Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016) was an Indian Bengali writer and social activist.

Born in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh, she grew up in a culturally rich

environment, which deeply influenced her writings. Devi's works often focused
on the struggles of marginalized communities, including tribal people, Dalits
(formerly known as untouchables), and women, highlighting issues of social
injustice, exploitation, and oppression.
Throughout her prolific career, Devi authored numerous novels, short stories,
and essays, earning critical acclaim both in India and internationally. She was
known for her uncompromising portrayal of societal realities and her
commitment to social justice causes. Devi's writing style was characterized by
its rawness, empathy, and deep engagement with her subjects.
"Mother of 1084" is a novel by Mahasweta Devi, an influential Indian writer
known for her powerful portrayal of socio-political issues and marginalized
communities. The story revolves around Sujata, the mother of Brati, a Naxalite
(left-wing extremist) who is killed by the police. The title refers to the police
code number given to Brati's corpse, highlighting the dehumanization and
anonymity of victims of state violence.
Character Analysis:
1. Sujata Chatterjee: She is the central character of the novel, portrayed as
a strong-willed and determined woman. Despite her lack of social status,
she exhibits immense courage in her fight against injustice. Her
transformation from a grieving mother to a fearless activist underscores
her resilience and inner strength.
2. Brati: Though not present throughout the novel, Brati's character looms
large over the narrative. He is depicted as an idealistic young man who
joins the Naxalite movement to fight for the rights of the poor and
oppressed. His death serves as a catalyst for Sujata’s journey towards
activism.
3. Nandani: Girlfriend of Brati
4. Other Characters: The novel features a range of supporting characters,
including Sujata’s husband, the police officers involved in Brati's death,
and fellow activists. Each character contributes to the portrayal of societal
complexities and the various forces at play in the struggle for justice.
Themes:
1. Motherhood and Sacrifice: The novel explores the profound bond
between a mother and her child, depicting Sujata's unwavering love and
 sacrifice for Brati. Her refusal to accept his death without justice
highlights the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her child.
2. State Violence and Oppression: Mahasweta Devi sheds light on the
brutal realities of state violence and oppression, particularly against
marginalized communities and political dissidents. The novel critiques
the abuse of power by the state and the impunity enjoyed by those
responsible for human rights violations.
3. Resistance and Solidarity: Through Sujata's journey, the novel
celebrates the power of resistance and solidarity in the face of adversity.
Sujata's alliance with other mothers who have lost their children to state
violence underscores the importance of collective action in seeking
justice and bringing about social change.
4. Class Struggle and Ideology: The Naxalite movement serves as a
backdrop to the story, highlighting the deep-rooted socioeconomic
inequalities and ideological conflicts in Indian society. The novel
interrogates the complexities of political activism and the sacrifices it
demands from its adherents.
5. Place, Identity, and Independence: Mahasweta Devi is a sensationalist
women writer. She has portrayed the protagonist of the book Sujata with
the utmost delicacy. Apparently, there is singular plot that depicts the
story of a mother and a wife who all of a sudden comes to know about the
death of her son Brati in police encounter for his involvement in the
rebels of Naxalbari movement. This makes her curious for what made her
son a rebel. Surprisingly during her investigation, she comes to know
about the cause that makes her revolt against the same system. Devi has
intentionally projected the protagonist as a covert character whose
psychological introspection becomes the line of plot in the book. The
very first thing that attracts the attention is the system of assigning roles
in the family and society. How she performs her duties in the family as a
wife, mother, and caretaker of the house. These roles in the society are
strictly monitored. They become the standards of defining their morality
or immorality. This age-old process of considering woman of the house as
secondary in the place is depicted beautifully in the book.
This issue interrelates the question of place of woman in the family. Mother
of 1084 is a saga of Sujata’s search for place of her own in the family. In her
search, she realizes that she even lacks the identity of her own. Her
individual identity relies on the patriarch of the family. The authoritative
 approach of her husband suppresses her individual identity. In Sujata’s case,
her family becomes her victimizer. She is denied the rightful place in the
family. The book is a saga of struggle of Sujata for finding the rightful place
and personal identity. One more issue in the book is the denial of economic
independence. Sujata’s going to job is severely criticized by her husband and
her mother-in-law.
6. Failure of the Marriage System: Devi has satirized the marriage system
as it becomes medium of exploitation by the patriarch of the family. It is
recommended in the name of safety, as single woman is not safe in the
society. They are often accused of being immoral and are exploited.
Sujata marries with the hope of better life, but her marriage smothers her.
Instead of love, compassion, companionship, and equality their relation
develops in to master and slave. Her husband controls her every move.
Devi satirizes that in Indian male dominated society women are used as
commodity. They are often exploited on sexual grounds in the family,
workplace, and in the society. Dibyanath’s illicit relationship with his
secretary highlights the issue of sexual exploitation of woman at work
place. The best of Devi’s expression in describing the relation of
Dibyanath and Sujata saying, ‘he used her as a doormat’. Devi has
emphasized the failure of marriage system.
7. Futility of Education System: Devi has shown the futility of education
in the improvement of the condition of women. The high conceptions of
education that provide mental as well economic stability, own identity,
independent thinking, etc. fail in the book. These conceptions are reduced
merely to the additional qualification. Besides that, it even doubles their
burden as educated women are expected to earn along with the household
work. They are forced to shoulder the responsibilities of two equally
burdensome spheres.
8. Escape from Reality: Surprisingly Devi has personified the character of
Sujata as an escapist. In the book, we often find her going to the room of
Brati, as it reminded her of the good old memories that she had with
Brati. Even her continuation of job represents her escape from the adverse
surrounding at home. This escape symbolizes the helplessness of women
in the issues.
A Chronicle of Pain: Mother of 1084 by Mahasweta Devi
The pain had come at eight in the evening. Hem with all her experience had
said, It won’t take time, Ma. The womb has started pushing it out. Hem held her
hands and said, Let all be well. Let God bring you back, the two of you
separate.
Sujata’s story is framed and defined by pain. As it opens, she is asleep, her
dreams have transported her back twenty-two years, to the morning following
an agonizing night of labour and emergency surgery when she gave birth to her
fourth child and second son, Brati. Now she is awoken by searing pain once
more, on the same date, January seventeenth, but this time an inflamed
appendix is to blame. Once her abdominal distress begins to settle, a glance at
the calendar takes her back to the early hours of yet another January
seventeenth, just two years earlier, when the telephone suddenly rang. At the
other end of the line, a voice summoned her to the morgue. There she would
find her beloved son reduced to a numbered corpse, 1084.

