NOTES
communities​ allowed her to ​understand and
I. Historical background
AUTHOR
MAHASVETA DEVI ​ (Mahasweta (?))
● Bengali writer-activist
● Born in 1926 in Dhaka
● (the capital and largest city of Bangladesh,
one of the largest and most densely
populated cities in the world today)
● She ​grew up in a political and literary
environment​: Daughter of well-known poet
and novelist Manish Ghatak and Dharitri
Devi, also a writer and social worker
Mahasveta Devi’s works
● primarily focused on social issues and
common people
● wrote over 100 novels and over 20 short
stories collections
Her language is simple – an ironic
juxtaposition to the complexity of the issues she
talks about​. In fact, it is precise​ because she is
talking about complex realities that she uses
simple language to reach the reader​.
Her fiction allows the reader to look at cultural
practices, social institutions, identity formations,
sexual roles and how they operate in spaces with
different power dynamics. The arrangement of all
these in her narratives come together to display the
exploitation of differences in caste, class, and
gender.
Social Work
Apart from her literary work, Devi was also
known for ​her social work for the rights of tribal
communities​ in West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand,
Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
Her ​intimate connection with these
begin documenting grassroots-level issues​, thus
making her ​a socio-political commentator of the
marginalized community​.
Devi used the imaginary space of fiction to
begin a conversation about and a conversation with
the very real people on the ground that had been
neglected all this while.
Her intimate knowledge of what transpired
on the ground allowed her to weave stories to bring
these struggles into the mainstream.
Devi passed away in July 2016​ following a heart
attack and other age-related illnesses. She was 90
years old.
The 1971 War
(The Bangladesh Liberation War, also known as
the Bangladesh War of Independence)
The backdrop of this story is the 1971 war
between Pakistan and Bangladesh in which
thousands of women were victims of genocidal
rape​. The Pakistani military killed thousands of
Bengali civilians, students, intelligentsia, religious
minorities, and armed personnel.
● Women took up arms and fought
alongside the men
● Almost ​400,000 Bangladeshi women and
girls ​were ​abducted, tortured and raped​ in
concentration camps ​by the Pakistani army
who set up ​rape camps​ in all towns and
villages they went to
It was ​part of a systematic plan​ to disempower
and destroy the vertebrae of Bengali society
Many of the hundreds of thousands of girls
and women were killed or later rejected by their
families; their children born out of the rape were
forcibly taken and adopted by foreign nationals.
Most of these women eventually died of
neglect and without recognition.
(from
https://womenintheworld.com/2016/03/25/why-is-the
-mass-sexualized-violence-of-bangladeshs-liberatio
n-war-being-ignored/​)
“Draupadi” was published in Mahasweta Devi‟s
collection of short stories, titled “Agnigarbha”
(Womb of Fires, 1978). It was later translated by
Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and included in her
collection of stories, titled „Breast Stories‟ (2010).
Breast Stories
a collection of three stories authored by Mahasveta
Devi
● Published in 1997
● The collection was ​originally written in
Bengali​ but was ​translated into English​ by
feminist critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak the
same year it was published.
● The three stories are titled: Draupadi, Behind
the Bodice, and Breast Giver.
● They have ​one connecting thread – the
breast,​ a metaphor for the exploitation of
women from marginalized communities.
“DRAUPADI”
The story centres around Draupadi, a tribal woman,
who is being hunted by the army. She is captured by
Senanayak, a Third World Army officer who is also a
First World scholar. The army brutally rapes her
under his orders. Ironically, the rapists later tell her
to cover herself up, but Draupadi defies them and
remains publicly naked. Senanayak is befuddled as
she strips her clothes and confronts him with her
gaping wounds. After it becomes clear that they
cannot succeed in breaking her psychologically
through their weapon of rape, she brazenly declares
“There isn’t a man here that I should be ashamed.
What more can you do?”
(from:
https://feminisminindia.com/2016/07/19/book-review
-breast-stories-mahasweta-devi/​)
II. Allusions to Mahabharata
Draupadi can be interpreted as ​a story that
rewrites an episode of the Mahabharata​, where
Draupadi’s eldest husband, Yudhishthir, “gambles”
her away. As the enemy chief pulls and pulls at her
sari, there is more and more of it. She cannot be
stripped, thanks to the divine intervention of Krishna.
In Devi’s story,​ it is ​not male leadership but
Draupadi’s strength and courage to challenge the
patriarchy​ that bring resolution to the story.
(​https://feminisminindia.com/2016/07/19/book-revie
w-breast-stories-mahasweta-devi/​)
III. Dichotomies and Deconstruction
A. Bengali/English
Although Spivak’s translation obviously reads as
straight English, we are told in the foreword that the
words in italics are English in the original Bengali
text. Most of the English words have to do with war.
As Spivak points out: “The language of war--offense
and defense--is international.” English is also the
