hardship enabled her to

develop mental strength and endurance.
1952 Joined her husband in Mumbai for a brief period. While Bijon
struggled for work, Mahasweta read a lot of history. Eventually,
she returned to Kolkata. Bijon had a windfall when invited to write
the screenplay for the Hindi film “Nagin,” which proved to be a
superhit.
1954 Mahasweta travelled to what was then called the united province
(now Uttar Pradesh) to collect material on Rani Lakshmi Bai, the
warrior queen of the princely North Indian state of Jhansi, who
fought the British in 1857, the first War of Independence. She toured
the area, sometimes on foot, visiting remote villages and desert
areas, gathering archival information and oral history, and famil-
iarising herself with the topography of the places where the Rani of
Jhansi fought her battles against the British.
1956 Jhansir Rani, her first major work, was published. It brought her
instant fame as a writer.
1957–1959 Several books followed in quick succession: Nati (1957),
Madhurey Madhur (1958), Jamuna ke Teer (1958), and Etotuku
Asha (1959).
1962 Divorced her husband and moved out, leaving her teenaged son
behind. Lived alone in the outskirts of South Calcutta. Went into
a deep depression. Survived a suicide attempt, after taking an over-
dose of sleeping pills. Upon regaining consciousness, she felt a great
urge to live.
1963 Completed her MA degree in English from Calcutta University.
1964 Published Bioscoper Baksho, a novel about the situation of middle-
class women in a tradition-bound society. Joined Bijoygarh Jyotish
Ray College, a private institution in an area where poor refugees
lived, as a lecturer in English. She taught there till 1984.
1965 Married the writer Asit Gupta. In the same year, she made a land-
mark visit to the Palamau district in Bihar. Her travels across the
poverty-stricken area on foot altered her awareness of the plight
of tribal people and landless peasants in remote areas of India. She
realised that the area had been ravaged by environmental depre-
dation, state indifference, and the exploitative system of debt and
bonded labour. She found a similar scenario in other parts of India.
1966 The Palamau experience triggered a new phase in Mahasweta’s
writings. She published Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon O Mri-
tyu, about the persecution of a low-caste poet in the 15th century,
and Andharmanik, about the impact on Bengal society of the raids
conducted by the Maratha armed cavalry, the Bargis, in the 18th
century. In both texts, she uses the past to comment on the predica-
ment of marginalised people in the present.
236
1968 Received Amrita Puraskar. Release of the Hindi feature film Sunghursh,
directed by H. S. Rawail, based on Mahasweta’s Laili Asmaner Aina,
and starring Dilip Kumar (who won a Filmfare Award for the role),
Vyjayanthimala, Sanjeev Kumar, Balraj Sahni, and Deven Varma.
1974 Publication of Hajar Churashir Ma (Mother of 1084), a path-
breaking novel that changed the course of Bengali fiction. It recounts
the political awakening of a middle-class mother from a conserva-
tive background, trying to understand her son’s sympathies with
the radical Naxalite group, after he is killed in a police encounter.
The text also draws upon Devi’s own transition from middle-class
domesticity to social and political activism.
1975–6 Divorced her second husband.
1977 Aranyer Adhikar (Right to the Forest) published.
1978 Published Agnigarbha (Womb of Fire), including Bashai Tudu and
“Draupadi”. Received Saratchandra Memorial Medal.
1979 Published Chotti Munda Ebong Tar Teer (Chotti Munda and his
Arrow). Received Sahitya Akademi Award for Aranyer Adhikar.
During this phase, Mahasweta actively championed the cause
of tribal and underprivileged communities in the border areas of
Orissa, Bihar, and West Bengal, particularly in the Purulia, Mayurb-
hanj, Medinipur, and Singhbhum districts.
1980 Founded Palamau Zila Bandhua Samiti, India’s first bonded labour
liberation organisation. Began editing Bortika, the journal founded
by her late father, and reinvented it as a platform where the voices of
tribals, peasants, and the working class could be heard.
1981 Published a Hindi book on the bonded labour system, Bharat Mein
Bandhua Majdoor, with Nirmal Ghosh as co-author. Received medal
from Nikhil Bharat Banga Sahitya Sammelan. Publication of Chotti
Munda Aur Uska Teer and Jangal ke Davedaar, Jagat Shankhdhar’s
Hindi translations of Chotti Munda Ebong Tar Teer and Aranyer
Adhikar.
1982–84 Acted as a roving reporter for Bengali daily Jugantar. She trav-
elled in the countryside and wrote about the plight of tribals and
other marginalised groups. In 1984, she gave up her teaching job
and devoted herself to writing about the lives of the people. She
wrote for the Dainik Basumati for about a year. Later, she wrote
a column for the newspaper Bartaman, until 1991. In 1983, she
received the Bhuvanmohini Medal from Calcutta University.
1984 She became President of the Pashchim Banga Kheria Sabar Kalyan
Samity (West Bengal Kheria Sabar Welfare Society), which she
founded, along with other social activists such as Gomasta Prasad
Soren and Gopiballabh Singh Deo.
1985 Visited France as part of a cultural exchange programme. Publica-
tion of Jagat Shankhdhar’s Hindi translation of Agnigarbha.
237
R adha C hakravarty
1986 Awarded Padmashri. Represented India at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Formed the Adim Jaati Aikya Parishad (Ancient Tribes Union) to
promote cooperation among 38 West Bengali tribal groups. It pro-
vided a forum for joint struggle for tribal rights and also defused
intertribal hostilities and violence.
1988 Visited Pittsburgh University in Pennsylvania, invited by the Marxist
Study circle.
1989 Awarded Jagattarini Gold Medal from Calcutta University. Release
of the film Behula, about the tussle between science and local beliefs.
1990 Visited eight American universities as Distinguished Fulbright
Lecturer.
1992 Attended the Geneva Summit Conference on ‘Economic Develop-
ment Of Women in Agricultural Sector in The Third World’. Also
revisited France, invited by the French Cultural Affairs Ministry.
Staging of Rudaali as a Hindi play adapted from Mahasweta’s text,
directed by Usha Ganguli.
1993 Release of Rudaali, an award-winning film by Kalpana Lajmi based
on Mahasweta’s text, starring Dimple Kapadia, Raakhee, Raj Bab-
bar, and Amjad Khan.
1996 Bharatiya Jnanpith Award presented to Mahasweta Devi by Nelson
Mandela. She donated the prize money to the cause of tribal welfare.
1997 Received Ramon Magsaysay Award. Breast Stories published.
Gudia, Goutam Ghose’s film adaptation of the play Urvashi O
Johnny, was released. Publication of Reena Das’ Hindi translation
of Sri Sri Ganesh Mahima.
1998 Forged a national forum, the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights
Action Group, the DNT-RAG, in collaboration with Ganesh N.
Devy of Baroda and Laxman Gaikwad of Mumbai. Hazaar Chau-
rasi Ki Maa, award-winning film directed by Govind Nihalani, star-
ring Jaya Bachchan, was released.
2001 Amader Santiniketan, memoirs of her early student days at Tagore’s
school during the 1930s, was published. Manipuri director Kan-
hailal’s production of Draupadi, with his wife Sabitri Devi in the
lead role. It inspired real-life public protests against rape by the mili-
tary in Manipur. By this time, Mahasweta’s memory was failing.
2003 Awarded the title “Officer des Arts et des Lettres” in France.
2004 Inspired by Sabitri Devi’s performance in the Kanhailal produc-
tion of Draupadi, 12 women stood naked outside Kangla fort in
Imphal, carrying a banner against rape, in protest against the Arms
Forces Special Powers Act 1958 (AFSPA). In the film Talking Writ-
ing (Seagull, Kolkata), Naveen Kishore recorded four conversations
with Mahasweta Devi.
2006 Awarded Padmavibhushan and Nonino Award (Italy); Attended
Frankfurt Book Fair as Special Invitee. Maati Maye, a Marathi film
238
starring Nandita Das, directed by Chitra Palekar, based on Mahas-

weta’s “Bayen,” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.
2007 Received SAARC Literary Award.
2008 In the article “Desh Bibhajan Smaraney,” later published in the jour-
nal Aksharekha (September 2018), Mahasweta describes her own
experience of the Bengal Partition. She says that although many
members of her own family were dislocated, they did not suffer
the material consequences as much as others from less-privileged
sections of society. She recalls the desperate plight of the uprooted
migrants and their struggle to find alternative modes of survival in
their new and altered circumstances.
2009 Shortlisted for Man Booker International Prize. In an interview with
Indrani Roy Mitra of rediff.com, she voiced her disenchantment with
the Left government in West Bengal. ‘When the Left Front came to
power in 1977, we supported them. I never thought we would have
to oppose them. But I witnessed how the state government turned
anti-people over the years’.
2010 1084 ki Maa, directed by Santanu Bose, was staged at the National
School of Drama, Delhi, combining elements from the original
novel, Samik Bandyopadhyay’s English translation, the Hindi adap-
tation by Shyamanand Jalan and Avijit Dutt, Nabarun Bhattacha-
rya’s poems, and documents by Charu Majumdar.
2010–11 Led the Nandigram agitation by intellectuals and artists against
the Communist government’s policy of confiscating farmers’ land
and ceding it to industrial houses. Supported the rise of Mamata
Banerjee. Gangor, a multilingual film with dialogues in Santhali,
Bengali, and English, directed by Italo Spinelli, based on Mahaswe-
ta’s story “Choli ke Peechhey,” won appreciation around the globe
and several awards at the New Jersey Independent South Asia Film
Festival.
2011 Received Bangavibhushan Award.
2012 Nominated for the Nobel Prize. Release of Ullas, a Bengali film based
on three stories by Mahasweta, directed by Ishwar Chakraborty.
2014 “Utsaber Shubhechchha,” Mahasweta’s final editorial and her last
piece of writing, published in the journal Bortika. It strikes a note
of melancholy, speaking of the ritual immersion of the image of the
goddess at the end of the Durga Puja festival.
28 July 2016 Died in Kolkata. Was given a state funeral with a 21-gun
salute. Tributes poured in from all over India and the world.
Describing her death as a terrible loss for literature, President Pranab
Mukherjee said: ‘[H]er voice was seen as the collective conscience
of society reflecting its yearning for justice and equality.’ ‘Mahas-
weta Devi wonderfully illustrated the might of the pen,’ declared
Narendra Modi. Amit Chaudhuri said: ‘[S]he was interested in the
239
R adha C hakravarty
extraordinariness that could be found in the ordinary and among

