Indian Streams Research Journal

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1 Vol 6 Issue 1 Feb 2016 ISSN No : ORIGINAL ARTICLE International Multidisciplinary Research Journal Indian Streams Research Journal Executive Editor Ashok Yakkaldevi Editor-in-Chief H.N.Jagtap

2 Welcome to ISRJ RNI MAHMUL/2011/38595 ISSN No Indian Streams Research Journal is a multidisciplinary research journal, published monthly in English, Hindi & Marathi Language. All research papers submitted to the journal will be double - blind peer reviewed referred by members of the editorial board.readers will include investigator in universities, research institutes government and industry with research interest in the general subjects. Regional Editor Manichander Thammishetty Ph.d Research Scholar, Faculty of Education IASE, Osmania University, Hyderabad. Mr. Dikonda Govardhan Krushanahari Professor and Researcher, Rayat shikshan sanstha s, Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College, Kolhapur. Kamani Perera Regional Center For Strategic Studies, Sri Lanka International Advisory Board Mohammad Hailat Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, University of South Carolina Aiken Hasan Baktir English Language and Literature Department, Kayseri Janaki Sinnasamy Librarian, University of Malaya Romona Mihaila Spiru Haret University, Romania Delia Serbescu Spiru Haret University, Bucharest, Romania Anurag Misra DBS College, Kanpur Titus PopPhD, Partium Christian University, Oradea,Romania Abdullah Sabbagh Engineering Studies, Sydney Ecaterina Patrascu Spiru Haret University, Bucharest Loredana Bosca Spiru Haret University, Romania Fabricio Moraes de Almeida Federal University of Rondonia, Brazil George - Calin SERITAN Faculty of Philosophy and Socio-Political Sciences Al. I. Cuza University, Iasi Ghayoor Abbas Chotana Dept of Chemistry, Lahore University of Management Sciences[PK] Anna Maria Constantinovici AL. I. Cuza University, Romania Ilie Pintea, Spiru Haret University, Romania Xiaohua Yang PhD, USA...More Editorial Board Pratap Vyamktrao Naikwade Iresh Swami ASP College Devrukh,Ratnagiri,MS India Ex - VC. Solapur University, Solapur R. R. Patil Head Geology Department Solapur University,Solapur Rama Bhosale Prin. and Jt. Director Higher Education, Panvel Salve R. N. Department of Sociology, Shivaji University,Kolhapur N.S. Dhaygude Ex. Prin. Dayanand College, Solapur Narendra Kadu Jt. Director Higher Education, Pune K. M. Bhandarkar Praful Patel College of Education, Gondia Sonal Singh Vikram University, Ujjain Rajendra Shendge Director, B.C.U.D. Solapur University, Solapur R. R. Yalikar Director Managment Institute, Solapur Umesh Rajderkar Head Humanities & Social Science YCMOU,Nashik S. R. Pandya Head Education Dept. Mumbai University, Mumbai Govind P. Shinde Bharati Vidyapeeth School of Distance Education Center, Navi Mumbai Chakane Sanjay Dnyaneshwar Arts, Science & Commerce College, Indapur, Pune Awadhesh Kumar Shirotriya Secretary,Play India Play,Meerut(U.P.) G. P. Patankar Alka Darshan Shrivastava S. D. M. Degree College, Honavar, Karnataka Shaskiya Snatkottar Mahavidyalaya, Dhar Maj. S. Bakhtiar Choudhary Director,Hyderabad AP India. S.Parvathi Devi Ph.D.-University of Allahabad Sonal Singh, Vikram University, Ujjain Rahul Shriram Sudke Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore S.KANNAN Annamalai University,TN Satish Kumar Kalhotra Maulana Azad National Urdu University Address:-Ashok Yakkaldevi 258/34, Raviwar Peth, Solapur Maharashtra, India Cell : , Ph No: ayisrj@yahoo.in Website:

3 Indian Streams Research Journal International Recognized Multidisciplinary Research Journal ISSN: Impact Factor : (UIF) Volume - 6 Issue - 1 Feb DALIT FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS IN MAHASWETA DEVI S DRAUPADI Shailja Chhabra Associate Prof., Department of English, Govt. P.G. College, Sec-1, Panchkula. Shailja Chhabra ABSTRACT This paper tries to identify dalit feminist consciousness in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak s translation of Mahasweta Devi s Draupadi. Devi s narrative focuses on characters that exemplify the twin problems of caste and gender; and explores a stinging indictment of destruction of tribal insurgents. She presents politics of domination, caste oppression, material violence, inhuman torture, repressive discourse, historical marginalization, and engineered exclusion; and liberates conventional epistemological bind. In Draupadi, the low-caste and the female gender act as the weapon for counter-offense and counter-resistance. Draupadi depicts how a marginalized tribal woman derives strength from her body and her inner feminine core to fight against her marginality. Here, the woman s body becomes an instrument of vicious denunciation of patriarchy and hegemony which are ironical, countercanonical, anti-literary, and contradictory. Spivak s intension is to effect an epistemic transformation of the concept of the monolithic third-world woman by drawing attention to the mechanics of investigating the subaltern consciousness. KEY WORDS: Caste Oppression, Countercanonical, Dalit Feminism, Gender Consciousness, Hegemony, Historical Marginalization, Patriarchy, Subaltern Consciousness. The Bengali writer and activist, Mahasweta Devi revisits the mythological story of Draupadi in her much acclaimed short story Draupadi. The story was published in her work Agnigarbha in The English reading world got to appreciate the work through Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak s translation 1

4 DALIT FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS IN MAHASWETA DEVI S DRAUPADI of her collection of short stories entitled Breast Stories (2010). The story has at its backdrop the Naxalbari movement of Bengal which started as a rural revolt of landless workers and tribal people against landlords and money lenders. It triggers the traumatizing experiences of male voyeurism and chauvinism that indulge for a national debate of dalit feminist narrative. In Draupadi, Mahasweta debunks and transgresses the narrow, apolitical, socio personal grid to which the female protagonists are usually confined in traditional feminist fiction. In the darkness of the tribal forests, it is a struggle of the entire extinction of an entire species of the petty peasant. Feminism is too urbane a word. Nor is there any fortress of male chauvinism to conquer. Men and women fight together, against a common foe: the establishment. Anup Beniwal notes that she abandons altogether the psycho-social narratives of introspection that dominate the middle class, urban women writers of fiction to produce emancipatory texts of self-conscious rebellion. Devi addresses the gap in Indian feminism and dalit activism as neither of them have addressed the concerns of the dalit and tribal woman who is placed at the locus of multiple victimhood (Beniwal). Mahasweta resorts to the technique of myth to make a dialogue between the past and the present and to view the present from the lens of past. Myth is constantly interwoven in the writings of Mahasweta Devi. It is a way of life for the tribals and ancient clans. Along with storytelling, she shares the task of the historian by undertaking to document the old stories which she believes are getting lost, ancient tales, history, songs, sagas, folklore, and folkways. Commenting on Mahasweta s engagement with myths, Maitreya Ghatak writes: whether it is a struggle for political power or more immediate problems like demands for land, a higher share of the crop, minimum wages, roads, schools, drinking water or for sheer human dignity, these remain the hallmark of her fiction especially the little known, little landed struggles which are part of everyday life and don t necessarily find a place in history books or the mainstream media (10-11). The life of poor peasants, tribals, their rebellions, their requirements and their pains never find any mention in mainstream history books. Through her literary endeavors, Mahasweta attempts to give them a voice because she believes that their voice should be heard. Mahasweta Devi s story Draupadi displays two forms of resistance first resistance is in the form of tribal insurgencies and the second is acted out by Dopdi Mejhen, an active worker of the Naxalbari movement who is hunted down and raped in a bid to subjugate insurgent groups. The tribals have lost their land and their identity is trodden over, likewise the woman also is raped and humiliated. But the woman, the so called subaltern can ultimately resist and speak when pushed to the ultimate margin. Her particular concern for women and their issues make her texts great areas of feminist research. The quintessential question Can the Subaltern (as women) speak? indoctrinates the female subjectivity and problematizes the lower-caste women through the blind spot of the stereotypical version Draupadi. Spivak questions the subaltern s ability to speak for herself (without being a mouthpiece) and suggests that if the subaltern is speaking (given a voice) she is not a subaltern anymore and that the terms determined for her speech (the space opened for her to speak) will affect what is going to be said and how her voice will be heard. Therefore, she is suspicious of attempts to retrieve a pure form of subaltern consciousness and suggests that the effort to produce a transparent or authentic (and heroic) subaltern is a desire of the intellectual to be benevolent or progressive that ends up silencing the subaltern once again (87). Spivak s conviction of speaking about and speaking for the female gender manifests the elite mainstream intrusion thwarted in Draupadi. From the root epic Mahabharatha onwards, the brutal cannibalistic exploitation and molestation begin with Draupadi s public unrobing. Draupadi is a reincarnation of mythical Draupadi, as both parallels the inherent semiotics of subjugation. Draupadi is a tribalized reincarnation of 2

