Mahasweta Devi: Writer, Activist, Visionary (Writer in Context) [1 ed.] 0367697769, 9780367697761

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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 writeractivist 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; individual 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 TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA

 9 Hajar Churashir Ma, Mahasweta, and the Next Phase of the Bangla Novel

75

DILIP KUMAR BASU TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA

10 Mahasweta Devi: Forests and Nature

80

PARTHA PRATIM BANDYOPADHYAY TRANSLATED BY RADHA CHAKRAVARTY

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 SHREEREKHA SUBRAMANIAN

x

110

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 MARY LOUISA CAPPELLI

xi

177

C ontents

SECTION 4

Personal Glimpses: A Life in Words

185

24 Our Santiniketan

187

MAHASWETA DEVI TRANSLATED BY RADHA CHAKRAVARTY

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 I I Am Truly Amazed

202 202

SOMA MUKHOPADHYAY TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA

II Baba, Ma, Our Home

206

SOMA MUKHOPADHYAY TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA

III The Didi I Have Known

209­

SARI LAHIRI TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA

IV My Mother

211

NABARUN BHATTACHARYA TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA

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) TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA

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 TRANSLATED BY NANDINI GUHA

31 ‘Every Dream Has the Right to Live’

229

DAKXIN BAJRANGE

Mahasweta Devi: A Bio-Chronology Mahasweta Devi: Selected Bibliography List of Contributors Index

xiii

233 241 247 252

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, decades after the independence of India, that the angst to redefine English literary 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 encouraged more translations of Indian literatures into English, even though translation 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 impending 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 otherwise 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’ writers, 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, progressivism, 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 socioliterary 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 engagements 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 overwhelming, 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. Choosing 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 Bhattacharjee, 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 Biographies’,” Benil Biswas for “Sahitya as Kinesis,” Shreerekha Subramanian for “Re-ordering the Maternal,” Mary Louisa Cappelli for “Haunted Landscapes,” 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 previously 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 Mahasweta 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 “Mahasweta Devi’s Writings: An Evaluation” by Sujit Mukherjee; Anupama Jaidev and Manohar Publishers and Distributors for “Douloti as National Allegory” 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 translations 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 Mukhopadhyay, 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 Uniqueness”; Sabita Bandyopadhyay and Korak for “Mahasweta Devi: Forests and Nature” by the late Partha Pratim Bandyopadhyay; Aksharekha for “Shobor 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 Routledge 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 marginality 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 ‘witnessing’. 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, simultaneously 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 Mahasweta 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 activist 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 English, 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 international literary sphere. Hence, there are multiple stereotypes of Mahasweta Devi, conjured up by her different audiences and separated by different 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 bodies 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 himself. 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 historical 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 establishment 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 established 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 landless 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.

3

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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 shortcomings of the Left government in Bengal. She changed her allegiance to the Trinamool 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 international 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 ‘continent’ (Devi 1995: xxi).

Ablaze With Rage: The Writer as Activist Mahasweta Devi is as renowned for her activism as for her literary achievement. She regards these as twin aspects of the same vocation, because writing 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 something 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 compartmentalise 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 4

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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 campaign 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 recognition 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 Bandhua 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 background, 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 subjugate and exploit the Global South. Although she disavows any link with the feminist movement, Mahasweta 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 oppression are shown to intersect in the constructions of female subjectivity. “The 5

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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 Bandyoghoti 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 passionate 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 independent 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 interrupt 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 6

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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 7

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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 turning a blind eye to social realities. All the same, her writings deploy special linguistic, textual, and aesthetic strategies that can be compared to the practices 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 modernist 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 narrative 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 existence 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 Nishadin” (see also Partha Pratim Bandyopadhyay, in this volume). “Draupadi,” for instance, rewrites the disrobing scene in Mahabharata, signalling ‘simultaneously 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 during 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 commensurate with altered realities. The socio-historical context produced ruptured sensibilities, a loneliness produced perhaps by the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family, and a certain philosophical angst about existence and 8

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identity. The encounters with Western culture during the colonial period also created a tension between indigenous tradition and transcultural influences. 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, Mahasweta 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 notwithstanding, 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 critiques 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 compares 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 translation 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 dwarpalika to the Western world (Sujit Mukherjee 1991: 31). They have proved to be not only immensely influential but also controversial. Multiple translations of the same texts also exist, inviting a comparative approach. Distinguishing 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

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require a comparative analysis’ (2000: 143). In this volume, we encounter 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 Mahasweta translations can be traced back to broader paradigm shifts in critical 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 several texts into Bengali, including A. K. Ramanujan’s Folktales from India (1991). She also involved herself seriously in the process of vetting translations 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 Marxism, 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 multidimensional 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 symptomatic 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 conventions, broke social barriers, explored subaltern worlds beyond the bhadralok 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 controversy. 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 internationalising 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 hostility 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, including 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 Publications, 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 successors, the appearance of Devi’s Queen of Jhansi in 1956 struck a distinctive 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 aesthetics 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, establishing 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 celebrates 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 translation, 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, Premchand, 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. Editors and publishers such as Samik Bandyopadhyay, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, 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 translators and scholars like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Kalpana Bardhan. She has been translated into English, French, German, Italian, and Swedish and has also won numerous international awards. Judith Butler, Martha 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 Family 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 building 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 involvement 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 environmental 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 fictionalised biography of Rani Lakshmibai, Queen of Jhansi, presents a remarkable blend of disparate elements, including historical sources, folklore, and creative characterisation, to show up the contradictions in different versions 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 (cremation 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,

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“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 incisiveness 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 reception in Bengal, the rest of India, and in the international domain. Tensions, 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 controversies 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 allegory 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 dramatist, 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 earning the right to intervene. Shreerekha Subramanian’s essay offers a comparative 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

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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 writing, comparative readings, and an emerging focus on her life. A full biography 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 performances of the Budhan theatre, and the rise to fame of the Dalit B ­ engali writer Manoranjan Byapari—Mahasweta’s influence can be felt in tangible 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 reverberations 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.

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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 Contemporary Women Writers: Rethinking Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2008).

References Bagchi, Alaknanda. 1996. “Conflicting Nationalisms: The Voice of the Subaltern in Mahasweta Devi’s Bashai Tudu,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 15(1): 141–150. Bandyopadhyay, Samik. 1997. “Introduction,” Five Plays by Mahasweta Devi, vii–xv. 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, Shakuntala. 1996. “Samprati Bangla Sahitya: Ekti Dhara,” Sharad Samway, 119–131. Bhattacharya, Sourit. 2020. Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel: On ­Catastrophic Realism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge. Chakraborty, Sumita. 1991. “Sahityer Lokho o Mahaweta Devi,” Proma (Subarno Sankhya): 397–404. Chakravarty, Radha. Spring 2004. “Reading Mahasweta: Shifting Frames,” Journal of the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, 64–70. ———. February  2021. “Mutant Worlds, Migrant Words: Rabindranath Tagore, Mahasweta Devi and Amitav Ghosh,” Thesis Eleven, 162(1), https://doi. org/10.1177/0725513621990795 (accessed on 2 February 2022). Chattopadhyay, Anunoy. B.E. 1395 (circa 1988). “Bangla Sahitye Adivasi Samaj,” Nandan (Sharad): 443–468. Devi, Mahasweta. 1956. Jhansir Rani. Kolkata: New Age. ———. 1967. Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon O Mrityu. Kolkata: Chatusparna. ———. 1969. “Bayen”. Amrita (Sharadiya, BE 1376). ———. 1974. Hajar Churashir Ma. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani. ———. 1983. “Ami/Amar Lekha,” Desh Sahitya Sankhya, 89–92. ———. 1995. Imaginary Maps. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York: Routledge. ———. 1997. Dust on the Road: The Activist Writings of Mahasweta Devi. Ed. Maitreya Ghatak. Kolkata: Seagull Books.

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———. 2022. Our Santiniketan. Trans. Radha Chakravarty. Kolkata: Seagull Books. Goswami, Achyut B.E. 1365 (circa 1958). “Review of Madhure Madhur by Mahasweta Devi,” Chaturanga (Sravan): 197–199. Hamam, Kinana. 2014. “Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Breast Giver’ and Buchi Emecheta’s Joys of Motherhood,” in Confining Spaces, Resistant Subjectivities: Toward a Metachronous Discourse of Literary Mapping and Transformation in Postcolonial Women’s Writing, pp. 137–166. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kailasam, Vasugi. 2011. “Veiled and Commodified Bodies: Djebar’s Women of Algiers in their Apartment and Devi’s Douloti the Bountiful,” in Nandini C. Sen (ed.), Mahasweta Devi: Critical Perspectives, pp. 110–119. New Delhi: Pencraft International. Kumar, Sukrita Paul. 2020. Conversations on Modernism. New Delhi: Vani Prakashan. Löwy, Michael. 2007. “The Current of Critical Irrealism: A  Moonlit Enchanted Night,” in Matthew Beaumont (ed.), Adventures in Realism, pp. 193–206. London: Blackwell. Mukherjee, Sujit. May–June 1991. “Mahasweta Devi’s Writings – An Evaluation,” The Book Review, 15(3): 30–31. Mukhopadhyay, Arun Kumar B.E. 1400 (circa 1993). “Mahasweta Devir Byatikrami Upanyash: Kobi Bondyoghoti Ganjir Jibon o Mrityu,” Korak (Sharad): 70–75. ———. 1982. “Sampratik Bangla Upanyas, Pratyasha o Prapti,” Sharadiya Paribartan, 27–46. Mukhopadhyay, Partha. March  1991. “Sottor Dashak, Ekti Upanyash: Kichchu Katha Kichchu Mathabyatha,” Antardwandwa, 17–22. Nussbaum, Martha. 2002. “Love, Care and Women’s Dignity: The Family as a Privileged Community,” in Philip Alperson (ed.), Diversity and Community: An Interdisciplinary Reader, pp. 209–228. New York: Blackwell. Parry, Benita. 2009. “Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms,” ARIEL: A  Review of International English Literature, 40(1): 27–55. Ramanujan, A.K. 1991. Folktales from India: A  Selection of Oral Tales from Twenty-Two Languages. New York: Pantheon Books. Salgado, Minoli. 2000. “Tribal Stories, Scribal Worlds: Mahasweta Devi and the Unreliable Translator,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 35(1): 131–145. 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). Satchidanandan, K. 2019. Positions: Essays on Indian Literature. New Delhi: Niyogi Books. Spivak, Gayatri C. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, pp. 271–313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 1999. “The Story of Draupadi’s Disrobing,” in Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (ed.), Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-Independence India, pp. 331–358. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Wenzel, Jennifer. 2000. “Grim Fairy Tales: Taking a Risk, Reading Imaginary Maps,” in Amal Amirah and Cosa Suhair Majaj (eds), Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, pp. 229–251. New York: Garland.

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Section 1 SPECTRUM The Writer’s Oeuvre

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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 announcement 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 Infantry 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 pension 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

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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 something 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 perverse 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 intention 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 fifteenth. 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

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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 subcontinent, 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. . . .

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From The Queen of Jhansi, Seagull, 2000.

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. Helmeted 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. No, you won’t get the body. 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

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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, pedestrians, 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, Dibyanath, 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 underneath 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

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pillars that stood witness to history, and beyond history into the foundations of faith that underlie the scriptures. The cry set oblivion itself, the present 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

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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

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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

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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, pumpkin, 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 repellent. 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

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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 profits 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 inlaws 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 unimaginable 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 government, 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, perhaps 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

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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 business, 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 discarded, lost if she’s dead, lost if she’s wed. Her father sighs, says, ‘Your daughter’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

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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.

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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

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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 scholarship. 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?

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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 hovering 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 cigarette and speaks more calmly) Go home, Bhagirath. I’ll go to the market, 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?

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dear, she won’t kill me. (He strokes Bhagirath’s head, lovingly, 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 sanyasis 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. MALINDAR:  No,

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buried children? 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 yellow, 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,

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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

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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 canister 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. (Thoughtful) But why did the boy ask me about a whole sari? He can’t be remembering anything. A clean sari, good looks, silver-nickelled bangles, 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

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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! (Broodingly) 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? Banamali’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 rumble 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?

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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 Gangaputta . . . 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 Gangadasi, 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 coloured water.

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Photo 1.2  Five Plays book cover. Source: Seagull Books.

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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 everything 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

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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

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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 possible. 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

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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 continued 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 achievement of Tarasankar critically and objectively. Objectivity, today, is almost absent from Bengali criticism. For the last twenty years we have been annually 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 Banerjee’s major stories reflect some influence of Jagadish Gupta’s in their critical analysis and probing exposure of the evil hidden in the subconscious. Otherwise, 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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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 acceptability of which was likely to be contradicted. Though he wrote continuously 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 considered 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 forcible 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 industrial belts. Such one-sided growth was unhealthy and it was fast impoverishing the villages. He saw that the development of rural economy was thoroughly neglected, a fatal mistake for an agricultural country. His novels 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

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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 landceiling. 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 knowledge 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 posthumously 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 capitalists 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

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mind, he attracted the readers primarily with his compelling way of storytelling. 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 language of the village-born poet of the 16th century, Kavikankan Mukundaram 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 language, 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 imparting a sense of historicity. One feels, in reading the novels about the five villages 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.