ordinary people.’ Amitav Ghosh called her ‘A great writer and
extraordinary activist; a woman with a warm, generous heart.’ Mri-
nal Pandey noted: ‘Women specially feel close to her because they
feel she is a writer who knows what it is to be a woman with her
physical vulnerability, her unspoken feelings about motherhood,
sensuality and violence’.
Radha Chakravarty
240
MAHASWETA DEVI: SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Selected Works
———. 1957. Nati. Kolkata: Kolkata: New Age.
———. 1967. Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon O Mrityu. Kolkata: Chatusparna.
———. 1975. Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay (English). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
———. 1977. Aranyer Adhikar. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani.
———. 1978. Agnigarbha. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani.
———. 1980. Chotti Munda Ebong Tar Teer. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani.
———. 1983. “Ami/Amar Lekha,” Desh Sahitya Sankhya, 89–92.
———. 1984. Gram Bangla. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani.
———. 1989. Pterodactyl, Puran Sahai O Pirtha. Kolkata: Proma.
———. 1990. Mahasweta Devir Chhotogalpa. Kolkata: Pratikshan.
———. 1991. Hajar Churashir Ma O Anyanya Natak. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani.
———. 2001. Amader Santiniketan. Kolkata: Srishti Prakashan.
———. October–September 2014a. “Utsav Shubhechchha (Bengali),” Bortika, Fes-
tival Special Issue. Reprint in Aksharekha, 11(1), September 2018, special issue on
Mahasweta Devi, Ed. Nilkamal Sarkar, pp. 393–394.
———. 2014b. Mahasweta Devi Omnibus (Bengali). Ed. Ajoy Gupta. Kolkata:
Dey’s Publishing.
———. 2017. Ek Jibonei: Smritikatha Sangraha (Bengali). Ed. Ajoy Gupta. Kolkata:
Dey’s Publishing.
———. 2017 to date. Rachanasamagra. Ed. Ajoy Gupta. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing,
Series with Multiple Volumes.
———. September 2018. “Desh Bibhajan Smaraney,” Aksharekha, 11(1), special
issue on Mahasweta Devi. Ed. Nilkamal Sarkar, pp. 385–388.
Translations
———. 1979a. Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay. Trans. into Malayalam by M. Achu-
than. New York: Sahitya Akademi.
———. 1979b. Eka Kodika Svapna (Ek Kodi’s Dream). Trans. into Marathi by
Amrendra Gadgil. New Delhi: NBT.
241
M ahasweta D evi : S elected B ibliography
———. 1981a. Chotti Munda Aur Uska Teer. Trans. into Hindi by Jagat Shankh-
dhar. New Delhi: Radhakrisha Prakashan.
———. 1981b. Jangal ke Davedaar. Trans. into Hindi by Jagat Shakhdhar. New
Delhi: Ankur Prakashan.
———. 1982. Sri Sri Ganes Mahima. Trans. into Telugu by Getta Rangaswami.
Hyderabad: Hyderabad Book Trust.
———. 1985a. Agnigarbh. Trans. into Hindi by Jagat Shankhdhar. New Delhi: Rad-
hakrishna Prakashan.
———. 1985b. Hajar Curasira Ma (Hajar Churashir Ma). Trans. into Gujarati by
Nispruha Desai. Kolkata: Sadbhavan Prakashan.
———. 1986. “The Wet Nurse”. Trans. Ella Dutta, in Truth Tales, pp. 1–50. New
Delhi: Kali for Women.
———. 1987. “Breast-Giver”. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in Ranajit
Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies V: Writings on South Asian History and Society,
pp. 252–276. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Reprint in Breast Stories, 39–75.
———. 1990a. Bashai Tudu. Trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay and Gayatri Chakra-
vorty Spivak. Kolkata: Thema.
———. 1990b. “Strange Children,” in Kalpana Bardhan (ed. and trans), Of Women,
Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels: A Selection of Bengali Short Stories, pp. 229–241.
Los Angeles: University of California Press.
———. 1995a. “Bayen”. Trans. Mahua Bhattacharya, in Geeta Dharmarajan (ed.),
Yuvakatha: Unforgettable Short Fiction from Some of India’s Master Story Tell-
ers, vol. 2, pp. 35–62. New Delhi: Katha.
———. 1995b. Imaginary Maps. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York:
Routledge.
———. 1996. La Cattura. (Operation? Bashai Tudu). Trans. into Italian by Federica
Oddera and Babli Moitra Saraf. Rome-Napoli: Theoria.
———. 1997a. Breast Stories. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Kolkata: Seagull
Books.
———. 1997b. Shri Shri Ganesh Mahima. Trans. into Hindi by Reena Das. New
Delhi: Radhakrishna Prakashan.
———. 1997c/1986. Five Plays. Trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay. Kolkata: Seagull
Books.
———. 1997d. Mother of 1084. Trans. Samik Bandyopadhyay. Kolkata: Seagull
Books.
———. 1997e. Dust on the Road: The Activist Writings of Mahasweta Devi. Ed.
Maitreya Ghatak. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
———. 1998a. Bitter Soil: Stories. Trans. Ipsita Chanda. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
———. 1998b. 1084 ra Tayi (Hajar Churashir Ma). Trans. into Kannada by Srim-
athi. Kolkata: Ankita Prakashana.
———. 2001. La meredu 1084. Trans. into French by Marielle Morin. Arles: Actes
Sud.
———. 2003. The Why-Why Girl. Chennai: Tulika Publishers.
———. 2004. In the Name of the Mother. Trans. Radha Chakravarty. Kolkata:
Seagull Books.
———. 2005. Aufstand in Munda-Lant (Aranyer Adhikar). Trans. into German by
Barbara Dasgupta, Durdana Foster, Mrtin Kunz, Johannes Laping and Christian
Weis. Brandenberg: Horlemann.
242
———. 2008. Branden I hjartat (Selected stories). Trans. into Swedish as part of the
Indiska Biblioteket Translation Project. Stockholm: Ordfront.
———. 2022. Our Santiniketan. Trans. Radha Chakravarty. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Devi, Mahasweta and Usha Ganguli. 1997. Rudali: From Fiction to Performance.
Trans. Anjum Katyal. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Interviews
Alam, Syed Mashiul. January 1997. “Mahasweta Devi O Akhtaruzzaman Eliaser
Alaap (Bengali),” Shaili (Bangladesh). Reprint in Mahasweta Devi Omnibus (Ben-
gali). Ed. Ajoy Gupta, pp. 557–570. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 2014.
Collu, Gabriella. 1998. “Speaking with Mahasweta Devi: Mahasweta Devi Inter-
viewed by Gabriella Collu, 1998,” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature,
33(2): 143–153.
Guha, Chinmoy. July–September 2011. “Nijei Nijeke Mukti Diyechhilam (Ben-
gali),” Boier Desh. Reprint in Mahasweta Devi Omnibus (Bengali). Ed. Ajoy
Gupta, pp. 571–579. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 2014.
Kishore, Naveen. 2004. Talking Writing: Four Interviews. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Video Uploaded 2016.
Masih, Archana. 24 December 1997. “Mahasweta Devi: The Rediff Interview,”
www.rediff.com/news/dec/24devi.htm (accessed on 25 January 2022).
Mitra, Amar. January–March 2010. “Mahaswetadir Mukhomukhi (Bengali),” inter-
view with Mahasweta Devi. Pustakmela. Reprint in Aksharekha, 11(1), Septem-
ber 2018, special issue on Mahasweta Devi, Ed. Nilkamal Sarkar, pp. 35–44.
Saraf, Babli Moitra and Francesca Oddera. 4 September 2016. “Activism, She Said,”
The Pioneer, www.dailypioneer.com/2016/sunday-edition/activism-she-wrote.
html (accessed on 15 December 2021).
Sen, Nandini C. 2011. “In Conversation with Mahasweta Devi,” in Nandini C.
Sen (ed.), Mahasweta Devi: Critical Perspectives, pp. 61–71. New Delhi: Pencraft
International.
Sourabh, Anindya. 2005. “Mahasweta Debir Mukhomukhi (Bengali),” Amritalok.
Reprint in Aksharekha, 11(1), September 2018, special issue on Mahasweta Devi,
Ed. Nilkamal Sarkar, pp. 53–70.
Spivak, Gayatri C. 2002. “ ‘Telling History’: Gayatri Spivak interviews Mahasweta
Devi,” in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (trans), Chotti Munda and His Arrow by
Mahasweta Devi, pp. ix–xxviii. Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Criticism
Anand, P. Sachidanandan. October–September 2019. “Small Big Things,” Indian
Literature, LXIII(5/313): 147–151.
Asaduddin, M. 2002. “Of Rape and Marginalization: Review of Outcast: Four Sto-
ries and The Book of the Hunter,” The Book Review, XXVI(11).
Bagchi, Alaknanda. 1996. “Conflicting Nationalisms: The Voice of the Subaltern in
Mahasweta Devi’s Bashai Tudu,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 15(1): 41–50.
Bagchi, Jashodhara. 20–27 October 1990. “Representing Nationalism: Ideology of
Motherhood in Colonial Bengal,” Economic and Political Weekly, WS, 65–71.
243
Bandyopadhyay, Bharati. 1993. “Mahasweta Debir Chhotogalpa: Shilpa Ar

