Revolutionary litterateur (1926–2016)
Born in 1926, Mahasweta Devi who passed away in a Kolkata nursing home on July 28, was one of India’s foremost literary personalities, a prolific and bestselling author in Bengali, of short fiction and novels; a deeply political social activist, who worked ceaselessly with and for tribals and marginal communities like the landless labourers of eastern India for years; the editor of a quarterly Bortika, in which the tribals and marginal people themselves documented grassroots level issues and trends; and a socio-political commentator whose articles appeared regularly in The Economic and Political Weekly, Frontier and other journals.
Mahasweta Devi made significant contributions to literary and cultural studies in the country. Her empirical research into oral history as it lives in the cultures and memories of tribal communities, was the first of its kind in India. Her innovative use of language has expanded the parameters of Bengali as a language of literary expression, by imbibing and interweaving of tribal dialects into her writing.
“It is not new for my literature to spring from a fight for the rights of these oppressed and downtrodden people. The tribal revolt against the British at the turn of the century formed the backbone of Aranyer Adhikar (Rights of the Forest), which the Sahitya Akademi singled out for their awards. My social activism is the driving force of all my literary activities, be it literature – which brought me into the good books of Jnanpeeth (which bestows the highest literary award in India for outstanding work in Indian languages over a sustained period of time to a single writer every year) – my newspaper columns or the journal I edit with writing of members of different tribes. The lives of the bonded labour provided me with a character like Dopadi”, she said.
In all her major works in the sixties – Rani of Jhansi, Bibek Biday Pala, Romtha, Andhar Manik, Amrita Sanchar – she described the common people and their plight. Andhar Manik describes the coastal tribal rebellion against feudal chiefs who they considered to be outsiders. She always tries to see society and judge history from the grassroots level, from the people’s point of view. This is true even of her first book, Rani of Jhansi. This process eventually took her to the tribals and other marginalised non-tribal people. She has written not only fiction, but also hundreds of newspaper reports on them, particularly on the so-called criminal tribes notified by the British as ‘criminal tribes’ in 1871.
Her reference to Dopadi links itself to Draupadi, one of her most electrifying pieces of work. The story is about Dopdi Mejhen, a tribal revolutionary, who, arrested and gang-raped in custody, turns the terrible wounds of her breasts into a counter-offensive. In another story, Breast-Giver, a woman who becomes a professional wet-nurse to support her family, dies of painful breast cancer, betrayed alike by the breasts that for years had been her chief identity, and the dozens of ‘sons’ she suckled. In Behind the Bodice, migrant labourer Gangor’s ‘statuesque’ breasts excite the attention of ace photographer Upin Puri, triggering off a train of violence that ends in tragedy.
These three stories are encapsulated in a beautiful translation (by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) called Breast Stories, brought out by Seagull Books, Calcutta. Though she categorically states that she looks at class and not at gender, many of her stories do deal with women oppressed by a patriarchal system. Rudali is a powerful short story that revolves around the life of Sanichari, a poor, low-caste village woman, is an acidly ironic tale of exploitation and struggle… Bayen (The Witch) is about a fair-skinned, light-eyed woman born into the community of Doms (very low-caste people who work as cremators of Hindu dead bodies), who is killed because her own people consider her a witch because of her different ‘looks.’
She lived, ate and learnt the language of the Shabars, the Lodhas, the Kheria-Shabars, the Mundas, the Santhals and the Oraons, all of them tribal communities impoverished by virtue of their race and caste, and State apathy to their plight. “I don’t make up stories. I go on making notes, jotting down dialogues, incidents….” she once said.