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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 agriculture. Statistics and census reports show that Birbhum has never had any major industry. There are only several rice-mills in the district. The railwaystations 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 understand what was actually happening in his district. Much has been said of his lack of style. It is true that he did not master 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 emotion. 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 contemporary 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 novels. 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 straightforward story, the central plot is submerged under subplots, and, this gives rise to another habit of his, repetitiveness. Very often he repeats himself or

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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 conservative and respectful of Brahminical way, one still wonders at the naivete with which he points out to all the social evils as the outcome 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 districttown. 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 becoming 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 Bengali 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 unknowingly, will follow Tarasankar’s path each time they write of the agony of an

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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

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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 intellectual 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 hurdles, 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 Goswami 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

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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 farmlabourers who had lost everything were unlimited. ‘Communism,’ ‘socialism,’ 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 postmortem 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 various 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 Adivasis, 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 narrativising 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

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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 sympathetic towards exploited humanity who have emerged as protagonists 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 socialpolitical-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, giving the greatest priority to ‘the content and the author’s honesty/commitment’ (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 decade 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 reflections 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 brilliant male style is evident in Mahasweta Devi’s stories. . . . She was never part of the feminine world, the sentiments and personal freedom of expression created by the pens of women authors. Mahasweta 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 challenge male writers, even daring to show them up as emotional in comparison. (S. Basu 1985: 343–348) 59

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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 failure 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 household seen through the eyes of a bourgeois, a story in which in spite of a lot of dissimulation, nothing has been said which could endanger 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 bourgeois 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

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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 concerns for their movement taught us to recognise its reality. Mahasweta 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 status 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 Mahasweta’s future collection of stories. (N. Basu 1987: 145–166) This critic, while endorsing Mahasweta’s individual heroes in their personal wars, actually feels that her writing shows an inclination to deny society 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 Chattopadhyay 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 talking of a Munda region and a Munda-world, did not give any importance 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

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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 imagination, Suresh Chandra Maitra still finds her lack of involvement with labourallied 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 storehouse. . . . 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 Bandyopadhyay, 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 descending 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

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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 bothered 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 contemporaries.  .  .  . 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 happily, 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

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Mahasweta criticism remains the same to date. In this phase, the first testimony 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 created 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 middleclass 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 cutting 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

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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 Deepakkumar 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 Mahasweta 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.

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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,” Sananda, 75. Goswami, Achyut. B.E. 1365 (circa 1958). “Review of Madhure Madhur by Mahasweta 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 Byatikrami Upanyash: Kobi Bondyoghoti Ganjir Jibon o Mrityu,” Korak (Sharad): 70–75. ———. 1982. “Sampratik Bangla Upanyas, Pratyasha o Prapti,” Sharadiya Paribartan, 27–46. Mukhopadhyay, Partha. March  1991. “Sottor Dashak, Ekti Upanyash: Kichchu Katha Kichchu Mathabyatha,” Antardwandwa, 17–22.

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8 MAHASWETA DEVI In Search of a Rare Uniqueness Dipendu Chakrabarti Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha Mahasweta Devi’s singularity is recognised, felicitated, and yet is somewhat disputed as well. In Bangla literature, no woman has earned the credit for being able to arouse such excitement through her new form of writing. 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 achievements. 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 periodical 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 ruthless 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

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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 deliverance was not shown clearly. In reply to this, Mahasweta declares: Those who are saying that I am showing exploitation and deprivation, 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 formula 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 opinions is very clear – yet, from this passion excellent literature can be created. Many of Mahasweta’s works have succeeded mainly because of her passionate 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

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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 Bachchan on the same stage at the function for the Hindi movie, Hazaar Chaurasi 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 understand 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 comfortable 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 politics 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, Mahasweta’s answer appears irrefutable. Please clarify your attitude towards these awards. In cinema and theatre, especially in the field of cinema, the producers get innumerable government awards and honours. You have not questioned their honesty and integrity. You neither point out that Leftist producers are selling their souls nor speak against them, but will do

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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 revolution 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 Mahasweta, 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 Mahasweta, literature was now only a component of her larger social functions, hence she was no longer interested in judgements about whether her writing 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 narrative 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 encounter extremely powerful realistic narrative and the free use of candid language. 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

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her second innings. As for structure, in her novel Swaha, Mahasweta continued 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. Moving 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 Mahasweta 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, actually 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 movement. 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 bourgeois 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 repetition 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

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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 Frankenstein). 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 presented various facts in a style that has become one of Documentary Theatre’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 sprinkled throughout her writings. We find words and phrases such as ‘phase,’ ‘gagged,’ ‘encounter,’ ‘injected,’ ‘tense,’ ‘premise,’ ‘superior,’ ‘abstraction,’ ‘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.”

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It is clear that even if the rickshaw pullers and labourers could read Mahasweta’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 realism’ 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 consciences 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 interest,’ and ‘she reads and teaches’ (Devi 1990). Who does she teach? Westerners! 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 Mahasweta 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 analysis. She played with language to create various special effects. If one looks

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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.

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9 HAJAR CHURASHIR MA, MAHASWETA, AND THE NEXT PHASE OF THE BANGLA NOVEL Dilip Kumar Basu Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha 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 Mahasweta 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 transformative 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 concern 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 DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-1275

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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 history of his evolution, did not find an opportunity for expression. . . . In those days, the concept of the ‘generation-gap’ had become very popular. 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 responsibility. 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 situation or more, and, for all these vile sins, had borne unadulterated mental suffering. These fictional characters were not only shown to be representatives 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

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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, famine, 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 miscellaneous 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. However, 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, embittered 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 particular 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 individual development. There now began an analysis of the extent to which the relationship between that feudalism and our new nation was harmonious or adversarial. In this way, the traditional quest for the discovery of 77

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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 movement, 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 political 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 persists, acceptable in reality – those who run the nation’s work are also individuals. 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.

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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 language 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 Shirshendu’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 reaching out to the new free nation, promise-bound to civil society to take them towards fulfilment. How this nation with its vast immobility, ineffectiveness, 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 people 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.

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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 natureproximate. 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 economic 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 bourgeois 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 oppressive 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 protagonists 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

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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 existence 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 successive 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 Draupadi 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 narrative 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

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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 representation 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 rearing 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, rivers, 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

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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 eternal 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 Chhotanagpur, 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, primordial purity, history. 83

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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 summoned 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 Santra 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 resonates, 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

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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 pleasantly 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, translated 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 paragraphs, 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 organises and leads the action wherever there is occasion for landless agricultural labourers of the region to resist some particular tyranny imposed by landowners 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 partyworker and small time journalist, Kali Santra, through whom much of the story is told. The much shorter (13 pages) second piece “Draupadi” focuses

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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 notoriously 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 translations 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 rendering 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 dramatisations 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

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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 “Draupadi” in – of all places – Critical Inquiry, one of those hi-fa scholarly journals 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 international 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 brilliantly 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

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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 himself which thus distinguished word is mere officialese, which meant ironically, 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 mistranslations 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 translators 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 manipulation (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 himself, Samik B. didn’t give up. If I have to find fault – and I must, to justify the 88

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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 Bengali, 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 introduction (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, Mahasweta’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

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so-called Third World. That could be for some writers, a greater achievement, 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 Dictionary of Contemporary English.

References Abel, Elizabeth. 1982. Writing and Sexual Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago 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.

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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 investigate 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 presumably to return to that uncertainty. Such middle-class ‘equal’ gender relationships 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.

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– 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 primordial dusk’ (109). She does not focus on what we know best about Chhattisgarh, 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 Adivasis 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 topdown 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.

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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 comment 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 having 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, understood 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 unverifiable. 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

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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 children dying of malnutrition, and one male, Shankar, the only literate person 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, Adivasi women were rarely a silent group, although she (and under her auspices, 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 commonality 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 Adivasis, 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

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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 ancestral 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 generation. – 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 nothing’ (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 inhabiting 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 pterodactyl, 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). Contrast this to the absence of affective focusing on the couple of pages on ‘the characteristics of the Indian Austric’ (114–115) broken by the appropriation 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

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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 darkness 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 planetarity and anthropocentric extinction as imagined by Puran trying to ‘read’ what the pterodactyl’s message might be. The first sentence is about planetarity. 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 explosions, or in war, or in the aggressive advance of the strong obliterating 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 civilisations 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

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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; translation modified). Critics such as Bruno Latour, Timothy Morton, Margaret Cohen, and Amitav Ghosh have suggested that the rise of the novel, conventionally connected 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 emissions’ 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

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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 representation 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 Gondwanaland 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 Gondwanaland. 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 (Spivak 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)

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Real, as in a news item: 12000-years-old ancient cave paintings in Hazaribagh face destruction; 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 southwest 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 Thethangi. 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 geometrical 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 government 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).

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‘Measurement began our might,’ W. B Yeats wrote in “Under Ben Bulben,” 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 mumbles, 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 description 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 transcendental figurations (‘translations?’) of what we think is the origin of this animating gift: Mother, Nation, God, Nature. These are names (nicknames, 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 ourselves 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

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the peculiar mindset of accepting the untranslatable, even as we are programmed 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 casteHindu 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 imagination 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 acknowledgement 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 epistemological 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 considerable 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 (Cambridge, 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 Chakravorty Spivak (trans), Imaginary Maps, pp. 95–196. New York: Routledge.

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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: International 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 Critique of Imperialism,” Critical Inquiry, 12(1), “Race, Writing, and Difference,” 243–261. ———. 1999a. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing 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.

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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 Doulotis 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 influential government contractor with a seemingly unending sexual urge for harijan girls. After Latia discards Douloti, she is passed on to another contractor, a Singh Sahib. He keeps her for over two years.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003145363-16103

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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 broken. 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 prostitute. 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 variety 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 formations 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 positions 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).

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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 necessarily 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 fetishizing it as something beyond interrogation; (5) Where they score heavily over sociology or history is in the fact that they are often successful in complexifying 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 nationalism 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 multinational consumerism in which the rights of the consumer are the lone consideration, 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 invariably associated with the victims, both male and female. Bono’s hands kill

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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 cannot 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 indifferent 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

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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 understanding of the structural logic, which is not available to the harijan characters for self-evident reasons. For less acceptable reasons, that kind of a perspective is often not available to the literate, supposedly knowledgeable sections 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 artist 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 dehistoricised, universalist formalism while reading Mahasweta is only to highlight 107

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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 everywhere 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 translation, 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 Bountiful” 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 quotations which I have substituted in place of Spivak’s. 3 Fredric Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” 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, subaltern, historian [. . .],’ in Mahasweta Devi, Breast Stories, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak (Calcutta: Seagull, 1997), p. 79. Also cf. Mahasweta Devi, Unpublished Intervention, 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.

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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.

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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 symbology of three women writers whose works interrogate cultural and historic 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) radically 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 oneself, 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

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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, development, 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 articulate 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 radical, 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 agential 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 theoretical 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 (womenof-colour epistemology) in struggles for justice’ (Mohanty 2013: 969). This essay is an effort at a transnational bridge-building, arguing for the possibility 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 psychoanalysis 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 condition of woman as the throwaway object of modernity, and Khanna’s political 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

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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. Morrison’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 chattel 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 Morrison’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, statehood, and naming. The women come from everywhere and travel great distances, escaping their pasts of marital abuse (Mavis), childhood abandonment (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 motherfigure, 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 abandonment, 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 sessions 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

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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 – physical, psychological, ideological, spiritual (Tally 1999; Elia 2001). For Morrison, 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 traditional 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 Morrison’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 Partition, 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

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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 violence 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, violated, or disappeared. Pooro, in the early years of her marriage to Rashid, realises the vulnerability of women always already living under the shadow of violence prescribed within the name and law of the father and begins to form alternative communities 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 translates 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 patriarchy 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 transactions 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 reconfigured 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.

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Exiting the Familial in Mahasweta Devi’s “Giribala” Martha Nussbaum opens her analysis on the futures of feminist liberalism (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 summarises 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 thematic 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 wisdom 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 violence 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).