Bastaber Melbandhan (Bengali),” in Tapas Bhowmick (ed.), Mahasweta Devi,
pp. 76–85. Kolkata: Boimela.
Bandyopadhyay, Samik. 1986. “Introduction,” Five Plays by Mahasweta Devi,
vii–xv.
———. 1990. “Introduction,” Bashai Tudu by Mahasweta Devi, vii–xiv.
Bandyopadhyay, Sandeep. April–June 1985. Bortika (Bengali). Special Issue on
Mahasweta Devi. Kolkata: Boimela.
Basu, Dilip Kumar. 1985. “Hajar Churashir Ma, Mahasweta O Bangla Upanyasher
Parabarti Parjay (Bengali),” in Sisir Kumar Das (ed.), Mahasweta Devi. Special
issue of Digangan, pp. 160–176. Kolkata: Boimela.
Bhattacharya, Sourit. 2020. Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel: On Cata-
strophic Realism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bhattacharya, Subodh. 1998. Nahabat (Bengali). Special issue on Mahasweta Devi,
year 35. Kolkata: Boimela.
Bhowal, Sanatan. 2018. The Subaltern Speaks: Truth and Ethics in Mahasweta
Devi’s Fiction on Tribals. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
Bhowmick, Tapas, ed. January 1993. Mahasweta Devi. Special issue of Korak (Ben-
gali). Kolkata: Boimela.
Biswas, Kanika. 2012. Anusandhaney Mahasweta (Bengali). Kolkata: Ebong
Mushaira.
Bose, Brinda. 2002. “Cast(e)ing Wicked Spells: Gendered Errancy in Mahasweta
Devi’s ‘Bayen’ ,” in Tapan Basu (ed.), Translating Caste, pp. 131–141. New Delhi:
Katha.
Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge.
Chakrabarti, Sudeshna. 1993. “Mahasweta Debir Sujata: Ma, Nari, Bidrohini
(Bangla),” in Tapas Bhowmick (ed.), Mahasweta Devi, pp. 33–44. Kolkata:
Boimela.
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246
CONTRIBUTORS
Anita Agnihotri writes in Bengali. She has authored over 50 books of short
stories, novels, poetry, essays, and stories for adolescents. Her works have
been translated into English and Swedish. She has won several awards,
including the Crossword Economist Book Award. Mahanadi: Story of a
River, The Sickle, and One Day in the Life of Mangal Taram are some of
her recent books.
Anand (P. Sachidanandan) is a well-known writer in Malayalam. Profes-
sionally an engineer, he has spent several years in the construction of Far-
akka barrage in Bengal. He had a long friendship and association with
Mahasweta Devi. He travelled with her to several parts of the country
and also visited Bangladesh as a member of an Indian Writers Delegation
led by her in 1996. He has translated her novel Kobi Bandyoghoti Gay-
ener Jeebon O Mrityu into Malayalam.
Dakxin Bajrange is an award-winning filmmaker, dramaturg, writer, and
film editor based in Ahmedabad. He has directed more than 130 fiction
and non-fiction documentary films, screened worldwide in many reputa-
ble film festivals, and received a number of awards. He has directed 12
plays and supervised more than 40 plays at the Budhan Theatre.
Partha Pratim Bandyopadhyay studied at Naihati and Kolkata and was Pro-
fessor, Rishi Bankimchandra College, Naihati. He was not only a film
critic but also a literary scholar and the author of several books, includ-
ing Chalachchitrer Nandantatwa and Pashchimer Mon.
Samik Bandyopadhyay was Regional Editor for Oxford University Press,
Calcutta, between 1973 and 1982 and, later, Editor for Seagull Books
between 1982 and 1988. He was also Producer Emeritus for All India
Radio and Doordarshan and Research Professor at Asiatic Society, Cal-
cutta, in the 1990s. He served as Vice-Chairman, National School of
Drama (2006–2010), and member of the National School of Drama Soci-
ety. He has contributed several essays in numerous film and theatre peri-
odicals in English and Bengali.
247
C ontributors
Paramita Banerjee is an activist, Ashoka Fellow and a recipient of Mac-

Arthur Foundation’s Fellowship for Leadership Development, whose
work focuses on gender and sexuality, especially in red-light districts of
Calcutta.
Dilip Kumar Basu taught English at Rajdhani College, Delhi University,
and is a poet and theatre activist. He is a founder member of the theatre
group Natyakal and has also acted on the Hindi stage for long. He has
published anthologies of poetry and a collection of verse-novels, Kotha-
nodir Banke.
Nabarun Bhattacharya (d. 2014) was a reputed Bengali writer and Secre-
tary of the Ganasanskriti Parishad. He was the son of Mahasweta Devi
and Bijon Bhattacharya. His novel Herbert, made into a film of the same
name, won the Sahitya Akademi Award.
Benil Biswas is a performer, scholar, and cultural commentator. He is Assis-
tant Professor, School of Cultural and Creative Expressions, Dr B. R.
Ambedkar University, Delhi. He trained in Theatre and Performance
Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics (SAA), Jawaharlal Nehru
University (JNU), New Delhi. His research interests include performance
theory and aesthetics from a minoritarian perspective, specially caste.
In 2016, he attended the Mellon School of Theatre and Performance
Research, Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA.
Mary Louisa Cappelli is an interdisciplinary scholar from the University
of Southern California, the University of California, Los Angeles, and
Loyola Law School, where she studied anthropology, theatre, film,
law, and literature. A former lecturer at Emerson College and Nevada
State College, she presently devotes her time to doing field research in
Central America, examining the impact of globalisation on indigenous
populations.
Dipendu Chakrabarti (d. 2021) was Sir Gurudas Professor of English Lit-
erature at the University of Calcutta. He was a reputed scholar of Bengali
literature, known for his critical writings on the literature of the 1970s,
1980s and 1990s.
Shreya Chakravorty heads the Department of English, Budge Budge Col-
lege, West Bengal. She is the author of Mahasweta Devi: Translated or
Translocated? She has contributed articles to national and international
journals and is an active member of Bharat Soka Gakkai, the Indian wing
of a global value-creating Buddhist organisation.
Ipshita Chanda, from the Department of Comparative Literature and Eng-
lish at Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, was ICCR Visiting
Professor of Indian Culture, Georgetown University, and member of the
248
C ontributors
faculty team in the International Faculty Exchange Programme of the

