Mahasweta Devi is a distinguished Indian Bengali writer, studying and writing ceaselessly and unremittingly about the life and struggles faced by the tribal communities in a number of states like Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. She is a reputed Indian writer who was born in the year 1926 into a middle class Bengali family at Dacca, Bangladesh. She received her education from the prestigious Shantiniketan founded by the great Indian philosopher and thinker, Rabindranath Tagore. Mahasweta Devi graduated from the University of Calcutta and this was followed by an MA degree in English from the Visva Bharti University. Even though Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak voice has gained some recognition in the Western academic space, Mahasweta Devi is not so widely known to academics outside Bengal in her own country. Mahasweta Devi, the most renowned social activist among the contemporary Bengali literary artists, penned stories to render and reveal to our gaze the charade and duplicity of the democratic set-up in our country and to give a picture of the fates of the marginalized women experiencing and undergoing untold miseries within and without their own communities. Mahasweta Devi’s Outcast: Four Stories powerfully and realistically presents the dismal and pitiable fate of four marginalized women characters—Dhouli, Shanichari, Josmina and Chinta—who are marginalized even by those who are generally considered as the marginalized in society. The writer gives a picture of a three-tier structure in the Indian social order composed of three rungs, the first of the main stream, the second of the marginalized, and the third of the outcast. Herein the writer explores and exhibits the gendered causes lying beneath the social and ... ... middle of paper ... ... that both she and her husband would be socially ostracized, Josmina, in utter desperation drowns herself in the Koyena river. One way to look at these short stories of Mahasweta Devi is to read them as the voiced articulations of the tribal “Others” in contemporary Indian society. Gayatri Spivak’s question as to whether the subaltern can speak, after reading Mahasweta Devi we can say with full conviction that the Subaltern do speak. It is worth noting that Mahasweta Devi speaks not only about the marginalized, but, far more importantly, about the marginalized within the communities of the marginalized Works Cited Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York and London: Routledge, 1988. Devi, Mahasweta. Outcast: Four Stories. Trans. Sarmistha Duttagupta. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2002.
A few upper caste youths, hiding behind parapet of the building in an opposite auction place, stoned the pot. “C-r-a-ash” a sound Teeha heard. The youths struck Methi’s pot and her whole body became drenched completely. It is her caste that is her flaw. By the time, Teeha moved towards Methi as soon as the pot shattered. Methi’s companions stood at some distance from them. Mathi was wet from head to feet. She stood rooted to the ground. The upper caste youths’ eyes roved over Methi’s breast and navel visible through her wet clothes, because the woman was an untouchable’s community in that village. So the upper caste youths wanted to humiliate her in public place. Look at this caste that became a weak and means of under-estimation. Teeha, a Dalit and an outsider, has openly hit a Patel youth that is a burning issue. But a low-caste girl was assaulted which is considered as sign of upper caste
While this work reflects much more on the European women who found themselves in British India with the vigor to bring political and social change to women in what is now modern day India, pakestan and shri lanka, Jayawardena widens our scope of the women who we identify as western feminist as a development in 19th and 20th century South Asia. I appreciated the detailed accounts of that these readings brought to Josephine Butler, as well as early Christian missionaries, and utilitarian activist such as Mary Carpenter and Annette Ackroyds. Through these specific examples, a the concept of a "global sisterhood" is commonly supported, but distinguishably executed. This is still true today when looking at contemporary missionary and feminist quest to improve the lives of women, globally. However, this concept of a "global sisterhood" to suggest the formation of an international feminist platform, finds its roots in imperialism and western ideologies that cannot be escaped. These readings, in conversation provide light on the history of global feminism and the empire as of way helping us understand the historical issues that keep the formation of solidarity between women around the world in a singular movement hard to
Families in poverty often have to make painful sacrifices in order to survive. Women in third world countries during the 1980s often had to put their families’ needs above their own. In the novel Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, through the use of flashbacks, negative tone and painful diction, the author emphasizes the sacrifices and grief poverty forces Kavita to endure in order to ensure a better life for her family.