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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 liberalism 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 decision 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 story’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 compensation 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 enslavement. Thus, within the world of Devi’s narrative, the refuge from or alternative 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 patriarchy, 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 Collins, with South Asian feminisms, vis-à-vis Pritam, Devi, and Butalia, reconciles the multiple forms of textual resistance adopted in writings by women of colour. In responding to the inherent and systemic violence of patriarchy, 116

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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 biological and other borders imposed on family, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, 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, geographically 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, Morrison, 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.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ali, Rabia Umar. 2009. “Muslim Women and the Partition of India: A Historiographical Silence,” Islamic Studies, 48(3): 425–436, www.jstor.org/stable/20839174 (accessed on 8 February 2021). Ardener, Shirley, ed. 1978. Perceiving Women. New York: Halsted Press. Basu, Lopamudra. 2010. “Mourning and Motherhood: Transforming Loss in Representations of Adivasi Mothers in Mahasweta Devi’s Short Stories,” in Pauline Dodgson Katiyo and Gina Wisker (eds), Rites of Passage in Postcolonial Women’s Writings. New York: Rodopi 127–147. Butalia, Urvashi. 2000. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chakravorty, Tulika. 2019. “Partition of India: Through Gendered Perspectives,” The Indian Journal of Politics, 53(1–2): 142–248, www.amu.ac.in/showjournal. jsp?did=83 (accessed on 1 December 2020). Chatterji, Joya. 2014. “Partition Studies: Prospects and Pitfalls,”  The Journal of Asian Studies,  73(2): 309–312, https://doi.org/10.1017/S002191181400045X (accessed on 1 February 2021). Devi, Mahasweta. 2004. In the Name of the Mother. Trans. Radha Chakravarty. Kolkata: Seagull Books. Dutt, Nirupama. 2017. “When Amrita Pritam Called Out to Waris Shah in a Heartrending Ode While Fleeing the Partition Riots: The Immortal Partition Poem Turns 70 too,” Scroll.in, https://scroll.in/article/847004/when-amrita-pritam-called-outto-waris-shah-in-a-heartrending-ode-while-fleeing-the-partition-riots (accessed on 3 January 2021).

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Elia, Nada. 2001. Trances, Dances, and Vociferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives. New York: Garland Publishing Inc. Joseph, Teresa. 2013. “Constructing Identities: Gender and Identity in South Asia,”  The Indian Journal of Political Science,  74(4): 711–722, www.jstor.org/ stable/24701167 (accessed on 11 February 2021). Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society, 2(3): 274–290, www.jstor.org.libproxy.uhcl.edu/stable/190357 (accessed on 31 March 2010). Karmakar, Indrani. 2019. “Mother’s Voices from the Margins: Representations of Motherhood in Two of Mahasweta Devi’s Short Stories,” in Charlotte Beyer and Andrea Lea Robertson (eds), Mothers Without Their Children. Ontario, Canada: Demeter Press 149–164. Khanna, Ranjana. 2009. “Disposability,” A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 20(1): 181–198, https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-2008-021 (accessed on 10 December 2010). Malik, Shazia. 2020. “Violence and Motherhood in Kashmir: Loss, Suffering and Resistance in the Lives of Women,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, 21(6): 309–320, https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol21/iss6/19/ (accessed on 14 November 2020). Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2013. “Transnational Feminist Crossings: On Neoliberalism and Radical Critique,” Signs, 38(4): 967–991, https://doi. org/10.1086/669576 (accessed on 23 July 2020). Morrison, Toni. 1987. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———. 1997. Paradise. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———. 2017. The Origin of Others. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2000. “The Future of Feminist Liberalism,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 74(2): 47–79, https://doi. org/10.2307/3219683 (accessed on 28 January 2021). Pritam, Amrita. 2004. Chune Hue Upanyas (Eight selected novels translated into Hindi). New Delhi: Bhartiya Gyanpith. Shikha, Goyal. 2016. “Discourse of Motherhood in Mahasweta Devi’s Selected Work,” Academicia, 6: 144–151, https://doi.org/10.5958/22497137.2016.00015.X (accessed on 15 November 2020). Subramanian, Shreerekha. 2013. Women Writing Violence: The Novel and Radical Feminist Imaginaries. New Delhi: Sage. Tally, Justine. 1999. Paradise Reconsidered: Toni Morrison’s (Hi)stories and Truths. Hamburg: LIT. Tracy, D. H. 1 June  2011. “Translator’s Note: ‘Me’ by Amrita Pritam,” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/145901/transla tor39s-note-me-by-amrita-pritam (accessed on 12 December 2021). Virdee, Pippa. 2013. “Remembering Partition: Women, Oral Histories and the Partition of 1947,” Oral History, 41(2): 49–62, www.jstor.org/stable/23610424 (accessed on 11 February 2021).

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Photo 2.2  In the Name of the Mother book cover. Source: Seagull Books.

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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 Spivak has translated, Breast Stories can be taken up to reveal the manipulative 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). Mahasweta 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 exploitation against the backdrop of so-called democratic nation. Even about ­“Stanadayini,” Mahasweta has said, ‘I have thought of Jashoda as West

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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 subaltern 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 undecidable 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). Probably 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, Draupadi returns, both as a palimpsest and a contradiction. Both Mahasweta and Spivak choose this story to rewrite the episode of Draupadi’s humiliation 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 temporal zones – mythical past, activist present, and subaltern feminist metropolitan contemporary, freeing the subaltern from the freezing stereotyping gaze of Eurocentric Orientalism. But how far does Spivak remain committed 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 movement 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

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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 supplies 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, middleclass 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 “Stanadayini” (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 ideologues, 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 possibility 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

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Yet the afterword to Spivak’s translation of “Stanadayini” attempts to empower the subaltern by practising a kind of active deconstructive reading 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-inlaw 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. Contrary 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 disapproving. 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 recognition 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: 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) GCS:  I think

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Spivak almost persuades Mahasweta into writing more about women characters, 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 translator 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 Chakravorty Spivak and Samik Bandyopadhyay as translators. If Spivak seeks to mould Mahasweta’s oeuvre according to the palate of her select target audience, 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 translations 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 represented in Mahasweta’s texts, Bandyopadhyay presents intra-class struggle as the central issue in Mahasweta’s writings. Like Mahasweta, Bandyopadhyay 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 sentimental 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 sharpening. . . . This is the prose that Mahasweta inherits. (Bandyopadhyay 1998: xviii) 124

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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 Bandyopadhyay, 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 multilingual culture, the equations ‘source language = target language’ or ‘authortext-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, transforming 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, English, 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 Spivak 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 Lakhindar and the rain-god Indra. Perhaps that explains the absence of footnotes, 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

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her belt, tobacco leaves tucked at her waist. . . . Tobacco leaves and limestone 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 audiences. Perhaps it is with this view that she permits Bandyopadhyay to translate 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 direction 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 canister 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 indifferent coloniser’s language. Unlike Spivak, Bandyopadhyay does not aim at lending a feminist perspective 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 leaders 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 archetypal motherhood. They are invariably located within a network of relationships defining their personalities into absolute clarity. (Bandyopadhyay 1997: ix)

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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 subaltern 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 Marxism 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 Independence, 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 inspiration 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 Mahasweta 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 individual 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)

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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 Translation,” 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. ———. 1974. Hajar Churashir Ma. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani. ———. 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 Stories by Mahasweta Devi, pp. xvii–xvi. Calcutta: Seagull Books. ———. 1997b. “ ‘Breast-Giver’: For Author, Reader, Teacher, Subaltern, Historian . . .,” 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.

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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) [translated 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

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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 invasion, 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 immediately 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

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2018c: 320). However, its novel-like construction and subsequent critical 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 folklore (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 representation of real events, a certain narrativity is attached to these representations. 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 ‘authentic’ 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 apprehensions 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 conventional 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 relationship to authority’ (1980: 22). Every historiographic narrative is constructed 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

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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. Interestingly, 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 emphasises 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 canonical historiography. However, within the narrative, T ­ hengphakri’s silence is used to rescripture language within the Spivakian rhetoric of the subaltern 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’ Lakshmibai, 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 participation of Dalit and indigenous voices presents the Rani as ‘folk symbol of indigenous resistance’ while simultaneously resisting an upper-caste, maleidentified historiography (Singh 2020: 29–30). Similarly, the iconographic interpretation of Goswami’s portrayal of a revolutionary figure from one

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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 public 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 policing 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 incorporation 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 ‘perfect 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 reducing the figure of the Rani for their own ends, I believe that a text can neither 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 relation to dominant discourses and hence can be co-opted into the status quo.

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Published as a book in Assamese in 2009, The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar came during a period when a ceasefire had been maintained 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 sovereign 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. Therefore, the question of competing nationalisms within the same geographical boundaries of ‘Assam’ has strained the relationship between the two communities over the course of time and thereafter has eluded a definite reconciliation. 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 recreation 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 cultural imagination. Such placement of the Bodo community within the tradition of Indian literary 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 redistributed 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 communities in the case of The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar, these texts radically respond to their immediate political contexts.

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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 fictionalised 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 writing 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 history’ 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-andabsu-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 Quarterly, 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). Devi, Mahasweta. 1956. Jhansir Rani. Kolkata: New Age. ———. 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. Kolkata: 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 Thengphakri 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-bookreview-the-bronze-sword-of-thengphakhri-tehsildar-1839568 (accessed on 15 December 2021). Malone, Irina Ruppo. 2016. “What’s Wrong with Medievalism? Tolkien, the Strugatsky 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 (accessed on 15 December 2021). 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 Uprising,” in Boyd Cothran, Joan Judge and Adrian Shubert (eds), Women Warriors and National Heroes: Global Histories, pp. 23–37. Bloomsbury Collection. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350140301.ch-002 (accessed on 15 December 2021). 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).

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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, letters 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 fiction, 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 newspapers, 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

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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 rewriting 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 understand 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, theatre was prolific and popular. The IPTA3 had disintegrated, but the pathbreaking 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, experimental 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 established auditoriums, such as the hugely popular Academy of Fine Arts in Calcutta. 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 authorities 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

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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 playscripts 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’ (Bandyopadhyay 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 corresponds to the time frame of the events enacted. It was completely contemporary. 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. Memory 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 nothing 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 sacrifice. 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

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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 comrades 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 separate 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 Sujata’s passionate plea to the audience for moral action, can be read as a metaphor 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 manner 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’ (Bandyopadhyay 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 landowner 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 traditional 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

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to Santosh; and his son Dhura is hot-headed and rebellious, eager for progress 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 infiltration, to be brutally suppressed. The plot revolves around water. This is a drought-ridden district, dependent 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 relations 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 accepting 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

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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 children. 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 preferable 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 prescribed 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

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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 democratic 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 Emergency 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 itinerant 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

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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 freedom, 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

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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 movement 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 perspectives 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 mainstream history and historiography in India. History written from a specific perspective creates certain hegemonies. Consequently, the history as available 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 adaptations. 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

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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 individual 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 Mahasweta 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 analysis. 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 movements and also recommends learning and engaging with the then prevalent, popular ‘bourgeois’ art, not just to create an alternate art but also for the purpose of mobilisation and guidance. From these influences, Mahasweta 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 Akademi 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

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and provokes new possibilities. For example, towards the ending of “Draupadi” (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, highlighting 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 physicality, as if they were nothing less than contemporary’ (Devi, cited in Bandyopadhyay 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 performance 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

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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 narratives. 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 Bandyopadhyay 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 people. 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 commercially successful but also received critical academic attention from various 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 Mahasweta 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 enactments, 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 contemplate 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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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 semiotic process in which particular signs (human beings and objects of their environment) are employed as signs of signs – by their producers, 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 embodied 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 representative 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). Characters such as Sanichari and Johnny can well be associated with the larger historical frames of reference involving casteism, colonialism, national politics, 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 ventriloquist 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 metonymic individuated microcosmic experiences guide the readers and the audience 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, performed) 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

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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 further 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 performative potential, traceable in Mahasweta Devi’s plays and other writings, facilitates and invites adaptions to stage and screen. One interesting lesson comes from the intersection of postcolonial literary 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 Kanhailal’s production of “Draupadi” (2000), with his wife Sabitri Devi playing 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 theatrical 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 movement, as the embodied personal history of Sujata, mother of Brati, mentioned 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 151

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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 documentation centre. But history repeats itself, and there is yet another killing in broad daylight. The film, characterised throughout by an otherwise unobtrusive, 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 performance. This physical and material actualisation of information in performance 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 Mahasweta 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

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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 “pedagogical” ’ (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, activating 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 autobiography (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 presence 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 creative 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 affective 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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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 gesticulation . . . 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 performance (1992, 1995). Performance as mimesis is inspired by Erving Goffman’s works that ‘gave currency to the notions of role-playing and impression management’ (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 poiesis is inspired by the perception that performance is ‘making not faking’. In other words, the performance and performative interactions bring about the possibility 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, humanity as performer, as a culture-inventing, social performing, self-making and self-­ transforming creature’ (1992: 84, 1995: 137–138).

References Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bajrange, Dakxin. 2016. “Mahasweta Devi Amma – a Rebellious Energy .  .  . in Mathrubhumi,” YouTube, https://english.mathrubhumi.com/features/literature/ mahasweta-devi-amma-a-rebellious-energy-english-news-1.1237152 (accessed on 25 June 2021). Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. Brecht, Bertolt. 1978. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and Trans. John Willett. London: Eyre Methuen. Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal, 40(4): 519–531, https://doi. org/10.2307/3207893 (accessed on 15 June 2021). Byapari, Manoranjan. 2018. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit. Trans. Sipra Mukherjee. Kolkata: Sage. Conquergood, Dwight. 1992. “Ethnography, Rhetoric, and Performance,” Quarterly Journal of Speech,  78(1):  80–97, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335639209383982 (accessed on 25 June 2021). ———. 1995. “Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies in Motion,” 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 Sengupta. 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. Draupadi. 2000 by Mahasweta Devi. Directed by Heisnam Kanhailal. [Theatre performance]. Imphal: Kalakshetra, Manipur, 14 and 20 April 2000. Fischer-Lichte, E. 1995. “I – Theatricality Introduction: Theatricality: A Key Concept in Theatre and Cultural Studies,” Theatre Research International, 20(2): 85–89, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883300008294 (accessed on 15 June 2021). Gudia. 1997. Directed by Goutam Ghose [Film]. India: PLUS Films. Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa. 1998. Directed by Govind Nihalani [Film]. India: Manmohan Shetty, Govind Nihalani. Kanhailal Heisnam, “Draupadi: A Performance of Twists and Turns” [Unpublished paper]. Imphal: Kalakshetra, Manipur. Krishnamoorthy, K. 1985. “The Meaning of ‘Sahitya’: A Study in Semantics,” Indian Literature, 28(105): 65–70, www.jstor.org/stable/24158449 (accessed on 15 June 2021). Misri, Deepti. 2011. “ ‘Are You a Man?’: Performing Naked Protest in India,” Signs, 36: 603–625, https://doi.org/10.1086/657487 (accessed on 10 June 2021). Nihalani, Govind. 2018. “Govind Nihalani on His New Film Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa,” YouTube. Wilderness Films India Ltd., www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2lVoAkXQ4&t=2s (accessed on 15 June 2021). Rudaali. 1993. Directed by Kalpana Lajmi [Film]. India: National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and Doordarshan. Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theatre and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge. Subramanyam, Radha. 1996. “Class, Caste, and Performance in ‘Subaltern’ Feminist Film Theory and Praxis: An Analysis of ‘Rudaali’ ,” Cinema Journal, 35(3): 34–51, https://doi.org/10.2307/1225764 (accessed on 6 July 2021). Sunghursh. 1968. Directed by Harnam Singh Rawail [Film]. India: Shemaroo Entertainment. Taylor, Diana. 2006. “Performance and/as History,” TDR: The Drama Review, 50(1): 67–86, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/197257 (accessed on 15 June 2021). Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications.

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Worthen, W. B. 2004. “Disciplines of the Text: Sites of Performance,” in Henry Bial (ed.), The Performance Studies Reader, pp. 10–24. London and New York: Routledge. 1084 ki Maa. 2010. Directed by Santanu Bose. [Theatre performance]. New Delhi: National School of Drama, 31st March to 5th April 2010.

Photo 2.3  Scene from the play “1084 ki Maa,” directed by Santanu Bose, NSD. Source: National School of Drama, Delhi

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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 litterateur 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 ageold 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 acknowledged 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

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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 development 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 suggestion is that in every state, booklets should be published informing the poor (including the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) of the various government 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 support 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 written 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 generation 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 mainstream, 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

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own language. But the Lodhas and Kherias speak in their version of the Bengali 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 language. 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:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Language

Number Speaking

Recognised?

Bhojpuri Chhatisgarhi Magdhi Maithili Marwari Santhali Kashmiri Rajasthani Gondi Konkanese Dogri Gurkhali/Nepali Pahari Bhili Kurukh/Oraon Kumauni Garhwali Sindhi

1,43,40,564 66,93,445 66,38,495 61,21,912 47,14,094 36,93,558 24,21,760 20,93,557 15,48,070 15,22,684 12,98,856 12,86,824 12,69,651 12,50,312 12,40,395 12,34,939 12,27,151 12,04,678

Yes No No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No Yes

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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 literary 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. Source: Bhasha Research and Publications.

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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.

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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 Dictionary). 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 destruction 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 society. 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 married 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 populace. 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

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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 sensible 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, importantly, 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 eucalyptus. 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, eucalyptus means matchboxes, rayon, furniture, medicine. Which class benefits from factories, workshops, plants and markets connected with various eucalyptus 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 downtrodden. 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

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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. Eucalyptus 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 whatever little water the Purulia soil had. That no undergrowth covers a eucalyptus 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 getting 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

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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 monsoons, 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 forest bill are closely linked together, such a movement should thwart and ultimately 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.

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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 exploitation. My reputation largely stands on certain works, of which the four stories 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 economy and land relations; because caste and class exploitation and the resistance 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 Government, 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

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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 bullocks?’ 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 socalled religious head of the administrative system, all of whom, as a combined force, are out for lower-caste blood. That I have based my writings on truth, and not on fiction, is substantiated 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 experience. My experience keeps me perpetually angry and makes me ruthlessly unforgiving towards the exploiters, or the exploiting system. That the mainstream 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 fodder helped these horses grow, and within three generations they were big and strong. The anthropologist Emil Tordey found tiny pygmies in equatorial Africa. Transferred to agriculturally rich areas, with a different climate, they slowly changed into normal-sized human beings. What I wrote in “Little 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 unabated. 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 clueless 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, Mahasweta 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

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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 University, 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 university 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 disturbed, 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 colleagues 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 lecture 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 Mahasweta 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 celebrity, came out in curiosity. We had an impromptu meeting across the fencing; 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

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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 ‘nonvegetarian 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 conditions of bonded labour and adivasis. She spoke at length about Palamau, about her adventures collecting material 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 innocents 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 journey. 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 Mahasweta 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

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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 DNTRAG. 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. Mahasweta 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 cannot 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 complaints of rape, torture and humiliation, often against those whose job it was to protect people. We visited sites of old and fresh atrocities. 173

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Mahasweta brought to those poor and harassed people a boundless compassion, 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 Panchamahals 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 compensation to Budhan’s widow, Shyamali. By the time this judgment was delivered 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 performed 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 character 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 spirituality; and Bhupen Khakhar’s house with its ‘forensic’ approach to sentimentality. 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 Noorjahan 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

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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 earthquake’. 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 manmade, 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 relationship 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 medication, 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 political’. The very next moment she is focusing on her cup of tea. 175

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I have often wondered about the source of her strength, the literary influences that have shaped her powerful style of writing, the political philosophies 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. Source: Bhasha Research and Publications.

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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, readers are called to answer the rhetorical question: ‘Who can save the countryside 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

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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 indifference’ 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 companies 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 impositions 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 Alienation 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 themselves’ 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 lifeaffirming 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 agribusinesses 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

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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 narrative 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. Landowners 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 strangulation’ (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 testifying 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, biosphere, lithosphere’ (Bubandt 2017: G137). Devi sets her story during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency Rule – the controversial period between June 1975 and February 1977 when political dissent was censored, political foes imprisoned and civil liberties suspended. Influenced by the Bhoodan movement of ‘wealth redistribution by moral persuasion,’ 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

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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 documentation 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 landscape 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 speaking 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 disposable 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 witness. 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, compared’ (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 Lachman 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

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for the people to plant. ‘The atmosphere was charged with the past of people 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-yearold Mary Oraon wants to hunt down and destroy the key Anthropocene beast and forest predator. Tehsildar Singh, a contractual tree extractor, represents 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 humanity 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 leopards’ 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 tumble 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

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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 sustainable 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 community 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 gluttonous 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?

References ACC Limited. 2021. www.acclimited.com/about/acc-at-a-glance (accessed on 22 January 2021). Biswas, Sudipta and Sukumar Pal. 2021. “Tribal Land Rights: A Situational Analysis in the Context of West Bengal,” Journal of Land and Rural Studies, 9(1): 193–209. Bubandt, Nils. 2017. “Haunted Geologies,” in Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, pp. G121–G141. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Devi, Mahasweta. 1990. “Paddy Seeds,” in Kalpana Bardhan (ed.), Of Women, Outcastes, Peasant, and Rebels, pp.  158–184. Oxford: University of California Press. ———. 1995. “The Hunt,” in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (trans), Imaginary Maps, pp. 1–17. New York: Routledge. ———. 1997a. “A Countryside Slowly Dying,” in Maitreya Ghatak (ed. and trans), Dust on the Road: Activist and Political Writings of Mahasweta Devi, pp. 82–89. London: Seagull Books.

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———. 1997b. “Eucalyptus, Why?,” in Maitreya Ghatak (ed. and trans.), Dust on the Road: Activist and Political Writings of Mahasweta Devi, pp. 90–96. London: Seagull Books. ———. 1997c. “Land Alienation Among Tribals in West Bengal,” in Maitreya Ghatak (ed. and trans), Dust on the Road: Activist and Political Writings of Mahasweta Devi, pp. 99–113. London: Seagull Books. Eswarappa, Kasi. 2017. “Livelihoods, Poverty and Development of Adivasis: Reflections from a Village,” South India Contemporary Voice of Dalit, 9(2): 121–145. Gautman, Krishna H. and Nora Devoe. 2006. “Ecological and Anthropogenic Niches of Sal (Shorea robusta Gaertn. f.) Forest and Prospects for MultipleProduct Forest Management,” Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research, 79(1): 81–101, https://doi.org/10.1093/forestry/cpi063 (accessed on 12 December 2021). Haraway, Donna. 2017. “Symbiogenesis, Sympoiesis, and Art Science Activisms for Staying with the Trouble,” in Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, pp. M25–M40. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mathews, Andrew D. 2017. “Ghostly Forms and Forest Histories,” in Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, pp. G121–G141. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mbembe, Achille. 2019. Necro-Politics. Durham: Duke University Press. Nixon, Rob.  2013. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Payat, Lobsan. 17 May 2013. “Early Buddhist Sanghas Valued Outlook of Tribal Society: Democratic Functioning, Gender Equality and Knowledge of Medicinal Plants,” Tribal Cultural Heritage in India Foundation, https://indiantribalherit age.org/?p=11309 (accessed on 13 December 2021). Rohse, Melanie. 2019. “From a Narrative Understanding of Conflict to a Narrative Resolution of Conflict: The Challenges of Storytelling in Conflict Transformation,” in Melanie Rohse (ed.), The Many Facets of Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative Complexity, pp. 53–67. The Netherlands: Brill. Saro-Wiwa, Ken. 1995. A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary. London: Penguin. Swanson, Heather, Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt. 2017. “Bodies Tumbled into Bodies,” in Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, pp. M1–M20. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tribal Cultural Heritage in India Foundation. 2020. “What Is the Forest Rights Act About? Who Is a Forest Dweller Under This Law, and Who Gets Rights?” Campaign for Survival and Dignity, https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=10151 (accessed on 12 December 2021). World Wildlife Fund. 2018.  “Living Planet Report: Aiming Higher,” https://wwf. panda.org/knowledge_hub/all_publications/living_planet_report_2018/ (accessed on 11 January 2021). Zalasiewicz, Jan. 2010. The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth’s Deep History. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Photo 3.4  Mahasweta Devi: In tune with the landscape. Source: Ina Puri.

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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 different behaviour pattern. That is why I once named a piece of writing “GangaJamuna-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 forest 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 century. 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

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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 juxtaposed – 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 teenager. 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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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 magazines. 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 brutal 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.

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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 circulation. 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 community, 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 surprised, 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 192

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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 Santiniketan 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 somehow? . . . 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 surveillance was on. . . . NK. There is this sense of betrayal at various levels across Party lines. . . . 193

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MD. Now so many people feel like that. . . . They are disillusioned, disappointed. . . . 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 particularly 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 solitude, 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 second 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 talking. 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

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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 tremendous 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 homework, 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, Malayalam, 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 students 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

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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 criminal. 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 columns 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 197

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things. Later, Kabikankan Mukundaram Chakrabarti left a profound impression 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 Mukhopadhyay, 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 preceded 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 properly 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, official 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. Arundhati 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 government servant. We lived in a house very near Ramna Maidan, in the Kayettuli area. In 1936, my father was transferred to Kolkata. 198

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In 1996, I  met Akhtaruzzman Elias for the first time. An outstanding writer. A mighty writer. Chilekothar Sepai and Khwabnama are remarkable 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 visited 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 relevant. 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 relevant 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 mainstream ­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, 199

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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 important. 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.

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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

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I I AM TRULY AMAZED

Soma Mukhopadhyay Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha 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 sculptor, 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, however, 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. However, 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

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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 Department. 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 Medinipur, 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 activities 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 Baharampur 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 composition 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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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 constantly 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,” “Stanadayini,” 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 atmosphere 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. However, that was about all. To write for a living, with great power and influence, 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 existing 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 Mahasweta 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,

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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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II BABA, MA, OUR HOME

Soma Mukhopadhyay Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha . . . 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 rivers’ . . . 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 swallowed 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 theatrical performances – on top of which she had a craze for reading. Even today, when I  think of Ma’s amazing command over Bangla and English 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 household 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

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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 written 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

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Photo 4.3  Mahasweta Devi as a child with her parents and sister Mitul. Source: Ina Puri.

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III THE DIDI I HAVE KNOWN

Sari Lahiri Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha 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 disposition. 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 circumstances, 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 parents 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. Keeping 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

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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 relationships, 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

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IV MY MOTHER

Nabarun Bhattacharya Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha 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 journey 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

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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, bullets, 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, having 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 JayaSura’s story – the beginnings of my reading literature are connected unfailingly 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.