Virginia Council for International Education and the Virginia Commu-
nity College System. She has written extensively in books and journals
including the edited volume Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in
Bengali Periodicals, 1865–1947 (2014) and Packaging Freedom: Femi-
nism and Popular Culture (2003). She is the author of Selfing the City:
Single Women Migrants and Their Lives in Kolkata (2017).
Arup Kumar Das is Professor of Bengali at Calcutta University. He has also
taught at Rabindra Bharati University for 12 years. He specialises in
post-Independence Bengali fiction. He is the author of 16 books, includ-
ing edited volumes, translations, and literary criticism.
Ranjit Kumar Das (Lodha) is a member of the Lodha-Sabar community.
He interacted with Mahasweta Devi and worked closely with her during
her efforts to win support for the members of his community during the
1970s.
Ganesh N. Devy, a thinker and a public intellectual, initiated the People’s
Linguistic Survey of India, covering over 700 languages, which resulted
in the publication of 91 titles. Devy initiated a series of international
conferences of the indigenous from all continents resulting in 12 pub-
lished volumes on culture, ecology, and politics. His recent publications
include Being Adivasi and Mahabharata – the Epic and the Nation. He
writes in three languages – Marathi, Gujarati, and English – and has
received honours including Padmashri, the Linguapax Award, and the
Prince Clause Award.
Maitreya Ghatak was a social researcher with considerable field experience
and was closely associated with Mahasweta Devi’s activism for many
years.
Nandini Guha is a retired Associate Professor of English from the College
of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi. She received the Katha Award
for translating Bani Basu’s novel, Dark Afternoons (Katha, 2007). Other
translations from Bangla to English include Taslima Nasreen’s autobiog-
raphy Wild Wind (Srishti Publishers, 2006) and Anita Agnihotri’s Awak-
ening (Zubaan, 2009). A Plate of White Marble, her translation of Bani
Basu’s novel, Swet Patherer Thala, was published by Niyogi Books in
2020. It received the Kalinga Literary Award in 2021.
Jaidev (1942–2000) taught English at the Himachal Pradesh University,
Shimla. His published works include The Culture of Pastiche: Existential
Aestheticism in Contemporary Hindi Novel and the English translation of
Bhisham Sahni’s novel Basanti. He edited a volume of occasional papers
titled On Literature and co-edited, with Dr R.K. Kaul, a critical anthol-
ogy titled Social Awareness in Modern Indian Literature. A collection
249
C ontributors
of his short stories Apocalypse and Other Stories was published posthu-
mously in 2001.
Anjum Katyal is a writer, editor, translator, and critic. She is the author
of several books on theatre and performance. Chief Editor of Seagull
Books, Calcutta (1987–2006), and Editor of Seagull Theatre Quarterly
(1994–2004), she steered two major translation projects: The Selected
Works of Mahasweta Devi and the New Indian Playwrights Series of
post-independence regional playwriting. She has translated stories by
Mahasweta Devi and Meera Mukherjee, as well as plays by Habib Tanvir.
Naveen Kishore established Seagull Books in 1982 and set up The Seagull
Foundation for the Arts in 1987. The Seagull School of Publishing was
set up in 2012. Kishore is a photographer and also has two documen-
tary films to his credit – Performing the Goddess on Chapal Bhaduri
and Talking Writing on Mahasweta Devi. Knotted Grief, his collec-
tion of poems, appeared in 2022. He is also the recipient of the Goethe
Medal and the Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Kishore lives and
works in Kolkata.
Arunabh Konwar studied literature at the School of Letters, Dr B. R.
Ambedkar University Delhi. Belonging to the Tai-Ahom community of
Assam, their research interests include translation studies with a special
interest in the languages and literatures from North-East India.
Sari Lahiri taught at the Naba Nalanda School. She is the younger sister of
Mahasweta Devi. She lives in Kolkata.
Sujit Mukherjee (d. 2003) was a writer, translator, critic, publisher, and
cricketer. He taught at Patna College, the National Defence Academy at
Khadakwasla, and the University of Poona. From 1970 to 1986, he was
Chief Publisher of Orient Longman. He translated some major Bengali
literary works into English and was the author of several books, includ-
ing Translation as Discovery, Translation as Recovery, Modern Poetry
and Sanskrit Kavya, and Autobiography of an Unknown Cricketer.
Soma Mukhopadhyay (d. 2021) was Professor of Bengali at the South Cal-
cutta Girls’ College. A reputed academic and editor, she was the younger
sister of Mahasweta Devi.
Ina Puri is an independent curator, art writer, documentarian, and art collec-
tor. Her memoirs on Manjit Bawa and Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma have
been translated into several languages. She has written on visual arts and
photography and on veterans such as Nemai Ghosh and Raghu Rai. Puri
received the National Award for her documentary on Manjit Bawa in
2003.
250
C ontributors
Mandira Sengupta is an artist who maintains an active interest in Bengali

literature. She has translated several of Mahasweta Devi’s works, in col-
laboration with Sagaree Sengupta.
Sagaree Sengupta is a writer/poet in English and a translator from South
Asian languages, with a special interest in South Asian literatures in
Hindi, Urdu, and Bangla. She has published translations of novels, short
stories and poems. She teaches English and World Religions at Maine
Girls’ Academy, Portland, Maine.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor at Columbia Uni-
versity. She is the author of Myself Must I Remake (1974), Of Gram-
matology (1976; translation/critical introduction of Derrida’s De la
grammatologie), In Other Worlds (1987), Outside in the Teaching
Machine (1993), A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), Death of a
Discipline (2002), Other Asias (2003), An Aesthetic Education (2013),
and Readings (2014). She has been awarded the Kyoto Prize (2012),
Padma Bhushan (2013), and 12 honorary doctorates.
Shreerekha Subramanian is Professor of Humanities at the University of
Houston-Clear Lake. She was the first recipient of the Marilyn Mieszkuc
Professorship in Women’s Studies established at her university (2008).
She published the monograph Women Writing Violence: The Novel and
Radical Feminist Imaginaries (Sage India 2013). She works on feminist
and carceral texts from South Asian, African, and diasporic traditions.
251
INDEX
1084 ki Maa, Santanu Bose 152, 239; Anandam 198

image 156 Ananthamurthy, U. R. 198
“A Countryside Slowly Dying,” Andharmanik, Mahasweta Devi 199,
Mahasweta Devi 6, 177 201, 204, 236
Aajir, Mahasweta Devi 125, 138, Anthropocene 6, 16, 97 – 8, 177 – 8,
142 – 3, 148 181 – 2
Abbas, Sadia 97 anti-colonial movement 134
Abel, Elizabeth 87 anti-eucalyptus movement 167
Abhibhab 65 Anustup 69
Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta 138 Aranyer Adhikar, Mahasweta Devi 3,
activism 1, 4 – 5, 11, 16, 107, 127, 137, 12, 59, 64, 81 – 2, 89, 191, 215, 226,
151, 153, 197 237; Chattopadhyay on 61 – 2
Adim Jaati Aikya Parishad (Ancient Argosy magazine 212
Tribes Union) 5, 238 “Arjun,” Mahasweta Devi 6, 200
“The Adivasi Mahasweta,” Devy on 16 Arms Forces Special Powers Act 1958
Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh 172, 229 (AFSPA) 151
Adivasi Sahitya Parishad, Bombay 196 Arogyaniketan, Tarasankar 51
adivasis 12, 78, 80, 82 – 3, 92, 94, 170, Asaduddin, M. 13
172, 174, 176, 181, 217 – 19, 222, Ashapurna Devi 12, 59, 198
226 – 7, (see also tribes); Mahasweta Austin, J.L. (1975) 147
Devi as champion for 58; rebellion Austric Civilisation of India, Hembram
62, 226, see also Birsa Munda 161
rebellion awards: Amrita Puraskar 237;
aesthetics 1, 6 – 8, 11 – 12, 70 Bangavibhushan 239; Bharatiya
Agamben, Giorgio 112 Jnanpith 238; Bhuvanmohini Medal
Agnigarbha, Mahasweta Devi 3, 68, 72, 237; French Legion of Honour
81, 84 – 5, 121, 127, 237 3; Jagattarini Gold Medal 238;
Agnihotri, Anita 16, 224 Jnanpith 3, 65, 69, 170, 196, 199,
Ahmad, Aijaz 104 205, 213, 228; Nikhil Bharat Banga
Aksharekha 207 Sahitya Sammelan 237; Nonino
Ali, Rabia Umar 114 (Italy) 238; “O˙ cer des Arts et des
Alkazi, Feisal 144 Lettres” in France 238; Padmashri
American universities, Distinguished 238; Padmavibhushan 238; Ramon
Fulbright Lecturer at 238 Magsaysay 3, 12, 63, 65, 69, 170,
“Ami/Amar Lekha” 6 – 7, 9 205, 228, 238; SAARC Literary 239;
Amrita Sanchoi, Mahasweta Devi 204, Sahitya Akademi 3, 53, 69, 89–90,
226 147, 161, 204, 221, 237; Saratchandra
Anand, Mulk Raj 13 Memorial Medal 237; Yasmin 174
252
INDEX
Babbar, Raj 238 Bharat Mein Bandhua Majdoor,

