Bhattacharya1
Name- Sanchari Bhattacharya
Semester-5
Subject- English Honours
College UID- 0304210201
Roll Number-213740
Course- CC11
Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi As A Potrayal Of Resistance
“I think a creative writer should have a social conscience. I have a duty towards society…. I
ask myself this question a thousand times: Have I done what I could have done?” (Devi 1)
The renowned Bengali author Mahasweta Devi, who is outraged by the forms of degrading
treatment meted out to members of lower castes, particularly women, and who has
championed the cause of the "untouchables," is appalled by the political game that seeks to
crush the spirit of those men and women who struggle for freedom from slavery on behalf of
their caste and clan. She therefore starts a journey to expose the startling truths that occur
behind the political and economical iron curtains through her most potent work, Draupadi.
Dopdi, the female lead and tribal rebel, is arrested during her outrageous tribal uprisings
against the government. The narrative details the triple marginalization—class, gender, and
caste—that dalit women in tribal areas experience on all fronts—economic, political, social,
and sexual. It concerns the 1967 peasant uprising against the unofficial state-feudal nexus by
nomadic farm workers and landless peasants in the West Bengal region of Naxalbari.
Bhattacharya2
The character of Dopdi allows us to view the subaltern’s identity through the hegemonic
structures seen through the policemen and Officer Senanayek. Dopdi's body thereby becomes
a site of gendered resistance as well as the exercise of authoritarian control. With the support
of another man named Arijit, who tells Dopdi to save her friends rather than herself, she
endures the agony of being raped by numerous men. But although she speaks openly to the
police, the assault on her body muffles the voice of this male authority. She defies the
phallocentric dominance by her refusal to be clothed which further gives her the agency to
reject the policemen's hegemonic patriarchy by taking control of her body. Dopdi’s act of
refusing to respond or react to the violence being inflicted on her body is an act of rebellion.
Devi captures the violence the State inflicts on Dopdi’s body in an attempt to change it from a
rebellious to a docile and subservient one, using visceral language. Devi also expresses
Dopdi's subversion and disobedience as a woman—that is, as a tribal woman who supports
the Naxalite movement—in the same language. Dopdi’s character is used to symbolise the
gendered subaltern subject who exists at the periphery of society and has the courage to
challenge the patriarchal systems that are in place. Because the subaltern can only be re-
presented and not truly represented, Spivak has expressed worry about how they are
portrayed in popular discourse. Devi, however, addresses the politics around the
categorization of the "subaltern" in addition to re-presenting the subaltern through the use of
polyphony.
Dopdi’s character can be seen as a reimagined and demythicised avatar of the eponymous
Draupadi from Mahabharata. Her disrobing stands in stark contrast to that of her namesake in
the Mahabharata. She stands, without a saviour, disrobed and brutalised, but unwilling to bear
the shame for a violation committed upon her. Instead of relying on male intervention, Dopdi
Bhattacharya3
engendered her own instrument of resistance. Unlike her legendary counterpart, Dopdi
countered the patriarchal construct of "sexual honour" and transformed her rape and other
forms of sexual oppression, Dopdi subverted this discourse of political violence by rendering
the violence itself impotent. The act of recreating Draupadi as Dopdi can be interpreted as
Mahasweta Devi's homage to women from tribal origins. Devi's wish for restitution for the
Santals is combined with Spivak's translation of this exceptional story. The translation, as
well as the original short story, both help to expose a harsh and unfair societal reality. In this
way, engaged literature and translation combine to provide a potent tool for changing social
reality.
The story's premise and tone demonstrate how Devi's writing transcends language and beauty
to become a political statement against racial and gender discrimination, specifically targeting
a marginalised society like India's Tribals. When Spivak clarifies that the suffering of a
community that is viewed as a minority should be shared throughout India and beyond in
order to serve as an example to the many women oppressed by patriarchal society as well as
to other marginalised communities, her translation also becomes an act of resistance.
Together, the author and translator develop a literary work and translation that, while
challenging and dismantling the Indian nationalist narrative, recreates the identity of the tribal
subordinate.
The lofty patriarchal traditions of Indian culture serve as the foundation for this short
narrative, which resonates with the painful, strong, and disturbing reality of the modern
world. Devi illustrates what happens to a woman when she is viewed as nothing more than a
"target object." As a result, Mahashweta Devi's "Draupadi" comes to symbolise various
segments of society, including women, dalits, and tribal people, who are fighting to break free
from subordination and have their voices heard in the country's larger socio-political and
cultural context.
Bhattacharya4
The story's heroine, Draupadi, is portrayed by the author as a fresh embodiment, shattering
the conventional notion of the subaltern. Devi successfully refutes Spivak's argument in her
essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" through Dopdi. We have a subaltern woman in Dopdi who
shouts out loud, both literally and figuratively. The intimidating image of the female body
transforms into that of a hunted, valiant revolutionary who rebels against the establishment of
a dominant, patriarchal nation state. Here, Mahasweta Devi underlines and insists on
highlighting the moment in the narrative where Dopdi's status as a subaltern ends and male
leadership ends. She gains the bravery to speak up, if not for herself then at least for her
allies, after going through the worst that could happen to a woman. It appears as though
Dopdi dies inside of her and then resurfaces as if from the ashes.
Citation
Devi, Mahasweta. Breast Stories. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Calcutta: Seagull
Books, 2002
Radhakrishnan, Sweta. Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi: A Feminist Text That Questions
Everything. The Curious Reader, The Curious Reader, 13 January 2020,
https://www.thecuriousreader.in/features/mahasweta-devi-draupadi/.
Yaqub, Huma. Performing Resistance and Reconstructing Margins in Mahasweta Devi's
Draupadi. Academia.edu, 2014,
https://www.academia.edu/75090783/Performing_Resistance_and_Reconstructing_Margins_i
n_Mahasweta_Devis_Draupadi