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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 Akhtaruzzaman 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

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V 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 little 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 complaints 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 Bhattacharya. 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 occasional 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

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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 Persian 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 literary world, far removed from our own. Mashi had started editing the quarterly 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

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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 experimented 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 Testimonies” 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 Mahasweta 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.]

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28 SHOBOR MOTHER MAHASWETA DEVI Ranjit Kumar Das (Lodha) Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha 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 cooking, 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 Parmananda 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 fatherin-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 living 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 eating 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 nightlong 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

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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 Bhattacharya, 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 Ballygunge. 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 Commissioner) 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

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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 asking 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 educational 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 creations. 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

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15th century tank in the front,’ she wrote in one of her several letters to me. ‘Trees, paddy fields, coconut groves, birds, squirrels, mongooses abounding. 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, literature. 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 independence. 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 Bangladesh, after its birth through violence and fire, and later massacres, military 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 jubilant 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 crumbling 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 assignments, 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

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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 matters of denotified tribes, at her insistence. I have not seen an officer or minister 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 wondered 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 boiling 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 completed her degree and got admission for post-graduation in anthropology in the North Bengal University. There she fell prey to all kinds of harassments 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

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80s. Now in the second decade of the 21st century we still hear about Rohit Vemula, Najib and others. Flogging, burning, lynching, rape, honour killing, 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

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30 MAHASWETA DEVI A Legend Who Lived on Her Own Terms Anita Agnihotri Translated from Bengali by Nandini Guha I remember that winding iron staircase. Bone-chilling to the touch. The Ballygunge 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 Sarmishtha. 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 plentiful 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 conferences. 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 – Rattan Masterer Pathshala. Meanwhile, workshops were being held for sexworkers. 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 special was her ability to stay as true to herself and her character as possible, whatever the circumstances.

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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 curiosity 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

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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 Upakhyan, 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 Mahasweta Devi from her Hajar Churashir Ma, Chotti Munda Ebong tar Teer, or her collection of stories, her early writings had already sounded a soulstirring 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 activity, nor divorced from human contact. That writing could never be complete

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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 questions that mattered to her. Nor was she concerned about where her writings 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 acknowledged 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 heinous 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 writers 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, someone 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 darkness 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.

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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 sincere invitation. In this new centre for the production of films connected with social awareness and upliftment, I, as a founder-director along with my colleagues, was then working in multiple capacities and through various mediums. 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 rebellious feelings, she had moved away from the Left ideology and involved herself 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 present 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 raintree over the dusty aroma that lingers around my head.

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31 ‘EVERY DREAM HAS THE RIGHT TO LIVE’ Dakxin Bajrange On 21 August 2016, the ashes of Mahasweta Devi were buried at the Adivasi Academy in Tejgadh, Gujarat, a tree was planted there, and a monument 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

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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 independence, 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 instrumental 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 ‘discovered’ 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 rehearsing a street-play based on Budhan’s murder. I was assigned the task of writing 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.

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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 performance, “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 citydwellers, 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, political, 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

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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.

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MAHASWETA DEVI: A BIOCHRONOLOGY

14 January  1926  Mahasweta Devi was born in Dhaka at 15 Zindabahar 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 Vidyasagar. 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 cinematographer 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 Chandimangal 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 Santiniketan, she describes this as the most important formative experience in her life, which moulded her personality and shaped her values. 233

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Through her exposure to a diverse community of students and teachers, 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 persecution 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.

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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 VisvaBharati. Enrolled for MA (English) at Calcutta University, her studies 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 Pakistan. Although her own family was not adversely affected in material terms, she witnessed the plight of uprooted migrants, especially those from minority communities and socio-economically disadvantaged 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 separate 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 Mahasweta 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. Subsequently, 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

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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 familiarising 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 overdose 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 middleclass 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 landmark 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 depredation, 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 Mrityu, 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 predicament of marginalised people in the present. 236

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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 conservative 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, Mayurbhanj, 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 travelled 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. Publication of Jagat Shankhdhar’s Hindi translation of Agnigarbha. 237

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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 provided 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 Development 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 Babbar, 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 Chaurasi Ki Maa, award-winning film directed by Govind Nihalani, starring Jaya Bachchan, was released. 2001 Amader Santiniketan, memoirs of her early student days at Tagore’s school during the 1930s, was published. Manipuri director Kanhailal’s production of Draupadi, with his wife Sabitri Devi in the lead role. It inspired real-life public protests against rape by the military 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 production 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 Writing (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

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starring Nandita Das, directed by Chitra Palekar, based on Mahasweta’s “Bayen,” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. 2007 Received SAARC Literary Award. 2008 In the article “Desh Bibhajan Smaraney,” later published in the journal 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 adaptation by Shyamanand Jalan and Avijit Dutt, Nabarun Bhattacharya’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 Mahasweta’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.’ ‘Mahasweta Devi wonderfully illustrated the might of the pen,’ declared Narendra Modi. Amit Chaudhuri said: ‘[S]he was interested in the 239

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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.’ Mrinal 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

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MAHASWETA DEVI: SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Selected Works Devi, Mahasweta. 1956. Jhansir Rani. Kolkata: New Age. ———. 1957. Nati. Kolkata: Kolkata: New Age. ———. 1967. Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon O Mrityu. Kolkata: Chatusparna. ———. 1974. Hajar Churashir Ma. Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani. ———. 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, Festival 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. Achuthan. New York: Sahitya Akademi. ———. 1979b. Eka Kodika Svapna (Ek Kodi’s Dream). Trans. into Marathi by Amrendra Gadgil. New Delhi: NBT.

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———. 1981a. Chotti Munda Aur Uska Teer. Trans. into Hindi by Jagat Shankhdhar. 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: Radhakrishna 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 Chakravorty 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 Tellers, 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 Srimathi. 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.

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———. 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 (Bengali). Ed. Ajoy Gupta, pp. 557–570. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 2014. Collu, Gabriella. 1998. “Speaking with Mahasweta Devi: Mahasweta Devi Interviewed by Gabriella Collu, 1998,” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 33(2): 143–153. Guha, Chinmoy. July–September  2011. “Nijei Nijeke Mukti Diyechhilam (Bengali),” 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),” interview with Mahasweta Devi. Pustakmela. Reprint in Aksharekha, 11(1), September 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 Stories 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.

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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 Catastrophic 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 (Bengali). 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. Chakravarty, Radha. 2004a. “Visionary Cartography: Imaginary Maps by Mahasweta Devi,” in Malashri Lal, Shormishtha Panja and Sumanyu Satpathy (eds), Signifying the Self: Women and Literature, pp. 75–88. New Delhi: Macmillan. ———. Spring 2004b. “Reading Mahasweta: Shifting Frames,” Journal of the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, 64–70. ———. Winter 2012–Spring 2013. “Other Histories: Gender and Politics in the Fiction of Mahasweta Devi,” India International Centre Quarterly, 39(3–4): 122–133. ———. February  2021. “Mutant Worlds, Migrant Words: Rabindranath Tagore, Mahasweta Devi and Amitav Ghosh,” Thesis Eleven, 162(1), https://doi. org/10.1177/0725513621990795. Chakravarty, Saumitra. 1993. “The Image of Women in Mahasweta Devi’s Novels,” in Yashoda Bhat and Yamuna Raja Rao (eds), The Image of Woman in Indian Literature, pp. 15–23. New Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation. Chattopadhyay, Maitreyi. 1993. “Mahaswetar Nari Jagat (Bengali),” in Tapas Bhowmick (ed.), Mahasweta Devi, pp. 7–16. Kolkata: Boimela. Das, Arup Kumar. 2004. Aranyer Adhikar: Itihaser Kanthaswar (Bengali). Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing. Deshpande, Shashi. 1998. “Writing from the Margin,” The Book Review, 22(3): 10.

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Dutta, Bijitkumar. 1993. “Chotti Munda Ebong Tar Tir (Bengali),” in Tapas Bhowmick (ed.), Mahasweta Devi, pp. 123–134. Kolkata: Boimela. Ghosh, Nirmal. 1998. Mahasweta Devi: Aparajeya Pratibadi Mukh (Bangla). Kolkata: Karuna. Hamam, Kinana. 2014. “Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Breast Giver’ and Buchi Emecheta’s Joys of Motherhood,” in Confining Spaces, Resistant Subjectivities: Toward a Metachronous Discourse of Literary Mapping and Transformation in Postcolonial Women’s Writing, pp. 137–166. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Hosain, Sohrab. 2005. Janajagaraner Upanyas O Mahasweta Devi (Bengali). ­Kolkata: Karuna Prakashani. Kailasam, Vasugi. 2011. “Veiled and Commodified Bodies: Djebar’s Women of Algiers in their Apartment and Devi’s Douloti the Bountiful,” in Nandini C. Sen (ed.), Mahasweta Devi: Critical Perspectives, pp. 110–119. New Delhi: Pencraft International. Karunanayage, Dinithy. 2011. “Dismantling Theory? Agency and the Subaltern Women in Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Draupadi’ ,” in Nandini C. Sen (ed.), Mahasweta Devi: Critical Perspectives, pp. 162–172. New Delhi: Pencraft International. Katyal, Anjum. 1997. “The Metamorphosis of Rudali,” Rudali: From Fiction to Performance, 1–53. Khair, Tabish. 2001. “The Knowledge of Loss, the Loss of Knowledge: Jhumpa Lahiri, Shashi Deshpande, Mahasweta Devi,” in Nanette Hale and Tabish Khair (eds), Angles of English-Speaking World, pp.  139–144. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen. Kumar, Sukrita Paul. 2020. Conversations on Modernism. New Delhi: Vani Prakashan. Lazarus, Neil. 2013. “Epilogue: The Pterodactyl of History?,” Textual Practice, 27(3): 523–536. Mann, Harveen Sachdeva. 1998. “Woman in Decolonization: The National and Textual Politics of Rape in Saadat Hasan Manto and Mahasweta Devi,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 38(2): 127–141. Marino, Alessandra. 2015. Acts of Angry Writing: On Orientalism and Citizenship in Postcolonial India. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Menozzi, Filippo. 2014. Postcolonial Custodianship: Cultural and Literary Inheritance. London: Routledge. Mukherjee, Sujit. May–June 1991. “Mahasweta Devi’s Writings – An Evaluation,” The Book Review, 15(3): 30–31. Mukherjee, Tutun. 2011. “Of Texts and Textualities: Performing Mahasweta,” in Nandini C. Sen (ed.), Mahasweta Devi: Critical Perspectives, pp. 206–222. New Delhi: Pencraft International. Mukhopadhyay, Pampa. 2013. Mahasweta Devir Upanyasey Itihas O Rajniti. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing. Nussbaum, Martha. 2002. “Love, Care and Women’s Dignity: The Family as a Privileged Community,” in Philip Alperson (ed.), Diversity and Community: An Interdisciplinary Reader, pp. 209–228. New York: Blackwell. Parry, Benita. 2009. “Aspects of Peripheral Modernisms,” ARIEL: A  Review of International English Literature, 40(1): 27–55.

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Raja, Ira. Spring 2005. “Embodied History: Intergenerational Conflict in Indian Fiction,” Commonwealth: Essays and Studies, 27(2): 9–25. Roy, Paroma. 2010. Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Roychowdhuri, Binota. 1993. “Mahasweta Debir Nairite Megh O Sri Sri Ganesh Mahima (Bengali),” in Tapas Bhowmick (ed.), Mahasweta Devi, pp.  135–144. Kolkata: Boimela. Salgado, Minoli. 2000. “Tribal Stories, Scribal Worlds: Mahasweta Devi and the Unreliable Translator,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 35(1): 131–145. Satchidanandan, K. 2019. Positions: Essays on Indian Literature. New Delhi: Niyogi Books. Sathyanarayana, E. 2000. The Plays of Mahasweta Devi. New Delhi: Prestige Books. Schwarz, Henri. 2011. “Postcolonial Performance: Texts and Contexts of Mahasweta Devi,” in Nandini C. Sen (ed.), Mahasweta Devi: Critical Perspectives, pp. 175–189. New Delhi: Pencraft International. Sen, Nandini C., ed. 2011. Mahasweta Devi: Critical Perspectives. New Delhi: Pencraft International. Sen, Nivedita and Nikhil Yadav, eds. 2008. Mahasweta Devi: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. New Delhi: Pencraft. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1987. “A  Literary Representation of the Subaltern: Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Stanadayini’ ,” in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies V: Writings on South Asian History and Society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Reprint as “ ‘Breast-Giver’: For Author, Reader, Teacher, Subaltern, Historian . . .,” Breast Stories, 76–137. ———. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, pp. 271–313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1995. “Translator’s Preface,” in Mahasweta Devi (ed.), Imaginary Maps, pp. xxiii–xxix. New York: Routledge. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty and Radha Subramanyam. 1996. “Class, Caste, and Performance in ‘Subaltern’ Feminist Film Theory and Praxis: An Analysis of ‘Rudaali’ ,”  Cinema Journal, 35(3): 34–51, https://doi.org/10.2307/1225764 (accessed on 6 July 2021). Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 1999. “The Story of Draupadi’s Disrobing,” in Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (ed.), Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-Independence India, pp. 331–358. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Wenzel, Jennifer. 1998. “Epic Struggles Over India’s Forests in Mahasweta Devi’s Short Fiction,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 18: 127–158. ———. 2000. “Grim Fairy Tales: Taking a Risk, Reading Imaginary Maps,” in Amal Amirah and Cosa Suhair Majaj (eds), Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, pp. 229–251. New York: Garland.