Bachchan, Jaya 69, 238 Mahasweta Devi and Nirmal Ghosh
Bagchi, Alaknanda 6 237
Bahrampur 187, 203, 206, 209, Bharatiya Gananatya Sangha 235
211 Bharenga 202, 206
Bajrange, Dakxin 5, 16, 153 ‘Bhasha’ 170
Ballygunge Station Road house 220 – 1, Bhashabondhon journal 227
224 Bhattacharjee, Nirmal Kanti 13
Bandhua Mukti Morcha 204 Bhattacharya, Bijon (first husband) 3 – 4,
Bandyopadhyay, Ajitesh 138 147, 194, 203, 214, 220, 235; death
Bandyopadhyay, Manik 47, 51 57, 62, of 191; screenplay for “Nagin” 236
67, 87, 198 Bhattacharya, Bimal 198
Bandyopadhyay, Partha Pratim 8, 15 Bhattacharya, Buddhadeb 219
Bandyopadhyay, Ranjan 12, 64 Bhattacharya, Nabarun/Bappa 3, 16,
Bandyopadhyay, Samik 10, 13, 15, 152, 190 – 2, 194, 203, 209, 211,
85 – 9, 124 – 7, 138, 143, 148, 152; 214, 219, 221, 227, 239; birth of
translations 125, 127, 239 235; first poem of 191
Bandyopadhyay, Saroj 60 Bhattacharya, Shakuntala 12
Bandyopadhyay, Tarasankar 15, Bhattacharya, Sourit 8, 13
47 – 53, 57, 62, 67, 87, 198; language Bhawal 206
50 – 1; as village story-teller 50 “Bhismer Pipasha,” 200
Banerjee, Mamata 239 Bhoodan movement 179
Bangladesh (East Pakistan) creation of Bhowal, Sanatan 9, 13
2, 199, 221 – 2, 235 Bhowmick, Nani 57
Bardhan, Kalpana 13, 87 Bibek Bidai Pala, Mahasweta Devi 201
Bargadari system 48 – 9 Bibhutibhushan 11, 47, 57
Bartaman 237 bio-fiction 130 – 1
Barthes 150 biography, fictionalised, or biofiction
Bashai Tudu, Mahasweta Devi 3, 5, 14 – 15, 21, 129, 131, 135
8, 12, 16, 58 – 60, 64, 84 – 5, 88 – 90, Birbhum 51, 187
194, 200, 237 Birsa Munda 82 – 3, 89, 123, 147;
Bashai Tudu Upakhyan 226 rebellion 82 – 3
Basu, Dilip Kumar 12, 15 Biswas, Debabrata 235
Basu, Nandita 61 Biswas, Hemango 212
Basu, Pratibha 198, 227 Bitter Soil, Mahasweta Devi 169
Basu Roy, Iraban 69Basu, Samaresh Black lives 112; see also feminism
57 – 8, 67 Bodo Accords 134
Basu, Shankar 78 Bodoland Liberation Tigers (BLT) 134
Basu, Sharmila 12, 59 – 60 Bohurupee 138
Bayen/“Bayen,” Mahasweta Devi 3, bonded labour 3, 6, 127, 172, 236
5 – 6, 9, 12, 33 – 6, 38 – 40, 64, 126, Bortika 5, 137, 161, 170 – 1, 191, 197,
138, 142 – 3, 148 203, 215, 225
Beloved, Morrison 110, 112, 115 Bose, Khudiram 159
Bengal Famine (1942–44) 2, 234 Bose, Santanu 152, 239
Bengal Partition 239, see also Bangladesh Bouddha Jatakas 164
(East Pakistan), creation of bourgeois humanism 68
Bengali literature 4, 8, 11 – 13, 48, 52, “Breast Giver” 5, 8, 86 – 7
75, 77 – 8, 198 Breast Stories 120 – 2, 125 – 6, 216, 238
Bengali middle-class 57 Breast Trilogy, The 120
Bera, Nalini 224 Brecht, Bertolt 148, 154n4
Betar Jagat 191, 227 Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri
Bhabha, Homi K. 153 Tehsildar, The, Goswami 129–31, 134
253
INDEX
Buck, Pearl S. 206 class 9, 117; oppression 168; struggle

Budhan theatre 5, 16, 153, 230 – 2 12, 197
Budhan, Shyamali 174, 230 Cohen, Margaret 97
Busstope Barsha, Mahasweta Devi 57 collected works 75
Butalia, Urvashi 114, 116 collecting words 191
Butler, Judith 9, 13 – 14, 147 colonial/colonialism 9, 80 – 82, 111,
Byapari, Manoranjan 16, 153 123, 125, 127, 133 – 4, 150, 230 – 1
Collins, Patricia Hill 114, 116
Calcutta riot. See under riots Collu, Gabriella 13
capitalism 73, 111, 125, 177, 181 Common Trees, Santappu 164
Cappelli, Mary Louisa 6, 13 – 14, 16 Communis, Shankar Basu 78
caste: killings 168 – 9; lower 137, Communism 58, 190
141 – 2; oppression 168; wars 169 Communist Party 4, 193, 212
casteism 14, 61, 105, 107, 111, 117, Comparative Literature 10, 14
140, 142, 146, 150, 168 – 9 Conquergood, Dwight 152 – 3
Castro, D. 169 conservatism 52
Census Commission 222 corruption 178 – 9; see also social
Chakrabarti, Dipendu 15 corruption
Chakraborty, Ishwar 239 criminal tribes 5, 230, see also tribes;
Chakraborty, Sumita 12, 63 Denotified and Nomadic Tribes
Chakraborty, Swapnamoy 224 (DNTs)
Chakravarty, Radha 132, 200; Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 172
interview with 16, 196 Critical Inquiry 87
Chakravorty, Tulika 114
“Chandalika,” Tagore 199 Dainik Basumati 237
Chandimangal, Mukundaram 233 Dalits 107, 132 – 3, 182, see also caste
Chandra, Suresh 203 Dandekar, Ajay 171
Chatterjee, Bankimchandra 11, 198 Das, Akhilbandhu 218
Chatterjee, Brati 24, 139 Das, Arup Kumar 15
Chatterjee, Upamanyu 198 Das, Ranjit Kumar (Lodha) 16
Chatterji, Joya 114 Das, Reena 238
Chattopadhyay, Anunoy 12, 61 Das, Samantak 125
Chattopadhyay, Mohit 138 death 82, 84, 97, 100, 104, 140, 143,
Chaudhuri, Amit 239 174, 178, 180, 217, 222, 229 – 30
Chhara community 230; as criminal “Death of Jagmohan, the Elephant”,
tribe 5, see also tribes Mahasweta Devi 170
Chharanagar 174; library in 230 – 1 Deb Sen, Nabaneeta 227Dehradun
Chhattisgarh 5, 92, 228 Forest Research Institute 166
Chhelebela 234 democracy 58, 193
children’s stories 137, 195 Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs)
Chilekothar Sepai, Elias 199, 221 5, 172 – 4, 222, 230 – 2; atrocities
“Chitrangada”, Tagore 199 against 231
“Choli ke Peechhey,” film adaptation Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights
of 239 Action Group, (DNTRAG) 173, 238
Chotti Munda Aur Uska Teer 237 Deo, Gopiballabh Singh 237
Chotti Munda Ebong tar Teer (Chotti deprivation 68, 72, 111, 197
Munda and His Arrow, Mahasweta Derrida, Jacques 121, 147
Devi 5, 64, 124, 195, 226, 234 Desai, Shantinath 173
Chowdhury, Sankho 2, 202, 233, “Desh Bibhajan Smaraney”,
234 – 4 Mahasweta Devi 239
civilisation 80, 98 Desh-Anandabazar group 77
254
INDEX
Dev, Amiya 171 Farrier, David 13

Devi, Anurupa 198 feminism 10, 115, 196; Black 116;
Devi, Jyotirmoyee 198 South Asian 112, 116
Devi, Shanta 198 Festival of India in France 87
Devy, Ganesh N. 5, 13, 229 – 30, 238 feudal system 77, 141, 168
“Dewana Khoi Mala,” Mahasweta fiction 1, 5, 7, 9, 11, 16, 78, 81, 90, 93,
Devi 201 129, 131, 137 – 8
Dharitri Devi 2, 202, 214, 233 “50 years of Independence and the
Dhatridevata, Tarasankar 51 Lodhas” in Aaj Kaal 218
Dhulomati, Bhowmick 57 Five Plays 41, 86, 89, 125, 127, 137 – 8,
Djebar, Assia 13 148; cover (image) 42
Douloti, Mahasweta Devi 78, 103 folklore 3, 14, 129, 131, 200, 203
Draupadi, Mahasweta Devi 5, 8 – 9, Folktales from India, Ramanujan 10
81, 85, 88, 121 – 2, 132, 144, 148, forest dwellers 182, 219
150 – 1, 153, 237; Santhal song in 7; Forests of India, The, Stebbing 164
Spivak translation of 87 Frankfurt Book Fair 238
“Draupadi” (2000), Kanhailal 151, 238 freedom struggle 4, 159
Duras, Marguerite 91
Dust on the Road, Ghatak 163, 167 Gaikwad, Laxman 171, 173, 238
Dutt, Avijit 152, 239 Ganadevata, Tarasankar 51
Dutt, Utpal 70, 72, 138 “Ganatantra o Gopal Kahar” 78
Dutta, Ella 86 Gandhi, Mahatma 172, 193;
Dutta Gupta, Sarmishtha 224 – 5 assassination of 2, 192 – 3
“Ganga-Jamuna-Dulang-Chaka”,
ecological/ecology 16, 166, 167, 177 – 9, Mahasweta Devi 187
181, 249 Gangopadhyay, Sunil 12, 64
Elias, Akhtaruzzaman 199, 213, 221 Gangor, Italo Spinelli 239
Elwin lecture in Baroda 170 – 2 Ganguli, Usha 144, 149, 238
Emecheta, Buchi 13 Garasia-Bhil Mahabharata 174
Emergency Rule, Indira Gandhi 58, gender 6, 104 – 5, 112, 122, 126, 133,
143, 179 – 80 146 – 7, 196; bias 135; discrimination
environmental strangulation 179 149, 228; role of 9
ethnicity 112, 117 generation-gap, concept of 76
ethnography 10 Geography of Hunger, The, Castro 169
“Etoa Munda Won the Battle” 86 “Ghaatak”, Mahasweta Devi 201
Etotuku Asha, Mahasweta Devi 70, Ghatak, Maitreya 5, 159
236 Ghatak, Manish Chandra (father/Baba)
eucalyptus 164 – 7; hazard 166; 2, 201 – 4, 214, 233
introduction of 165; Karnataka Ghatak, Ritwik 2, 147, 176, 233, 235
(2017) ban on 179, see also anti- Ghatak, Sudhish, 233
eucalyptus movement Ghatak, Suresh Chandra 202
“Eucalyptus: Why?”, Mahasweta Devi Ghose, Goutam 150, 238, see also
6, 15, 177 – 8 Gudia
exploitation 5, 68 – 9, 80 – 1, 116, 126, Ghose, Jyotsnamoy 59
144, 168, 197, 204, 216, see also Ghose, Kalyani 64
caste; women Ghose, Sankho 12, 64
Ghose, Santosh 79
Falgoo 214 Ghosh, Alpana 198
famine 49, 51, 77, 96, see also Bengal Ghosh, Amitav 91, 97, 198, 240
Famine (1942–44) Ghosh, Jyotsnamoy 12
farmers 82, 180 Ghosh, Nirmal 191
255
INDEX
Ghosh, P.K. 85, 87 Hemingway, Ernest 173

