Mahasweta Devi’s Outcast: Four Stories

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Tribal literature represents a prevailing, emerging trend in the Indian literary scene. This literature is by nature oppositional because of its arching preoccupations with the location of Dalits in the caste-based Hindu society, and their struggles for self-esteem, justice and equality. Tribal literature is perched to obtain a national and an international occurrence as well as to pose a key challenge to the established ideas of what constitutes literature and how we read it. Mahasweta Devi’s writing offers insight, an asset of perceptive; amass of meaning and a base of discourse. Holding the writer’s hand, we can see an entirely diverse world, with her assistance we can seek to comprehend the potential of human accomplishment. Gloom, failure and discontent chiefly in the matter of human relationships do not, however, give rise to complete chaos and anarchy. We perceive the struggles of the protagonists, as gallant efforts that finally bring grandeur to the individual and add dignity to the courage of liberty. The Dalit/Tribal discourses on human rights in free India based on Ambedkar and Periyar movements infiltrated into literary works of Indian writers and have been gathering momentum. The post-Independence, post-Emergency period witnessed literary works exposing atrocities on Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Though the focus of these writings during the early period was on caste terms, contemporary literary discourse treats it in turns of human rights. Writers in regional lan¬guages, especially in leftist states of West Bengal and Kerala, were in the forefront expressing concern for the human rights violations to the oppressed, especially, Dalits and Tribals. Dhouli is a short story taken from Outcast: Four Stories by Mahasweta.... ... middle of paper ... ...itute intensifies a trauma to accept that the pariahs in reality are astounded victims strained by the will of privileged. It’s a need to correct the outlook of common people that the prostitutes cannot be the outcaste because the people who cross the threshold of their rooms are the men from common homes. When the men folk are not accused, why the whores are always to be blamed? Sharing the same periphery with others, why they are so distant? Dhouli’s voyage is a fervent journey to unfurl the history of the human spirit that has been striving for deliverance and bliss from long back still tries to seek life through buoyancy and fortitude. Works Cited Devi, Mahasweta. Outcast: Four Stories. tr. by Sarmistha Dutta Gupta. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2002. (All textual citations in this paper are from this edition of the book and followed by page number in parentheses)

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