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. Professionally an engineer, he has spent several years in the construction of Farakka 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 Gayener 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 reputable 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 Professor, Rishi Bankimchandra College, Naihati. He was not only a film critic but also a literary scholar and the author of several books, including 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, Calcutta, in the 1990s. He served as Vice-Chairman, National School of Drama (2006–2010), and member of the National School of Drama Society. He has contributed several essays in numerous film and theatre periodicals in English and Bengali. 247

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Paramita Banerjee is an activist, Ashoka Fellow and a recipient of MacArthur 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, Kothanodir Banke. Nabarun Bhattacharya (d. 2014) was a reputed Bengali writer and Secretary 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 Assistant 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 Literature 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 College, 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 English at Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, was ICCR Visiting Professor of Indian Culture, Georgetown University, and member of the 248

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faculty team in the International Faculty Exchange Programme of the Virginia Council for International Education and the Virginia Community 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: Feminism 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, including 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 published 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 autobiography Wild Wind (Srishti Publishers, 2006) and Anita Agnihotri’s Awakening (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 anthology titled Social Awareness in Modern Indian Literature. A  collection 249

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of his short stories Apocalypse and Other Stories was published posthumously 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 documentary films to his credit – Performing the Goddess  on Chapal Bhaduri and  Talking Writing  on Mahasweta Devi. Knotted Grief, his collection 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, including 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 Calcutta 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 collector. 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.

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Mandira Sengupta is an artist who maintains an active interest in Bengali literature. She has translated several of Mahasweta Devi’s works, in collaboration 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 University. She is the author of Myself Must I  Remake  (1974),  Of Grammatology  (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; image 156 “A Countryside Slowly Dying,” Mahasweta Devi 6, 177 Aajir, Mahasweta Devi 125, 138, 142 – 3, 148 Abbas, Sadia 97 Abel, Elizabeth 87 Abhibhab 65 Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta 138 activism 1, 4 – 5, 11, 16, 107, 127, 137, 151, 153, 197 Adim Jaati Aikya Parishad (Ancient Tribes Union) 5, 238 “The Adivasi Mahasweta,” Devy on 16 Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh 172, 229 Adivasi Sahitya Parishad, Bombay 196 adivasis 12, 78, 80, 82 – 3, 92, 94, 170, 172, 174, 176, 181, 217 – 19, 222, 226 – 7, (see also tribes); Mahasweta Devi as champion for 58; rebellion 62, 226, see also Birsa Munda rebellion aesthetics 1, 6 – 8, 11 – 12, 70 Agamben, Giorgio 112 Agnigarbha, Mahasweta Devi 3, 68, 72, 81, 84 – 5, 121, 127, 237 Agnihotri, Anita 16, 224 Ahmad, Aijaz 104 Aksharekha 207 Ali, Rabia Umar 114 Alkazi, Feisal 144 American universities, Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer at 238 “Ami/Amar Lekha” 6 – 7, 9 Amrita Sanchoi, Mahasweta Devi 204, 226 Anand, Mulk Raj 13

Anandam 198 Ananthamurthy, U. R. 198 Andharmanik, Mahasweta Devi 199, 201, 204, 236 Anthropocene 6, 16, 97 – 8, 177 – 8, 181 – 2 anti-colonial movement 134 anti-eucalyptus movement 167 Anustup 69 Aranyer Adhikar, Mahasweta Devi 3, 12, 59, 64, 81 – 2, 89, 191, 215, 226, 237; Chattopadhyay on 61 – 2 Argosy magazine 212 “Arjun,” Mahasweta Devi 6, 200 Arms Forces Special Powers Act 1958 (AFSPA) 151 Arogyaniketan, Tarasankar 51 Asaduddin, M. 13 Ashapurna Devi 12, 59, 198 Austin, J.L. (1975) 147 Austric Civilisation of India, Hembram 161 awards: Amrita Puraskar 237; Bangavibhushan 239; Bharatiya Jnanpith 238; Bhuvanmohini Medal 237; French Legion of Honour 3; Jagattarini Gold Medal 238; Jnanpith 3, 65, 69, 170, 196, 199, 205, 213, 228; Nikhil Bharat Banga Sahitya Sammelan 237; Nonino (Italy) 238; “O˙ cer des Arts et des Lettres” in France 238; Padmashri 238; Padmavibhushan 238; Ramon Magsaysay 3, 12, 63, 65, 69, 170, 205, 228, 238; SAARC Literary 239; Sahitya Akademi 3, 53, 69, 89 – 90, 147, 161, 204, 221, 237; Saratchandra Memorial Medal 237; Yasmin 174

252

INDEX

Babbar, Raj 238 Bachchan, Jaya 69, 238 Bagchi, Alaknanda 6 Bahrampur 187, 203, 206, 209, 211 Bajrange, Dakxin 5, 16, 153 Ballygunge Station Road house 220 – 1, 224 Bandhua Mukti Morcha 204 Bandyopadhyay, Ajitesh 138 Bandyopadhyay, Manik 47, 51 57, 62, 67, 87, 198 Bandyopadhyay, Partha Pratim 8, 15 Bandyopadhyay, Ranjan 12, 64 Bandyopadhyay, Samik 10, 13, 15, 85 – 9, 124 – 7, 138, 143, 148, 152; translations 125, 127, 239 Bandyopadhyay, Saroj 60 Bandyopadhyay, Tarasankar 15, 47 – 53, 57, 62, 67, 87, 198; language 50 – 1; as village story-teller 50 Banerjee, Mamata 239 Bangladesh (East Pakistan) creation of 2, 199, 221 – 2, 235 Bardhan, Kalpana 13, 87 Bargadari system 48 – 9 Bartaman 237 Barthes 150 Bashai Tudu, Mahasweta Devi 3, 5, 8, 12, 16, 58 – 60, 64, 84 – 5, 88 – 90, 194, 200, 237 Bashai Tudu Upakhyan 226 Basu, Dilip Kumar 12, 15 Basu, Nandita 61 Basu, Pratibha 198, 227 Basu Roy, Iraban 69Basu, Samaresh 57 – 8, 67 Basu, Shankar 78 Basu, Sharmila 12, 59 – 60 Bayen/“Bayen,” Mahasweta Devi 3, 5 – 6, 9, 12, 33 – 6, 38 – 40, 64, 126, 138, 142 – 3, 148 Beloved, Morrison 110, 112, 115 Bengal Famine (1942–44) 2, 234 Bengal Partition 239, see also Bangladesh (East Pakistan), creation of Bengali literature 4, 8, 11 – 13, 48, 52, 75, 77 – 8, 198 Bengali middle-class 57 Bera, Nalini 224 Betar Jagat 191, 227 Bhabha, Homi K. 153

Bharat Mein Bandhua Majdoor, Mahasweta Devi and Nirmal Ghosh 237 Bharatiya Gananatya Sangha 235 Bharenga 202, 206 ‘Bhasha’ 170 Bhashabondhon journal 227 Bhattacharjee, Nirmal Kanti 13 Bhattacharya, Bijon (first husband) 3 – 4, 147, 194, 203, 214, 220, 235; death of 191; screenplay for “Nagin” 236 Bhattacharya, Bimal 198 Bhattacharya, Buddhadeb 219 Bhattacharya, Nabarun/Bappa 3, 16, 152, 190 – 2, 194, 203, 209, 211, 214, 219, 221, 227, 239; birth of 235; first poem of 191 Bhattacharya, Shakuntala 12 Bhattacharya, Sourit 8, 13 Bhawal 206 “Bhismer Pipasha,” 200 Bhoodan movement 179 Bhowal, Sanatan 9, 13 Bhowmick, Nani 57 Bibek Bidai Pala, Mahasweta Devi 201 Bibhutibhushan 11, 47, 57 bio-fiction 130 – 1 biography, fictionalised, or biofiction 14 – 15, 21, 129, 131, 135 Birbhum 51, 187 Birsa Munda 82 – 3, 89, 123, 147; rebellion 82 – 3 Biswas, Debabrata 235 Biswas, Hemango 212 Bitter Soil, Mahasweta Devi 169 Black lives 112; see also feminism Bodo Accords 134 Bodoland Liberation Tigers (BLT) 134 Bohurupee 138 bonded labour 3, 6, 127, 172, 236 Bortika 5, 137, 161, 170 – 1, 191, 197, 203, 215, 225 Bose, Khudiram 159 Bose, Santanu 152, 239 Bouddha Jatakas 164 bourgeois humanism 68 “Breast Giver” 5, 8, 86 – 7 Breast Stories 120 – 2, 125 – 6, 216, 238 Breast Trilogy, The 120 Brecht, Bertolt 148, 154n4 Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar, The, Goswami 129 – 31, 134

253

INDEX

Buck, Pearl S. 206 Budhan theatre 5, 16, 153, 230 – 2 Budhan, Shyamali 174, 230 Busstope Barsha, Mahasweta Devi 57 Butalia, Urvashi 114, 116 Butler, Judith 9, 13 – 14, 147 Byapari, Manoranjan 16, 153 Calcutta riot. See under riots capitalism 73, 111, 125, 177, 181 Cappelli, Mary Louisa 6, 13 – 14, 16 caste: killings 168 – 9; lower 137, 141 – 2; oppression 168; wars 169 casteism 14, 61, 105, 107, 111, 117, 140, 142, 146, 150, 168 – 9 Castro, D. 169 Census Commission 222 Chakrabarti, Dipendu 15 Chakraborty, Ishwar 239 Chakraborty, Sumita 12, 63 Chakraborty, Swapnamoy 224 Chakravarty, Radha 132, 200; interview with 16, 196 Chakravorty, Tulika 114 “Chandalika,” Tagore 199 Chandimangal, Mukundaram 233 Chandra, Suresh 203 Chatterjee, Bankimchandra 11, 198 Chatterjee, Brati 24, 139 Chatterjee, Upamanyu 198 Chatterji, Joya 114 Chattopadhyay, Anunoy 12, 61 Chattopadhyay, Mohit 138 Chaudhuri, Amit 239 Chhara community 230; as criminal tribe 5, see also tribes Chharanagar 174; library in 230 – 1 Chhattisgarh 5, 92, 228 Chhelebela 234 children’s stories 137, 195 Chilekothar Sepai, Elias 199, 221 “Chitrangada”, Tagore 199 “Choli ke Peechhey,” film adaptation of 239 Chotti Munda Aur Uska Teer 237 Chotti Munda Ebong tar Teer (Chotti Munda and His Arrow, Mahasweta Devi 5, 64, 124, 195, 226, 234 Chowdhury, Sankho 2, 202, 233, 234 – 4 civilisation 80, 98

class 9, 117; oppression 168; struggle 12, 197 Cohen, Margaret 97 collected works 75 collecting words 191 colonial/colonialism 9, 80 – 82, 111, 123, 125, 127, 133 – 4, 150, 230 – 1 Collins, Patricia Hill 114, 116 Collu, Gabriella 13 Common Trees, Santappu 164 Communis, Shankar Basu 78 Communism 58, 190 Communist Party 4, 193, 212 Comparative Literature 10, 14 Conquergood, Dwight 152 – 3 conservatism 52 corruption 178 – 9; see also social corruption criminal tribes 5, 230, see also tribes; Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs) Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 172 Critical Inquiry 87 Dainik Basumati 237 Dalits 107, 132 – 3, 182, see also caste Dandekar, Ajay 171 Das, Akhilbandhu 218 Das, Arup Kumar 15 Das, Ranjit Kumar (Lodha) 16 Das, Reena 238 Das, Samantak 125 death 82, 84, 97, 100, 104, 140, 143, 174, 178, 180, 217, 222, 229 – 30 “Death of Jagmohan, the Elephant”, Mahasweta Devi 170 Deb Sen, Nabaneeta 227Dehradun Forest Research Institute 166 democracy 58, 193 Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs) 5, 172 – 4, 222, 230 – 2; atrocities against 231 Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group, (DNTRAG) 173, 238 Deo, Gopiballabh Singh 237 deprivation 68, 72, 111, 197 Derrida, Jacques 121, 147 Desai, Shantinath 173 “Desh Bibhajan Smaraney”, Mahasweta Devi 239 Desh-Anandabazar group 77