Ghoshjaya, Shailabala 198 heteroglossia 7
Ghunpoka 58 historiography 123, 129,131 – 3, 135,
Gikandi, Simon 92 146 – 7
“Giribala”, Mahasweta Devi 5, 9, history 148
13 – 14, 27, 111, 113, 115 – 17 human rights 10, 69
Gobindadas 206 Human Rights Commission 222
God 39 – 40, 52, 100, 198; as luxury of “Hun Maha” 201
rich 52 “Hunt, The”, Mahasweta Devi 5, 9,
God of Small Things, Roy 198 177, 181
Godhra incident 227, see also riots
Godse, Nathuram 193 “I cannot do the big things” 223
Golf Green house 225, 228 imaginative activism 93, 95, 97
Goswami, Achyut 11, 57 immortality 80, 84
Goswami, Indira 15, 131 – 2, 134 – 5 “Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet”
Goswami, Mamoni Raisom 129 100
grandfather: maternal 197 – 8; paternal In Other Worlds 87, 124
197 In the Name of the Mother: Four
grandmother 197, 209 Stories 32; cover image 119
Gramsci, Antonio. 98, 197 independence 2, 6, 8, 77, 103, 113,
Grimms’ fairy tales 13 127, 137, 193, 221, 229, 235
Gudia Gautam Ghose 150, 238 See also Indian languages 3, 8 – 9, 13, 146,
Urvashi and Johnny 205
Guha, Ranajit 93 Indian People’s Theatre Association
Gupta, Ajoy 12 (IPTA) 3 – 4, 138, 147, 173, 235
Gupta, Asit 3, 147, 190, 194, 215, 236; indigenous people 1, 5, 125; campaign
death of 191 for rights of 5, see also adivasis;
Denotified and Nomadic Tribes
“H.F. 37: Ekti Reportage”, Mahasweta (DNTs); tribes
Devi 204 indigenous words 7, 125
Haazar Chaurasi kee Maa, Jalan inequalities 5 – 6
215 Integrated Tribal Development Project
Haider, Qurratulain 198 (ITDP) 160
Hajar Churashir Ma (Mother of 1084) interdisciplinary storytelling 179
5, 8 – 9, 12, 14 – 15, 26, 60, 62, 64, intersectionality 10, 16
68 – 71, 75, 78 – 9, 86, 89 – 90, 124, irrealism 8; critical 8
138 – 41, 148, 151, 153, 226, 231, ‘Isco Cave’ 99
237; Basu on 12, 61; Mukhopadhyay
on 12, 58 Jagomohoner Mrityu, Mahasweta Devi
Hansuli Banker Upakatha, Tarasankar 51 78, 204
Haq, Hasan Azizul 87, 199 Jaidev 13, 15, 103, 173
Haraway, Donna 179 Jaipur History Congress 203
harijan killings 169, see also under “Jal”, Mahasweta Devi 72, 81, 121,
caste 138
Hariram Mahato, Mahasweta Devi 78 Jalan, Shyamanand 152, 215, 239
“Haunted Landscapes: Mahasweta Jalarko 74
Devi and the Anthropocene,” Jameson, Fredric 104
Cappelli 16 “Jamunabotir Ma” 201
Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa, Nihalani Jamuna ke Teer, Mahasweta Devi 236
146, 152, 238 “Jamunaboti’s Mother,” Mahasweta
Heise, Ursula 97 Devi 5, 9
Hembram, Nityananda 161 Jangal ke Davedaar 237
256
INDEX
Jhansir Rani, Mahasweta Devi 3, 7, “Land Alienation Among Tribals,”

14, 89, 147, 211, 226 see also The Mahasweta Devi 178
Queen of Jhansi land ceiling 168
Jhargram Mohkumay 217 “Land Grabbing among Tribals in West
“Jiyankanya” 235 Bengal”, Mahasweta Devi 177
Joseph, Joshy 231 The Land of Naked People, Madhusree
Joseph, Teresa 114 Mukherjee 198
Jotjomi, Debes Ray 78 landless 3, 166, 168; agricultural
Jugantar 237 labourers 85; peasants 236; rural
Jussawala, Adil 86 poor 137
landlords 107, 180
Kaku, Mejo 212 land-owning-moneylenders 107
Kambar, Chadrashekhar 170 language 73; recognition of 161; use of
“Kanai Bairagir Ma” 201 7, 64, 73, 89, 147
Kandiyoti, Deniz 115 Latour, Bruno 97
Kanhailal, Heisnam 144, 151, Leftists 62 – 3, 67; government in Bengal
238 4; literature and theatre 71
Kanhailal, Sabitri Devi 151, 238 liberalism 115 – 16
Kanwar, Amar 216 Lichte, Fischer 150
Kapadia, Dimple 238 “Lightning Testimonies, The”, Kanwar
Kar, Bimal 57 216
Karunanayake, Dinithy 13 Little Theatre Group 138
Kashyap, Aruni 134 “Love, Care and Dignity: The Family as a
Katyal, Anjum 13, 15, 120, 137 Privileged Community,” Nussbaum 13
Kaur, Ajit 198 Lu Xhun, biography of 3
Khakhar, Bhupen 174 – 5
Khan, Amjad 238 “M W Banam Lakhind”, Mahasweta
Khan, Shah Rukh 7 Devi 121
Khanna, Ranjana 111 – 12 Maati Maye, Palekar 238 – 9
Khwabnama, Elias 199, 221 Madhubala 173
Kishore, Naveen, conversation with Madhurey Madhur, Mahasweta Devi
238; English translations of 13; 70, 236; Goswami on 57
interview by 152, 189 – 95 “Maganbhai’s Glue”, Khakhar 174
Kisku, Saradaprasad 159 “Mahananda” 232
Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon o Mahasweta Devi/Bhattacharya 226 – 7:
Mrityu, Mahasweta Devi 201, 204, Anita Agnihotri on 224; birth of 2,
221, 236 202, 233; conversation with Kishore
Konchi 214 189 – 95; criticism 64; death of 4,
Konwar, Arunabh 15 227, 229; as didi 30, 199, 203 – 4,
Kotal, Chuni 222 209 – 10, 218 – 19; education of 2 – 4,
Krishnamoorthy, K. 146, 153 148 – 9, 151, 203 – 4,233 – 6; essays
Kumar, Dilip 237 177; family of 4; father/Baba 28,
Kumar, Sanjeev 237 31, 43, 204, 206 – 7, 209, 211 – 12;
“Kunti and the Nishadin,” Mahasweta fiction 9, 12, 80, 144; first marriage
Devi 8 3; images 55, 157, 162, 184, 185,
200, 208, 234; as Marangdai 3, 5; as
Lahiri, Sari 16, 209 Mahasweta Bhattacharya 70; novels
Laili Aasmaner Aina, Mahasweta Devi 59 – 60, 63, 73, 152; pseudonym as
146, 226 Sumitra Devi 3, 11, 203, 212, 235;
Lajmi, Kalpana 146, 149 second marriage 194; as Shobor
Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi147 Mother 217; stories 13, 59, 73, 78,
Land Acquisition Act of 1894 225 80 – 1, 110 – 11, 115, 117, 143, 216;
257
INDEX
style of writing 73 – 4, 176; texts 8, Mitra, Manoj 138