language of imperialism and colonization, and in a
postcolonial country such as India (and the
Philippines), it’s a symptom of trauma.
But the blending of the two languages in the
text--and indeed in real life usage--also points to a
possible deconstruction of the power of English.
Italics in most English language writing indicates the
foreignness and exoticness of a word, so it’s English
that’s in a sense being othered here in this particular
translation. Spivak also points out Draupadi’s use of
the word ​counter: ​she doesn’t actually know English,
and technically she’s using it wrong (the proper word
is encounter, which is itself a euphemism for torture,
rape, and murder), but the meaning is powerful
because it’s scarily accurate, plus it becomes a
double entendre. When she challenges Senanayak
to counter her at the end, it’s because she knows
that even as she’s naked and bleeding, she’s still
the one attacking him and getting the last laugh.
B. Relevance of Draupadi/Dopdi name
Ambiguity and confusion about her name--is it
Draupadi or Dopdi?--rendering her invisible and
unaccounted for. The soldiers are initially unable to
find her in the list of names they have.
Hybridity in identity: Dopdi is born to tribal parents,
but her mother dies, and so she is named Draupadi
by the landlord’s wife, who is by all accounts Hindu
Implications of ancient class struggle in the name
Draupadi/Dopdi. Spivak: “We might consider the
Mahabharata itself in its colonialist function in the
interest of the so-called Aryan invaders of India.” As
the Mahabharata expanded, so did the Aryan
empire. Yet the name is given to a tribal peasant
rebel--and it is transformed.
C. Theory/Practice
Senanyak: incredibly apparent disjunct between
theory and practice, or his beliefs as an intellectual
and his actions as a military officer. Devi: “Whatever
his practice, in theory he respects the opposition…
In order to destroy the enemy, become one. Thus he
understood them by (theoretically) becoming one of
them. He hopes to write on all this in the future. He
has also decided that in his written work he will
demolish the gentlemen and highlight the message
of the harvest workers” (394).
Spivak: “Senanayak remains fixed within his class
origins, which are similar to those of the gentlemen
revolutionaries. Correspondingly, he is contained
and judged fully within Mahasweta’s story” (386).
In the end, Dopdi confronts him with the hypocrisy of
the disjunct between his theory and practice--this is
the point at which finally, he loses control of the
situation, and he becomes afraid.
IV. Tribal oppression // oppression of the
landless peasantry
When tribals were ​unable to pay their loan​,
money-lenders and landlords ​usurped their lands​.
The tribals therefore become tenants on their own
land and sometimes even labourers.
The ​courts were not only ignorant of the
tribal agrarian system and customs ​but also were
unaware of the plight of the tribals​. All these fac​tors
of​ land alienation, usurpation, forced labour,
minimum wages, and land grabbing​ compelled
many tribes like the ​Santhals​ ​to revolt.
By​ taking away forest lands for industries
and plantation forestry ​instead of preserving
natural species that provide livelihood to these
people, the government was ​depriving them of the
basic means of livelihood​.
V. Patriarchy // Gender Oppression
Class violence and racial violence manifesting as
gendered violence as well. The scene where Dopdi
is raped and her waking moments after when she
views her own body are very graphic; Mahasweta is,
after all, interested in depicting things as they are
with no sugarcoating. Women--poor women
especially--become the most vulnerable victims of
violence during times of war.
The episode in which Draupadi is violated in
Mahabharata has often been read as a critique and
exposure of women’s oppression, and it has power,
 urgency, and influence because of its position as an
episode in THE Indian epic. By retelling it in a
modern setting--and making the Draupadi figure a
tribal peasant rebel--Mahasweta imbues the plight of
the poor peasant woman with the same legendary
importance of Draupadi’s plight in the Mahabharata.

VI. Resistance to these oppressions

Devi illustrates how any conflict or war

results in the women’s body being the primary
targets of attack by men.

Dopdi bears the torture as she is raped by

many men. Her ​refusal to be clothed goes against
the phallocentric power​, and the exploitation of her
body gives her the agency to step away from the
hegemonic patriarchy of the policemen.

Dopdi ​represents the gendered subaltern

subject​ who exists at the margins of society and
goes against the existing patriarchal structures​.

Dopdi subverts the physicality of her body

from powerlessness into powerful resistance.
Dopdi’s body​ ​becomes a site of both the
exertion of authoritarian power and of gendered
resistance.
Dopdi does not let her nakedness shame
her, torture her, intimidate her, or let the rape
diminish her.

At the end of the story as ​she confronts the

army officers with her bare body​, t​ he body that was
violated and tortured is also in reverse used as a
weapon​. ​Even though Dopdi has been physically
abused, she refuses to be emotionally wounded.

In Draupadi, Devi presents a strong

woman who despite being marginalised and
exploited, transgresses conventional sexual and
societal standards.