254

INDEX

Dev, Amiya 171 Devi, Anurupa 198 Devi, Jyotirmoyee 198 Devi, Shanta 198 Devy, Ganesh N. 5, 13, 229 – 30, 238 “Dewana Khoi Mala,” Mahasweta Devi 201 Dharitri Devi 2, 202, 214, 233 Dhatridevata, Tarasankar 51 Dhulomati, Bhowmick 57 Djebar, Assia 13 Douloti, Mahasweta Devi 78, 103 Draupadi, Mahasweta Devi 5, 8 – 9, 81, 85, 88, 121 – 2, 132, 144, 148, 150 – 1, 153, 237; Santhal song in 7; Spivak translation of 87 “Draupadi” (2000), Kanhailal 151, 238 Duras, Marguerite 91 Dust on the Road, Ghatak 163, 167 Dutt, Avijit 152, 239 Dutt, Utpal 70, 72, 138 Dutta, Ella 86 Dutta Gupta, Sarmishtha 224 – 5 ecological/ecology 16, 166, 167, 177 – 9, 181, 249 Elias, Akhtaruzzaman 199, 213, 221 Elwin lecture in Baroda 170 – 2 Emecheta, Buchi 13 Emergency Rule, Indira Gandhi 58, 143, 179 – 80 environmental strangulation 179 ethnicity 112, 117 ethnography 10 “Etoa Munda Won the Battle” 86 Etotuku Asha, Mahasweta Devi 70, 236 eucalyptus 164 – 7; hazard 166; introduction of 165; Karnataka (2017) ban on 179, see also antieucalyptus movement “Eucalyptus: Why?”, Mahasweta Devi 6, 15, 177 – 8 exploitation 5, 68 – 9, 80 – 1, 116, 126, 144, 168, 197, 204, 216, see also caste; women Falgoo 214 famine 49, 51, 77, 96, see also Bengal Famine (1942–44) farmers 82, 180

Farrier, David 13 feminism 10, 115, 196; Black 116; South Asian 112, 116 Festival of India in France 87 feudal system 77, 141, 168 fiction 1, 5, 7, 9, 11, 16, 78, 81, 90, 93, 129, 131, 137 – 8 “50 years of Independence and the Lodhas” in Aaj Kaal 218 Five Plays 41, 86, 89, 125, 127, 137 – 8, 148; cover (image) 42 folklore 3, 14, 129, 131, 200, 203 Folktales from India, Ramanujan 10 forest dwellers 182, 219 Forests of India, The, Stebbing 164 Frankfurt Book Fair 238 freedom struggle 4, 159 Gaikwad, Laxman 171, 173, 238 Ganadevata, Tarasankar 51 “Ganatantra o Gopal Kahar” 78 Gandhi, Mahatma 172, 193; assassination of 2, 192 – 3 “Ganga-Jamuna-Dulang-Chaka”, Mahasweta Devi 187 Gangopadhyay, Sunil 12, 64 Gangor, Italo Spinelli 239 Ganguli, Usha 144, 149, 238 Garasia-Bhil Mahabharata 174 gender 6, 104 – 5, 112, 122, 126, 133, 146 – 7, 196; bias 135; discrimination 149, 228; role of 9 generation-gap, concept of 76 Geography of Hunger, The, Castro 169 “Ghaatak”, Mahasweta Devi 201 Ghatak, Maitreya 5, 159 Ghatak, Manish Chandra (father/Baba) 2, 201 – 4, 214, 233 Ghatak, Ritwik 2, 147, 176, 233, 235 Ghatak, Sudhish, 233 Ghatak, Suresh Chandra 202 Ghose, Goutam 150, 238, see also Gudia Ghose, Jyotsnamoy 59 Ghose, Kalyani 64 Ghose, Sankho 12, 64 Ghose, Santosh 79 Ghosh, Alpana 198 Ghosh, Amitav 91, 97, 198, 240 Ghosh, Jyotsnamoy 12 Ghosh, Nirmal 191

255

INDEX

Ghosh, P.K. 85, 87 Ghoshjaya, Shailabala 198 Ghunpoka 58 Gikandi, Simon 92 “Giribala”, Mahasweta Devi 5, 9, 13 – 14, 27, 111, 113, 115 – 17 Gobindadas 206 God 39 – 40, 52, 100, 198; as luxury of rich 52 God of Small Things, Roy 198 Godhra incident 227, see also riots Godse, Nathuram 193 Golf Green house 225, 228 Goswami, Achyut 11, 57 Goswami, Indira 15, 131 – 2, 134 – 5 Goswami, Mamoni Raisom 129 grandfather: maternal 197 – 8; paternal 197 grandmother 197, 209 Gramsci, Antonio. 98, 197 Grimms’ fairy tales 13 Gudia Gautam Ghose 150, 238 See also Urvashi and Johnny Guha, Ranajit 93 Gupta, Ajoy 12 Gupta, Asit 3, 147, 190, 194, 215, 236; death of 191 “H.F. 37: Ekti Reportage”, Mahasweta Devi 204 Haazar Chaurasi kee Maa, Jalan 215 Haider, Qurratulain 198 Hajar Churashir Ma (Mother of 1084) 5, 8 – 9, 12, 14 – 15, 26, 60, 62, 64, 68 – 71, 75, 78 – 9, 86, 89 – 90, 124, 138 – 41, 148, 151, 153, 226, 231, 237; Basu on 12, 61; Mukhopadhyay on 12, 58 Hansuli Banker Upakatha, Tarasankar 51 Haq, Hasan Azizul 87, 199 Haraway, Donna 179 harijan killings 169, see also under caste Hariram Mahato, Mahasweta Devi 78 “Haunted Landscapes: Mahasweta Devi and the Anthropocene,” Cappelli 16 Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa, Nihalani 146, 152, 238 Heise, Ursula 97 Hembram, Nityananda 161

Hemingway, Ernest 173 heteroglossia 7 historiography 123, 129,131 – 3, 135, 146 – 7 history 148 human rights 10, 69 Human Rights Commission 222 “Hun Maha” 201 “Hunt, The”, Mahasweta Devi 5, 9, 177, 181 “I cannot do the big things” 223 imaginative activism 93, 95, 97 immortality 80, 84 “Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet” 100 In Other Worlds 87, 124 In the Name of the Mother: Four Stories 32; cover image 119 independence 2, 6, 8, 77, 103, 113, 127, 137, 193, 221, 229, 235 Indian languages 3, 8 – 9, 13, 146, 205 Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) 3 – 4, 138, 147, 173, 235 indigenous people 1, 5, 125; campaign for rights of 5, see also adivasis; Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs); tribes indigenous words 7, 125 inequalities 5 – 6 Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) 160 interdisciplinary storytelling 179 intersectionality 10, 16 irrealism 8; critical 8 ‘Isco Cave’ 99 Jagomohoner Mrityu, Mahasweta Devi 78, 204 Jaidev 13, 15, 103, 173 Jaipur History Congress 203 “Jal”, Mahasweta Devi 72, 81, 121, 138 Jalan, Shyamanand 152, 215, 239 Jalarko 74 Jameson, Fredric 104 “Jamunabotir Ma” 201 Jamuna ke Teer, Mahasweta Devi 236 “Jamunaboti’s Mother,” Mahasweta Devi 5, 9 Jangal ke Davedaar 237

256

INDEX

Jhansir Rani, Mahasweta Devi 3, 7, 14, 89, 147, 211, 226 see also The Queen of Jhansi Jhargram Mohkumay 217 “Jiyankanya” 235 Joseph, Joshy 231 Joseph, Teresa 114 Jotjomi, Debes Ray 78 Jugantar 237 Jussawala, Adil 86 Kaku, Mejo 212 Kambar, Chadrashekhar 170 “Kanai Bairagir Ma” 201 Kandiyoti, Deniz 115 Kanhailal, Heisnam 144, 151, 238 Kanhailal, Sabitri Devi 151, 238 Kanwar, Amar 216 Kapadia, Dimple 238 Kar, Bimal 57 Karunanayake, Dinithy 13 Kashyap, Aruni 134 Katyal, Anjum 13, 15, 120, 137 Kaur, Ajit 198 Khakhar, Bhupen 174 – 5 Khan, Amjad 238 Khan, Shah Rukh 7 Khanna, Ranjana 111 – 12 Khwabnama, Elias 199, 221 Kishore, Naveen, conversation with 238; English translations of 13; interview by 152, 189 – 95 Kisku, Saradaprasad 159 Kobi Bandyoghoti Gayener Jibon o Mrityu, Mahasweta Devi 201, 204, 221, 236 Konchi 214 Konwar, Arunabh 15 Kotal, Chuni 222 Krishnamoorthy, K. 146, 153 Kumar, Dilip 237 Kumar, Sanjeev 237 “Kunti and the Nishadin,” Mahasweta Devi 8 Lahiri, Sari 16, 209 Laili Aasmaner Aina, Mahasweta Devi 146, 226 Lajmi, Kalpana 146, 149 Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi147 Land Acquisition Act of 1894 225

“Land Alienation Among Tribals,” Mahasweta Devi 178 land ceiling 168 “Land Grabbing among Tribals in West Bengal”, Mahasweta Devi 177 The Land of Naked People, Madhusree Mukherjee 198 landless 3, 166, 168; agricultural labourers 85; peasants 236; rural poor 137 landlords 107, 180 land-owning-moneylenders 107 language 73; recognition of 161; use of 7, 64, 73, 89, 147 Latour, Bruno 97 Leftists 62 – 3, 67; government in Bengal 4; literature and theatre 71 liberalism 115 – 16 Lichte, Fischer 150 “Lightning Testimonies, The”, Kanwar 216 Little Theatre Group 138 “Love, Care and Dignity: The Family as a Privileged Community,” Nussbaum 13 Lu Xhun, biography of 3 “M W Banam Lakhind”, Mahasweta Devi 121 Maati Maye, Palekar 238 – 9 Madhubala 173 Madhurey Madhur, Mahasweta Devi 70, 236; Goswami on 57 “Maganbhai’s Glue”, Khakhar 174 “Mahananda” 232 Mahasweta Devi/Bhattacharya 226 – 7: Anita Agnihotri on 224; birth of 2, 202, 233; conversation with Kishore 189 – 95; criticism 64; death of 4, 227, 229; as didi 30, 199, 203 – 4, 209 – 10, 218 – 19; education of 2 – 4, 148 – 9, 151, 203 – 4,233 – 6; essays 177; family of 4; father/Baba 28, 31, 43, 204, 206 – 7, 209, 211 – 12; fiction 9, 12, 80, 144; first marriage 3; images 55, 157, 162, 184, 185, 200, 208, 234; as Marangdai 3, 5; as Mahasweta Bhattacharya 70; novels 59 – 60, 63, 73, 152; pseudonym as Sumitra Devi 3, 11, 203, 212, 235; second marriage 194; as Shobor Mother 217; stories 13, 59, 73, 78, 80 – 1, 110 – 11, 115, 117, 143, 216;

257

INDEX

style of writing 73 – 4, 176; texts 8, 14 – 15, 100, 123 – 4, 127; translations and 88; use of language 73; work experience 235 – 6; writings 2, 5 – 6, 9 – 12, 14, 62 – 4, 67 – 8, 73, 120 – 1, 124, 146 – 7, 149, 152, 203; as writer activist 4 – 6 mahua tree 229 – 30 Maitra, Jyotirindra 212 Maitra, Suresh Chandra 62 Maity, Amitesh 65 Majumdar, Amiya Bhushan 67 Majumdar, Charu 152, 239 Majumdar, Debasis 138 Majumdar, Lila 198 Malcolm, D.A. 21 – 2 Malik, Shazia 113 Mallaburman, Advaita 62 Malone, Irina Ruppo 131 Mandela, Nelson 172, 238 Mangai 144 Manipuri women, naked protest against AFSPA 151, 238 Manjari Opera, Tarasankar 51 Mann, Harveen Sachdeva 9 Manto, Sadat Hasan 9, 173 Marathwada 228 marginalisation 6, 8, 116, 127; of women 9 Marino, Alessandra 13 Marxism 4, 10, 12, 68, 111, 127, 197 Masik Basumati 206 massacres 221; see also riots Master Saab, Mahasweta Devi 12, 58 Maternal 59, 81, 105 – 6, 110 – 14, 116 – 17 “Mayer Murti” 201 Mbembe, Achille 178 “Me,” poem by Amrita Pritam 110 Menozzi, Filippo 13 Miles, Alfred Henry 223 Miller, Arthur 173 minoritarian perspectives 146 Mishra, Dinesh 170 Misra, Subimal 57 Misra, Udayon 134 Misri, Deepti 151 Mitra, Amar 224 Mitra, Ashok 69 Mitra, Indrani Roy, interview with 239 Mitra, Joya 198