14 – 15, 100, 123 – 4, 127; translations Mitra, Premendra 51
and 88; use of language 73; work Mitra, Ranjanikanta 198
experience 235 – 6; writings 2, 5 – 6, Mitra, Sombhu 138
9 – 12, 14, 62 – 4, 67 – 8, 73, 120 – 1, Mitra, Sureshchandra 12
124, 146 – 7, 149, 152, 203; as writer Mitul (image) 208
activist 4 – 6 Mejo dada 207
mahua tree 229 – 30 modernism 8
Maitra, Jyotirindra 212 Modi, Narendra 239
Maitra, Suresh Chandra 62 Mofussil Brittanto, Debes Ray 78
Maity, Amitesh 65 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 111
Majumdar, Amiya Bhushan 67 moneylenders 140, 180
Majumdar, Charu 152, 239 Monjo, F. N. 129
Majumdar, Debasis 138 morality 52, 132
Majumdar, Lila 198 Morrison, Toni 15, 110 – 13, 115 – 17
Malcolm, D.A. 21 – 2 Morton, Timothy 97
Malik, Shazia 113 motherhood 15, 111, 113, 115, 126,
Mallaburman, Advaita 62 201; representations of 9
Malone, Irina Ruppo 131 “Moul Adhikar o Bhikhari Dusad,”
Mandela, Nelson 172, 238 Mahasweta Devi 204
Mangai 144 Mukherjee, Hemanta Kumar 173
Manipuri women, naked protest against Mukherjee, Madhusree 198
AFSPA 151, 238 Mukherjee, Meenakshi 86
Manjari Opera, Tarasankar 51 Mukherjee, Sujit 9, 13, 15
Mann, Harveen Sachdeva 9 Mukherjee, Tutun 13
Manto, Sadat Hasan 9, 173 Mukhopadhyay, Arun Kumar 12,
Marathwada 228 58 – 9, 63
marginalisation 6, 8, 116, 127; of Mukhopadhyay, Partha 12, 60
women 9 Mukhopadhyay, Shirshendu 58, 79
Marino, Alessandra 13 Mukhopadhyay, Soma 16, 206
Marxism 4, 10, 12, 68, 111, 127, Mukhopadhyay, Trailokyanath 198
197 Mukhopadhyay, Umaprasad 198
Masik Basumati 206 Mukundaram (Kavikankan) 50, 198,
massacres 221; see also riots 233
Master Saab, Mahasweta Devi 12, 58 Munda uprising 147, 216
Maternal 59, 81, 105 – 6, 110 – 14, Murmu, Sadhu Ram Chand 159
116 – 17 myth 3, 8, 11, 15, 60, 62, 80 – 4, 90, 94,
“Mayer Murti” 201 104, 200; of golden age 81
Mbembe, Achille 178 mythologies 47, 50 – 1, 80, 82
“Me,” poem by Amrita Pritam 110
Menozzi, Filippo 13 Nabo Kallol 204, 227
Miles, Alfred Henry 223 Nagin (1952) 236
Miller, Arthur 173 Nagini Kanyar Kahini, Tarasankar 51
minoritarian perspectives 146 Najib 223
Mishra, Dinesh 170 Nandigram agitation 238 – 9
Misra, Subimal 57 Nandikar 138
Misra, Udayon 134 Nandy, Jyotirindra 198
Misri, Deepti 151 Nasrin, Taslima 198
Mitra, Amar 224 Nati, Mahasweta Devi 70, 236
Mitra, Ashok 69 national allegories 15, 104 – 5, 107
Mitra, Indrani Roy, interview with 239 National Democratic Front of
Mitra, Joya 198 Bodoland (NDFB) 134
258
INDEX
National Human Rights Commission Palamau Zila Bandhua Samiti 5, 237

173 Palamu novellas 103
National School of Drama 152 Palekar, Chitra 239
nationalism 6, 104, 110 – 11 Panchagram, Tarasankar 51
nationality 117 Pandey, Mrinal 240
Naxal movement 14, 58 – 61, 67 – 8, 71, Paradise, Morrison 110, 112 – 13, 116
75, 121, 139 – 40, 151, 191, 215 Parry, Benita 8
Naya Sadak, translation of Peral S. Parsai, Harishankar 198
Buck 206 Partition 2, 8, 50 – 1, 77, 110, 113 – 14,
Nazrul 199 222, 235
Ndebele, Njabulo S. 92 Paschim Banga Kheria Sabar Kalyan
neoliberalism 111 Samiti 220, 237
Nihalani, Govind 69, 146, 152, 238 passion 57, 68, 73, 212
Niranjana, Tejaswini 125 Patel, Bhagwandas 171
Nixon, Rob 177 Patel, Kanji 174
Nomadic Tribes 231 patriarchy 9, 110 – 14, 116, 133, 215
“Noon” (“Salt”), Mahasweta Devi 6, Paul, Ruma 174
204, 224, 226 performance 16, 130, 138, 143, 147 – 8,
novels 15, 47 – 8, 50 – 2, 57 – 9, 61 – 5, 150 – 3, 231; rights 87; studies 10,
70, 73, 75 – 81, 89, 195 – 6, 204; 148, 152
Mahesweta Devi on her 58 performativity 147 – 8
Nussbaum, Martha 13 – 14, 115 – 16 “Phoren Soap”, Khakhar 174
“Nyadosh the Incredible Cow,” “Pindadaan”, Mahasweta Devi 64, 200
Mahasweta Devi 15, 43 – 6, 215 Pinjar, Amrita Pritam 110 – 11, 113 – 14
planetarity 6, 16, 95, 97 – 8, 100
Of Women, Outcasts, Peasants and playwriting 138, 140
Rebels 87On Both Sides, Mangai 144 political: consciousness 3 – 4;
On the Cultural Front, Ritwik Ghatak marginalisation 179; movement
147 71, 78
Operation? Bashai Tudu: Mahasweta political theatre 138, see also theatre
Devi 3, 5, 8, 64, 85, 88; positionality 120
Mukhopadhyay on 58 poverty 235 – 6, see also famine
oppression 5, 9, 80, 83, 111, 116, 142, Pradhan, Pankaj Kumar 219
197 Prasad 227
oral traditions 7, 129, 198 – 9, see also Pratibha 197
folklore Premtara, Mahasweta Devi 70
Other Side of Silence, The, Butalia 114 Pritam, Amrita 15, 110 – 13, 116 – 17
Our Non-Veg Cow and Other Stories, pterodactyl 91, 93 – 8, 172, 200
Mahasweta Devi 46 “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha”,
Our Santiniketan 16, 188, 233 Mahasweta Devi, trans. Spivak 91
outcastes 137, see also caste; casteism; Puri, Ina 16, 214
Dalits; harijan killings Purulia 160, 165 – 6, 172, 187, 189,
Outlook 216 200, 220, 222, 229; custodial death
of Budhan Sabar in 172, 174
“Paddy Seeds”, Mahasweta Devi 177, Putul Nacher Itikatha, Manik
179 Bandyopadhyay 51
Pakistan, creation of 2, see also
Partition Queen of Jhansi, The 3, 7, 11, 21, 23,
Palamau 3, 165 – 8, 172, 189 – 90, 204, 129 – 30, 147, 200, 211, 236; book
236 cover (image) 20; Radha Chakravarty
“Palamau is a Mirror of India,” on 133; translation 129
Mahasweta Devi 15 Quit India movement 2, 234
259
INDEX
Raakhee 238 Sachitra Bharat 203, 212

Rabindranath 2, 11, 57, 73, 87, 172, Sahni, Balraj 237
174, 193, 197, 199, 206, 212; birth Sahni, Bhisham 198
of 188, 233; dance dramas 199 Saikia, Tejoswita 132
race 112, 117, 146 Salgado, Minoli 8 – 9, 13
Rachanasamagra, Mahasweta Devi Samakaler Jiyan Kathi 205, 210
11 – 12 Sananda, Sankho Ghose in 64
Rajlakshmi Devi 228 Sangari, Kumkum 133
Rajshahi 199, 202, 221 Sangbad Pratidin 213
Raju, Cherabanda 86 “Sangrakshan”, Mahasweta Devi 204
Ramanujan, A. K. 10 “Sanjh Baisakhi,” 201
Rane, The 22 Santappu, H. 164
Rangmashal 234 Santhali language 159, 161
Rathwa, Nagin 172 Santiniketan 2, 4, 6, 16, 172, 187 – 8,
Rattan Masterer Pathshala 224 193, 197, 199, 203, 214
Ravindranathan, Thangam 91, 97 Saratchandra 11, 47 – 8, 57
Rawail, HS 146 Satabdi, Badal Sircar 138
Ray, Asim 57 Sathyanarayana, E. 13
Ray, Debes 57, 78 Scheduled Tribes 182
Ray, Satyajit 195 Schleiermacher, Freidrich 124
readers/audience 9, 73, 124 – 5, 149, Schwartz, Henry 13
226 screen adaptations 15, 146, 149
realism 1, 8, 76, 78 Sea Wall, The, Marguerite Duras 91
refugees 58, 111 – 12 Second World War 2, 45
religion 110 – 11, 113, 117, 146 “Seeds”, Mahasweta Devi 169 – 70
reproductive heteronormativity (RHN) 94 Seeta, Meadows Taylor 22
revolution 69 – 70, 80 – 1, 190 Sen, Nandini 13
riots 50 – 1, 221; in Ahmedabad 227; Sen, Nivedita 13
in Calcutta 2, 235; 221; in Gujarat Sepoy Mutiny 60, 203
175, 227; Hindu–Muslim 77, see also Seth, Vikram 198
Partition Shah, Waris 113
rivers 23, 45, 62, 82, 93, 141, 166 – 7, Shankhdhar, Jagat 237
187, 195, 206, 229; Kumari-Chaka- Shatabdir Mrityu, Tarasankar 49
Kshintowa-Kansai 187 Sheikh, Umar 212
Rolland, Romain 47 Shishu, Mahasweta Devi 78
romances 11, 70, 226 sign-system, shared 8
romanticism 139 short stories 14, 51, 75, 115, 137, 177,
Roopkala Kendra 228 212
Roy, Arundhati 198 Shrestha Galpo, Mahasweta Devi 75;
Roy, Bani 198 Sharmila Basu on 59 – 60
Roy, Binoy 212 Shukla, Srilal 198
Roy, Ram Mohun 233 Singbhum and Mahasweta Devi 164 – 6,
Rudaali (1993) (Hindi) by Kalpana 179; Alliance Cement Company
Lajmi 146, 149, 238 (ACC) 177 – 8; land confiscation in
Rudali, Usha Ganguli 149, 238 179
Rudali, play, Mahasweta Devi 148, 153 Singh, Harleen 133
Singh, Parmananda 217
Sabar, Budhan, killing of 172, 230 Sinha, Shumona 91
Sabar, Sagar 200 Sircar, Badal 138, 231
Sabitri 144 Sita Devi, 198
Sachidanandan, P. “Anand” 10, 16, Smriti Bismriti 202
173, 220 Sobti, Krishna 198
260
INDEX
social forestry 165 Thengphakhri Tehsildaror Taamor