5 DALIT FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS IN MAHASWETA DEVI S DRAUPADI mythical Draupadi, and the tale of rape murder- lockup torture in police custody. It captures the torturing experience of Santhal tribe, Draupadi Mejhen with multi-faced personality. Draupadi, the central character is introduced to the reader between two uniforms and between two versions of her name i.e. Dopdi and Draupadi. It is either that as a tribal she cannot pronounce her own Sanskrit name Draupadi, or the ancient Draupadi They have no right to heroic Sanskrit names (10). She cannot pronounce even her name because of the dalit tongue and dialect. The story is a moment caught between two deconstructive formulas: on the one hand, a law that is fabricated with a view to its own transgression, on the other, the undoing of the binary opposition between the intellectual and the rural struggles (10). The tale exposes the dalit feminist consciousness in its initial exposition itself: What s this, a tribal called Dopdi? The list of names I brought has nothing like it! How can anyone have an unlisted name? (19) Dopdi and Dulna are married couple, active workers in Naxalbari movement and fights for their prime necessities. The setting of Draupadi is the peasant rebellion in the Naxalbari area of the northern part of West Bengal in The tragedy of the exploitation of the landless peasants in India, and particularly West Bengal is an ageless one. So is the history of revolt, from the sanyasis and the indigo cultivators to the Naxalbari explosion. The people near Naxalbari in North Bengal are mostly tribals- the Medis, Lepchas, Bhutias, Santhals, Orangs. The zamindars extend the petty bait of paddy seeds, the oxen team, a handful of rice and negligible wages. In return, they reap a lion s share of the harvest, at the cost of the landless labourer s back-breaking toil. In great Bengal famine of 1943, starving people died in front of well stocked food shops. A peasant differs from a landless labourer in terms of ownership position since he cultivated his own land. The migrants like Dopdi or her husband Dulna Majhi are forced to work for wages well below government fixation of minimum wages. They are not fighting for bigger academic issues. They are fighting for bare minimum needs to survive. The target of these movements was the long established oppression of the landless peasantry and itinerant farm workers, sustained through an unofficial government landlord collision. The Indian government was able to crack down the rebellion with exceptional brutality on the Naxalites destroying the rebellious sections of the rural population, most significantly the tribal. D. Karunanayake asserts that Dopdi s existence in the forest as a militant in the Naxalite movement, among strange men, bereft of the protection of her husband Dulna, is transgressive because earlier she talked about her forefathers and not foremothers who stood guard over their women s blood in black armour (193). She is of vital importance to the movement. It is Dopdi who goes in to the village in search of food (191). And to spy on the activities of the police. She is a strong resilient female character, transgressing the gender and cultural norms of her society; she does not appear to be an agent as yet, noted Karunanayake. She and Dulna initially join the movement because circumstance force them to so. Dopdi is not in a position to exert power and authority. Her actions are governed by the instructions she receives from Arijit. Dopdi remains faithful to codes of conduct of Santhal tribe crow would eat crow s flesh before a Santhal would betray Santhal (193). Unfortunately, it is these loyalties that enable Senanayak to predict her behaviour and in the end apprehend her and rape her. After Dulna s murder, Draupadi is brutally molested by the policemen in their attempts to extract information about the fugitives. Senanayak, the army chief, with Keatsian negative capability torments Dopdi. As a counter-offense, she tears her clothes and makes herself naked as a figure of refusal in front of Police authorities, displaying her crushed body. Rajan comments, Dopdi does not let her nakedness shame her, the horror of rape diminish her. It is 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 ( ). She is at a distance from the political activism of the male and the 3