In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo tells the stories and struggles of families living in a slum adjacent to the Sahar Airport in Mumbai, India. Boo details the ways in which the residents of this slum, Annawadi, attempt to escape their poverty, but fail to do so. Despite numerous initiatives sponsored by the Central Government of India to improve the lives of the many individuals living in Annawadi, these programs are ultimately unable to do so due to deep-rooted corruption in the city of Mumbai. Regardless of this, the residents of Annawadi seem to accept corruption as a fact of life, and do little to fight it. As illustrated over the course of Boo’s narrative, this results from the fact that many Annawadians recognize the ways in which the laws of their society allow for the unfair treatment of certain groups of people, especially the poor and religious minorities, and are also cognizant of the fact that they have no real power to change a system that
Kamala Markandaya’s novel, Nectar in a Sieve, focuses on a time period in which urban development is taking place in India. This disruption of the Indian culture brings forward the issue of what Edward Said would describe as, “the Other.” Edward Said’s theory helps to generate an understanding of stereotyping and binary structures in society. Due to the changes occurring in their society, the characters in Markandaya’s novel are often subjected to stereotypical beliefs for being different, which coincides with Said’s theory of “the Other.” Markandaya’s novel shows how the concept of “the Other” does not just apply to one specific group, but affects everyone.
One statement in the beginning of the book was especially poignant to any one who studies Indian culture, It is easy for us to feel a vicarious rage, a misery on behalf of these people, but Indians, dead and alive would only receive such feelings with pity or contempt; it is too easy to feel sympathy for a people who culture was wrecked..
One could not truly state that she was a political activist, yet despite this, her image and philosophy was used in a political way when counteracting the West and colonialism. However, as stated in Goulet’s The Lives of Sarada Devi, Sarada “included a political identity (or a ‘politiczed Sarada’)” (Goulet, 174).
Owing to India’s diversity, these identities are determined by caste, ancestry, socioeconomic class, religion, sexual orientation and geographic location, and play an important role in determining the social position of an individual (Anne, Callahan & Kang, 2011). Within this diversity, certain identities are privileged over others, due to social hierarchies and inequalities, whose roots are more than a thousand years old. These inequalities have marginalized groups and communities which is evident from their meagre participation in politics, access to health and education services and
In this chapter Mahasweta Devi’s anthology of short stories entitled Breast Stories to analyze representations of violence and oppression against women in name of gender. In her Breast Stories, Devi twice evokes female characters from ancient Hindu mythology, envisions them as subalterns in the imagined historical context and, creates a link with the female protagonists of her short stories. As the title suggests, Breast Stories is a trilogy of short stories; it has been translated and analyzed by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and, in Spivak’s view, the ‘breast’ of a woman in these stories becomes the instrument of a brutal condemnation of patriarchy. Indeed, breast can be construed as the motif for violence in the three short stories “Draupadi,” “Breast-Giver,” and “Behind the Bodice,”
Ramamoorthy, P. “My Life is My Own: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s Women” Feminism and Recent Fiction in English Ed. Sushila Singh. New Delhi: Prestige, 1991.
Indian women poets like their counterparts in the world literature show their concern for the freedom of woman on a par with the freedom of man in the social, political and spiritual contexts. In their poetry, sometimes, it appears that they are a little too bold as poets. The boldness of women poets is natural when they look at inequality they have to suffer at the hands of men. Therefore, they constantly search for their identity as independent women.
Mahasweta Devi, always writes for deprived section of people. She is a loving daughter, a clerk, a lecturer, a journalist, an editor, a novelist, a dramatist and above all an ardent social activist. Her stories bring to the surface not only the misery of the completely ignored tribal people, but also articulate the oppression of w...
Gairola, Rahul. “Burning with Shame: Desire and South Asian Patriarchy, from Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ to Deepa Mehta’s Fire.” Comparative Literature 54:4 (Fall 2002). 307-324. EBSCOhost.
Widely regarded as Bengali’s earliest and boldest feminist writer, Rokeya was a woman of many talents.
Gayatri Spivak, (born Feb. 24, 1942, Calcutta, India), Spivak is a literary critic and theorist. She sometimes regarded as the “Third-World Woman”. She is best known for the article, (Can the Subaltern Speak?). It is considered a founding text of postcolonialism. She is also known for her translation of Jacques Derrida‘s Of Grammatology‟. This translation brought her to prominence. After this she carried out a series of historical studies and literary critiques of imperialism and feminism.