Mitra, Manoj 138 Mitra, Premendra 51 Mitra, Ranjanikanta 198 Mitra, Sombhu 138 Mitra, Sureshchandra 12 Mitul (image) 208 Mejo dada 207 modernism 8 Modi, Narendra 239 Mofussil Brittanto, Debes Ray 78 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 111 moneylenders 140, 180 Monjo, F. N. 129 morality 52, 132 Morrison, Toni 15, 110 – 13, 115 – 17 Morton, Timothy 97 motherhood 15, 111, 113, 115, 126, 201; representations of 9 “Moul Adhikar o Bhikhari Dusad,” Mahasweta Devi 204 Mukherjee, Hemanta Kumar 173 Mukherjee, Madhusree 198 Mukherjee, Meenakshi 86 Mukherjee, Sujit 9, 13, 15 Mukherjee, Tutun 13 Mukhopadhyay, Arun Kumar 12, 58 – 9, 63 Mukhopadhyay, Partha 12, 60 Mukhopadhyay, Shirshendu 58, 79 Mukhopadhyay, Soma 16, 206 Mukhopadhyay, Trailokyanath 198 Mukhopadhyay, Umaprasad 198 Mukundaram (Kavikankan) 50, 198, 233 Munda uprising 147, 216 Murmu, Sadhu Ram Chand 159 myth 3, 8, 11, 15, 60, 62, 80 – 4, 90, 94, 104, 200; of golden age 81 mythologies 47, 50 – 1, 80, 82 Nabo Kallol 204, 227 Nagin (1952) 236 Nagini Kanyar Kahini, Tarasankar 51 Najib 223 Nandigram agitation 238 – 9 Nandikar 138 Nandy, Jyotirindra 198 Nasrin, Taslima 198 Nati, Mahasweta Devi 70, 236 national allegories 15, 104 – 5, 107 National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) 134

258

INDEX

National Human Rights Commission 173 National School of Drama 152 nationalism 6, 104, 110 – 11 nationality 117 Naxal movement 14, 58 – 61, 67 – 8, 71, 75, 121, 139 – 40, 151, 191, 215 Naya Sadak, translation of Peral S. Buck 206 Nazrul 199 Ndebele, Njabulo S. 92 neoliberalism 111 Nihalani, Govind 69, 146, 152, 238 Niranjana, Tejaswini 125 Nixon, Rob 177 Nomadic Tribes 231 “Noon” (“Salt”), Mahasweta Devi 6, 204, 224, 226 novels 15, 47 – 8, 50 – 2, 57 – 9, 61 – 5, 70, 73, 75 – 81, 89, 195 – 6, 204; Mahesweta Devi on her 58 Nussbaum, Martha 13 – 14, 115 – 16 “Nyadosh the Incredible Cow,” Mahasweta Devi 15, 43 – 6, 215 Of Women, Outcasts, Peasants and Rebels 87On Both Sides, Mangai 144 On the Cultural Front, Ritwik Ghatak 147 Operation? Bashai Tudu: Mahasweta Devi 3, 5, 8, 64, 85, 88; Mukhopadhyay on 58 oppression 5, 9, 80, 83, 111, 116, 142, 197 oral traditions 7, 129, 198 – 9, see also folklore Other Side of Silence, The, Butalia 114 Our Non-Veg Cow and Other Stories, Mahasweta Devi 46 Our Santiniketan 16, 188, 233 outcastes 137, see also caste; casteism; Dalits; harijan killings Outlook 216 “Paddy Seeds”, Mahasweta Devi 177, 179 Pakistan, creation of 2, see also Partition Palamau 3, 165 – 8, 172, 189 – 90, 204, 236 “Palamau is a Mirror of India,” Mahasweta Devi 15

Palamau Zila Bandhua Samiti 5, 237 Palamu novellas 103 Palekar, Chitra 239 Panchagram, Tarasankar 51 Pandey, Mrinal 240 Paradise, Morrison 110, 112 – 13, 116 Parry, Benita 8 Parsai, Harishankar 198 Partition 2, 8, 50 – 1, 77, 110, 113 – 14, 222, 235 Paschim Banga Kheria Sabar Kalyan Samiti 220, 237 passion 57, 68, 73, 212 Patel, Bhagwandas 171 Patel, Kanji 174 patriarchy 9, 110 – 14, 116, 133, 215 Paul, Ruma 174 performance 16, 130, 138, 143, 147 – 8, 150 – 3, 231; rights 87; studies 10, 148, 152 performativity 147 – 8 “Phoren Soap”, Khakhar 174 “Pindadaan”, Mahasweta Devi 64, 200 Pinjar, Amrita Pritam 110 – 11, 113 – 14 planetarity 6, 16, 95, 97 – 8, 100 playwriting 138, 140 political: consciousness 3 – 4; marginalisation 179; movement 71, 78 political theatre 138, see also theatre positionality 120 poverty 235 – 6, see also famine Pradhan, Pankaj Kumar 219 Prasad 227 Pratibha 197 Premtara, Mahasweta Devi 70 Pritam, Amrita 15, 110 – 13, 116 – 17 pterodactyl 91, 93 – 8, 172, 200 “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha”, Mahasweta Devi, trans. Spivak 91 Puri, Ina 16, 214 Purulia 160, 165 – 6, 172, 187, 189, 200, 220, 222, 229; custodial death of Budhan Sabar in 172, 174 Putul Nacher Itikatha, Manik Bandyopadhyay 51 Queen of Jhansi, The 3, 7, 11, 21, 23, 129 – 30, 147, 200, 211, 236; book cover (image) 20; Radha Chakravarty on 133; translation 129 Quit India movement 2, 234

259

INDEX

Raakhee 238 Rabindranath 2, 11, 57, 73, 87, 172, 174, 193, 197, 199, 206, 212; birth of 188, 233; dance dramas 199 race 112, 117, 146 Rachanasamagra, Mahasweta Devi 11 – 12 Rajlakshmi Devi 228 Rajshahi 199, 202, 221 Raju, Cherabanda 86 Ramanujan, A. K. 10 Rane, The 22 Rangmashal 234 Rathwa, Nagin 172 Rattan Masterer Pathshala 224 Ravindranathan, Thangam 91, 97 Rawail, HS 146 Ray, Asim 57 Ray, Debes 57, 78 Ray, Satyajit 195 readers/audience 9, 73, 124 – 5, 149, 226 realism 1, 8, 76, 78 refugees 58, 111 – 12 religion 110 – 11, 113, 117, 146 reproductive heteronormativity (RHN) 94 revolution 69 – 70, 80 – 1, 190 riots 50 – 1, 221; in Ahmedabad 227; in Calcutta 2, 235; 221; in Gujarat 175, 227; Hindu–Muslim 77, see also Partition rivers 23, 45, 62, 82, 93, 141, 166 – 7, 187, 195, 206, 229; Kumari-ChakaKshintowa-Kansai 187 Rolland, Romain 47 romances 11, 70, 226 romanticism 139 Roopkala Kendra 228 Roy, Arundhati 198 Roy, Bani 198 Roy, Binoy 212 Roy, Ram Mohun 233 Rudaali (1993) (Hindi) by Kalpana Lajmi 146, 149, 238 Rudali, Usha Ganguli 149, 238 Rudali, play, Mahasweta Devi 148, 153 Sabar, Budhan, killing of 172, 230 Sabar, Sagar 200 Sabitri 144 Sachidanandan, P. “Anand” 10, 16, 173, 220

Sachitra Bharat 203, 212 Sahni, Balraj 237 Sahni, Bhisham 198 Saikia, Tejoswita 132 Salgado, Minoli 8 – 9, 13 Samakaler Jiyan Kathi 205, 210 Sananda, Sankho Ghose in 64 Sangari, Kumkum 133 Sangbad Pratidin 213 “Sangrakshan”, Mahasweta Devi 204 “Sanjh Baisakhi,” 201 Santappu, H. 164 Santhali language 159, 161 Santiniketan 2, 4, 6, 16, 172, 187 – 8, 193, 197, 199, 203, 214 Saratchandra 11, 47 – 8, 57 Satabdi, Badal Sircar 138 Sathyanarayana, E. 13 Scheduled Tribes 182 Schleiermacher, Freidrich 124 Schwartz, Henry 13 screen adaptations 15, 146, 149 Sea Wall, The, Marguerite Duras 91 Second World War 2, 45 “Seeds”, Mahasweta Devi 169 – 70 Seeta, Meadows Taylor 22 Sen, Nandini 13 Sen, Nivedita 13 Sepoy Mutiny 60, 203 Seth, Vikram 198 Shah, Waris 113 Shankhdhar, Jagat 237 Shatabdir Mrityu, Tarasankar 49 Sheikh, Umar 212 Shishu, Mahasweta Devi 78 sign-system, shared 8 short stories 14, 51, 75, 115, 137, 177, 212 Shrestha Galpo, Mahasweta Devi 75; Sharmila Basu on 59 – 60 Shukla, Srilal 198 Singbhum and Mahasweta Devi 164 – 6, 179; Alliance Cement Company (ACC) 177 – 8; land confiscation in 179 Singh, Harleen 133 Singh, Parmananda 217 Sinha, Shumona 91 Sircar, Badal 138, 231 Sita Devi, 198 Smriti Bismriti 202 Sobti, Krishna 198

260

INDEX

social forestry 165 social: awareness 68, 159, 228; corruption 179; criticism 61; justice 98, 139 – 40; mission 12; movements 147, 231; responsibility 4, 12, 77 socialism 58 Spinelli, Italo 239 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 1, 3, 6, 9 – 10, 13 – 15, 67, 69, 73, 85 – 9, 120 – 1, 123 – 7, 151; “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 4; internationalising strategies 11; interpretation 122; Mahasweta Devi on 73; mediation 9; translations 9, 14, 123 – 4, 126 Sri Sri Ganesh Mahima, Mahasweta Devi 78 Sri Sri Ganesh Mahima Hindi translation 238 “Stanadayini”, Mahasweta Devi 9 – 10, 72, 120, 122 – 3, 204 Stebbing, E.P. 164 storytelling 94, 179; Tarasankar and 49 – 50 stream-of-consciousness 14 Subramanian, Shreerekha 113 Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari 8 subaltern/ subalternity 1, 4, 6, 9, 95, 121 – 3, 125, 127, 132, 215; literature 121; resistance 9; studies 10, 86, 93, 120; tribal as 9 Suhrud, Tridip 171 Sumitra Devi (pseudonym). See under Mahasweta Devi/Bhattacharya “Sunghursh” 146, 237 Swaha, Mahasweta Devi 71 Swanson, Heather 179 Swarnakumari Devi 12, 59 Tagore, Rabindranath. See Rabindranath Talking Writing 195 “Tasher Desh,” Tagore 199 Taylor, Jesse Oak 97 Taylor, Meadows 22 Tebhaga-Telengana issue 212, 235 Teesta Parer Brittanto, Debes Ray 78 Tejgadh 172, 174, 229 Thakumar Jhhuli 212 theatre 69, 71, 139, 144, 149, 151, 231; activism 138; and theatricality 148 – 50

Thengphakhri Tehsildaror Taamor Toruwal, Goswami 130 Third World 87, 90, 105 Timir Lagan, Mahasweta Devi 70, 226 Tordey, Emil 169 Tracy, D. H. 110 translations 1 – 3, 7, 9 – 11, 13, 15, 85, 95, 100, 124 – 6, 196, 198, 205; English 1, 10, 13, 73, 86, 225, 228; of literary texts 88 – 9 tribal; campaign for languages 7; championing cause of 237; displacement for development 181; groups 5, 67, 161 – 2, 178; identity 95, 160; languages 5, 15, 161; revolt 58 tribes 4, 6, 9, 89, 93 – 4, 125, 137, 159 – 64, 180, 182, 190, 192, 197, 204, 221, 236; Bedias 161; Ho 165; Kherias 159, 161, 167; Lodhas 16, 61 – 2, 161, 165, 167, 222, 217 – 19, 226; Mundas 61, 83, 161, 217; Oraons 161; Parhayiyas 165; Sabar/ Shobors 159, 167, 217 – 19, 222, 226, 230; Santhals 61, 161 – 2, 165, 167 Trinamool Congress (TMC) 4 Truth Tales 86 Tunzelmann, Alex von 135 Turner, Victor 152 Tushu songs 218 Ullas, Ishwar Chakrborty 239 Undoing Gender, Butler 14 Urvashi and Johnny (English) 126, 138, 143 – 4, 148 Urvashi O Johnny, Mahasweta Devi 238 “Utsaber Shubhechchha” 239 Vajpeyi, Ashok 198 Varma, Deven 237 Vasudevan Nair, M.T. 198 Vemula, Rohit 223 Venuti, Lawrence 124 Vidyasagar, Ishwarchandra 233 Virdee, Pippa 114 Visva Bharati 203, 214 Visvanathan, Shiv 13 vulnerable peoples 179, see also tribes Vyjayanthimala 237

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INDEX

Wenzel, Jennifer 6, 13 – 14, 97 West Bengal 48 – 9, 52, 58, 60 – 2, 160 – 2, 164 – 5, 167 – 8, 177, 196, 204, 230 – 1 “Wet Nurse, The” 86 – 7 White, Hayden 131 women, adivasi 94; exploitation of 9; of Manipur 16; writer 9, 197 woman writer 9, 197, 204, 228

Worthen, W. B. 150 Writing and Sexual Difference 87 writing as kinesis 152 – 3 Yeats, W. B 100 Yogabhrashta, Tarasankar 51 Yook, Sun Hee 13 Zalasiewicz, Jan 180

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