6 DALIT FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS IN MAHASWETA DEVI S DRAUPADI gradual emancipation of the bourgeois female. Her confidence and courage dare to look at the public without any hesitation. She laughs weirdly with the blind acceptance of humiliation, corruption, molestation, and disentangled chain of patriarchal shame. Her stubborn refusal to cover herself humiliates the male officers. She is defiant with self protest, charms with counter-resistance and retaliation, and celebrates the woman-power with honour, diversity and resolution. She experiences the subaltern woman within the context of historical juncture of interregnum where woman are concerned with its connotation of violation, imposition of force, destruction of psyche, and alignment of victimization. As Draupadi s revenge excerpts: What s the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man? (37) Her legitimized pluralization (victimized person), in singularity (subaltern woman) is used to demonstrate male glory. Spivak says, Mahasweta s story questions this singularity by placing Dopdi first in a comradely, activist, monogamous marriage and then in a situation of multiple rape (11). Mahasweta Devi reconstructs the myth of subaltern woman as her protagonist breaks away from the shackles of false notions of shame. Appreciating Devi s skill of envisioning myth Radha Chakravarty writes: One of the most notable features of Mahasweta s writing is the visionary, utopian or myth-making impulse that acts as a counterbalance to her dystopian, forensic, critical perspective on the contemporary world. (108) In the final section of the story Dopdi emerges as empowered who can challenge her assailants even when unarmed. Having nothing else to lose now she suddenly realizes the vulnerability of her oppressors and becomes the agent of justice. She exerts an unusual form of resistance and subverts the gaze in such a way that it is her oppressors who are made to feel the shame. Here, the female body acts as a weapon for resistance, the female body speaks as a sword for identity, and the female body epitomizes as a synecdoche for survival. The tale explores the conflicts between remnant colonial morality and subalternity. Here, the woman s body becomes an instrument of vicious denunciation of patriarchy and hegemony which are ironical, countercanonical, anti-literary, and contradictory. Draupadi becomes a metaphor of resistance. She is representative of millions of tribal women who are fighting against oppression and who can dare to challenge imperialism and patriarchy. The tribal woman is marginalized in more than one way as she lives in a constant fear of victimization. Mahasweta Devi does not romanticize the tribal woman rather her writings are so realistic that they shake each reader out of his slumber and ask for renewed understanding with regard to tribal identity and their rights. As a south Asian writer and activist Mahasweta Devi has successfully portrayed the problems of ethnic groups in her fiction. The fight of Dopdi is at the grassroots level and she is first human and then female. Draupadi is not written as a patriarchal and authoritative sacred text, proof of male power. Indrani Rai says that as a tribal, Dopdi is not like the mythic Draupadi. Dopdi is at once a palimpsest and a contradiction. There is nothing historically implausible about Dopdi s attitude. She loves her husband and keeps political faith as an act of faith toward him. She adores her forefathers because they protected their woman s honour. She emerges as the most powerful subject who still using the language of sexual humour can derisively call herself the object of your search whom the author can describe as a terrifying super object- an unarmed target. In the final scene, she is in a place where she will finally act for herself in not acting in challenging the man to encounter her. WORKS CITED 1. Beniwal, Anup and Vandana. Configuring the Sites of Activism. Retrieved on August 6, 2013 from 2. Chakravart, Radha. Reading Mahasweta: Shifting Frames, in Nandini Sen Ed. Mahasweta Devi: 4

7 DALIT FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS IN MAHASWETA DEVI S DRAUPADI Critical Perspectives. New Delhi: Pencraft International, Chakravarty, Radha. Mahasweta Devi: A Luminous Anger, in Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers: Rethinking Subjectivity. New Delhi: Routledge, Devi, Mahasweta.. Imaginary maps. Tr. Gayatri Chakravorty. Calcutta :Thema D. Karunanayake. Dismantling Theory. Retrieved, September 10, 2013 from 6. Devi, Mahasweta. Breast Stories. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York: Seagull Books, Print. 7. Devi, Mahasweta. (1998). Palamau is a Mirror of India: An Introduction. Bitter Soil. trans Ipsita Chandra. Calcutta: Seagull. 8. Devi. Mahasweta. Draupadi. (1988). Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. ed and trans. Gayatri Spivak. London: Rutledge In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. Ed. and Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York: Routledge, Print. 10. Ghatak, Maitreya. (2000). Introduction. Dust on the Road: The Activist Writings of Mahasweta Devi. ed Maitreya Ghatak. Calcutta: Seagull. 11. Hass, Andrew. Hegel and the Art of Negation: Negativity, Creativity, and Contemporary Thought. London: I. B. Tauris and Co Ltd., Web. 12. Rai, Indrani Singh. Mahasweta Devi?s Draupadi: A Discourse of the Dispossesed. Retrieved on September 10, 2013 from Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak? : Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press Print. 14. Spivak, Gayatri. (1988). A Literary Representation of the Subaltern. A Women?s Text from the Third World. Other Worlds. Essays in Cultural Politics. London. Routledge. 5

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