social: awareness 68, 159, 228; Toruwal, Goswami 130
corruption 179; criticism 61; justice Third World 87, 90, 105
98, 139 – 40; mission 12; movements Timir Lagan, Mahasweta Devi 70,
147, 231; responsibility 4, 12, 77 226
socialism 58 Tordey, Emil 169
Spinelli, Italo 239 Tracy, D. H. 110
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty translations 1 – 3, 7, 9 – 11, 13, 15, 85,
1, 3, 6, 9 – 10, 13 – 15, 67, 69, 95, 100, 124 – 6, 196, 198, 205;
73, 85 – 9, 120 – 1, 123 – 7, 151; English 1, 10, 13, 73, 86, 225, 228;
“Can the Subaltern Speak?” 4; of literary texts 88 – 9
internationalising strategies 11; tribal; campaign for languages
interpretation 122; Mahasweta Devi 7; championing cause of 237;
on 73; mediation 9; translations 9, displacement for development 181;
14, 123 – 4, 126 groups 5, 67, 161–2, 178; identity 95,
Sri Sri Ganesh Mahima, Mahasweta 160; languages 5, 15, 161; revolt 58
Devi 78 tribes 4, 6, 9, 89, 93 – 4, 125, 137,
Sri Sri Ganesh Mahima Hindi 159 – 64, 180, 182, 190, 192, 197,
translation 238 204, 221, 236; Bedias 161; Ho 165;
“Stanadayini”, Mahasweta Devi 9 – 10, Kherias 159, 161, 167; Lodhas 16,
72, 120, 122 – 3, 204 61 – 2, 161, 165, 167, 222, 217 – 19,
Stebbing, E.P. 164 226; Mundas 61, 83, 161, 217;
storytelling 94, 179; Tarasankar and Oraons 161; Parhayiyas 165; Sabar/
49 – 50 Shobors 159, 167, 217 – 19, 222,
stream-of-consciousness 14 226, 230; Santhals 61, 161 – 2, 165,
Subramanian, Shreerekha 113 167
Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari 8 Trinamool Congress (TMC) 4
subaltern/ subalternity 1, 4, 6, 9, 95, Truth Tales 86
121 – 3, 125, 127, 132, 215; literature Tunzelmann, Alex von 135
121; resistance 9; studies 10, 86, 93, Turner, Victor 152
120; tribal as 9 Tushu songs 218
Suhrud, Tridip 171
Sumitra Devi (pseudonym). See under Ullas, Ishwar Chakrborty 239
Mahasweta Devi/Bhattacharya Undoing Gender, Butler 14
“Sunghursh” 146, 237 Urvashi and Johnny (English) 126, 138,
Swaha, Mahasweta Devi 71 143 – 4, 148
Swanson, Heather 179 Urvashi O Johnny, Mahasweta Devi
Swarnakumari Devi 12, 59 238
“Utsaber Shubhechchha” 239
Tagore, Rabindranath. See
Rabindranath Vajpeyi, Ashok 198
Talking Writing 195 Varma, Deven 237
“Tasher Desh,” Tagore 199 Vasudevan Nair, M.T. 198
Taylor, Jesse Oak 97 Vemula, Rohit 223
Taylor, Meadows 22 Venuti, Lawrence 124
Tebhaga-Telengana issue 212, 235 Vidyasagar, Ishwarchandra 233
Teesta Parer Brittanto, Debes Ray 78 Virdee, Pippa 114
Tejgadh 172, 174, 229 Visva Bharati 203, 214
Thakumar Jhhuli 212 Visvanathan, Shiv 13
theatre 69, 71, 139, 144, 149, 151, vulnerable peoples 179, see also
231; activism 138; and theatricality tribes
148 – 50 Vyjayanthimala 237
261
INDEX
Wenzel, Jennifer 6, 13 – 14, 97 Worthen, W. B. 150

West Bengal 48 – 9, 52, 58, 60 – 2, Writing and Sexual Difference 87
160 – 2, 164 – 5, 167 – 8, 177, 196, writing as kinesis 152 – 3
204, 230 – 1
“Wet Nurse, The” 86 – 7 Yeats, W. B 100
White, Hayden 131 Yogabhrashta, Tarasankar 51
women, adivasi 94; exploitation of 9; of Yook, Sun Hee 13
Manipur 16; writer 9, 197
woman writer 9, 197, 204, 228 Zalasiewicz, Jan 180
262

Mahasweta Devi - Writer, Activist, Visionary (Writer in Context)

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Mahasweta Devi - Writer, Activist, Visionary (Writer in Context)

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Mahasweta Devi occupies a singular position in the history of modern Indian

The Writer in Context Series has been conceptualised to facilitate a

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Edited by Radha Chakravarty

Introduction: The Searing Vision of Mahasweta Devi 1

1 Fictionalised Biography: The Queen of Jhansi21

2 Novel: Mother of 108424

3 Short Story: Giribala 27

5 Children’s Literature: Nyadosh, the Incredible Cow 43

6 Literary Criticism: Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay47

7 Novelist Mahasweta Devi: The Critical Tradition 57

8 Mahasweta Devi: In Search of a Rare Uniqueness 67

9 Hajar Churashir Ma, Mahasweta, and the Next Phase

10 Mahasweta Devi: Forests and Nature 80

11 Mahasweta Devi’s Writings: An Evaluation 85

13 Douloti as a National Allegory 103

14 Re-ordering the Maternal: Histories of Violence in

15 The Politics of Positionality: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

16 Reconsidering ‘Fictionalised Biographies’: Mahasweta

17 Writing for the Stage: The Plays of Mahasweta Devi 137

18 Sahitya as Kinesis: Performative Potential in Stage and

19 Tribal Language and Literature: The Need for Recognition 159

20 Eucalyptus: Why? 164

21 ‘Palamau Is a Mirror of India’ 168

22 The Adivasi Mahasweta 170

23 Haunted Landscapes: Mahasweta Devi and the Anthropocene 177

24 Our Santiniketan 187

25 Talking Writing: Conversations With Mahasweta Devi 189

26 ‘To Find Me, Read My Work’: Dialogues With

27 Family Reminiscences 202

28 Shobor Mother Mahasweta Devi 217

29 Small Big Things 220

30 Mahasweta Devi: A Legend Who Lived on Her Own Terms 224

31 ‘Every Dream Has the Right to Live’ 229

Mahasweta Devi: A Bio-Chronology 233

Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016) vi

The conceptualisation and making of the Writer in Context series must in

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Samik Bandyopadhyay as Translators of

Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016) is best known to the English-speaking world

journal, translated from English to Bengali, published criticism in English,

Mahasweta’s marriage in 1946 to Bijon Bhattacharya, the renowned

Her intensely political consciousness notwithstanding, Devi’s worldview

Ablaze With Rage: The Writer as Activist

Story of Chuni Kotal,” an activist essay, highlights the multiple forms of

After thirty-one years of Independence, I find my people still ­groaning

She writes against communalism, caste prejudice, and superstition.

pry open the closures of the national discourse, compelling the

The Writer in Action

Writing”), published in Desh Sahitya Sankhya, she speaks of the writing

I don’t use apparent/visible experience directly in literature. To

Because every text requires this aesthetic process, words, language

Local vocabularies become central to the style and subject of Mahasweta’s

I borrow from everywhere – from oral traditions, proverbs, folk

Mahasweta’s relationship with modernism remains a fraught question.

require a comparative analysis’ (2000: 143). In this volume, we encoun-

Through the Kaleidoscope: Critical Reception

Bengali Critical Reception

(i) 1950s to the late 1960s

This broad trend of adulation continues, even today. Mahasweta Devi’s

Critical Reception Across India

International Critical Reception

becomes the springboard for Nussbaum’s larger reflections on asymmetries

Introduction: The Searing Vision of Mahasweta Devi 1

1 Fictionalised Biography: The Queen of Jhansi21

2 Novel: Mother of 108424

3 Short Story: Giribala 27

5 Children’s Literature: Nyadosh, the Incredible Cow 43

6 Literary Criticism: Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay47

7 Novelist Mahasweta Devi: The Critical Tradition 57

8 Mahasweta Devi: In Search of a Rare Uniqueness 67

10 Mahasweta Devi: Forests and Nature 80

11 Mahasweta Devi’s Writings: An Evaluation 85

13 Douloti as a National Allegory 103

17 Writing for the Stage: The Plays of Mahasweta Devi 137

19 Tribal Language and Literature: The Need for Recognition 159

20 Eucalyptus: Why? 164

21 ‘Palamau Is a Mirror of India’ 168

22 The Adivasi Mahasweta 170

23 Haunted Landscapes: Mahasweta Devi and the Anthropocene 177

24 Our Santiniketan 187

25 Talking Writing: Conversations With Mahasweta Devi 189

27 Family Reminiscences 202

28 Shobor Mother Mahasweta Devi 217

29 Small Big Things 220

30 Mahasweta Devi: A Legend Who Lived on Her Own Terms 224

31 ‘Every Dream Has the Right to Live’ 229

Mahasweta Devi: A Bio-Chronology 233

Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016) vi

After thirty-one years of Independence, I find my people still groaning

24 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-4