Set over the late sixties and early seventies, during the first phase of the Maoist-
inspired Naxalite insurgency in West Bengal, Mother of 1084 by Indian writer
and activist, Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016), is a focused examination of the
impact of targeted violence on those left behind through the story of one woman
stranded in her loss and grief. Sujata comes from a background of privilege,
raised in a wealthy Calcutta family and afforded an education, but in marriage
her life is constrained by the roles her social class expects of her. At the time of
the critical events in this novel, she is in her early fifties. Her oldest son and
daughter, Jyoti and Neepa, are both married and each have one child. Jyoti and
his family, as custom would have it, lives in the family home. The younger
daughter, Tuli, has a serious boyfriend. Her husband, Dibyananth—or as he is
often described, “Jyoti’s father”—is a successful businessman with, once his
wife decided she wanted no more children, a string of mistresses on the side.
Sujata also has a job at a banking office, taken on her own initiative when her
mother-in-law was still alive and commanding the daily affairs of the
household. It is something she has refused to give up.

Brati, the youngest son, had always been unlike his other siblings. Imaginative
and sensitive, he was easily frightened and deeply attached to his mother. From
his earliest years on through adolescence, their bond was close while there was
little love lost between Dibyananth and his second son. Naturally Sujata was
blamed for spoiling him and making him weak. When Brati is killed with a
group of young Naxalite revolutionaries, his father’s immediate concern is to
assure that no one knows of his involvement. He pulls a few strings and Brati’s
name is omitted from the news reports while at home all evidence of his
existence is cleared away and locked in his bedroom on the uppermost floor.
Sujata finds herself on the wrong side of her own family, on the side of the dead
man who had failed to consider the shame and embarrassment he would cause.
She is left alone to try to make sense of why her son had been drawn to such a
radical movement and to understand the events of the night on the eve of his
twentieth birthday that had cost him his life. It was a death that could not be
classified in any of the usual ways—illness, accident, crime:

All that Brati could be charged with was that he had lost faith in the social
system itself. Brati had decided for himself that freedom could not come from
the path society and the state offered. Brati had not remained content with
writing slogans on the wall, he had come to commit himself to the slogans.
There lay his offence.
Extending from morning to evening over the course of a single day, exactly two
years after his death, Mother of 1084 chronicles Sujata’s attempt to honour her
son’s memory and perhaps find some sense of closure. At home, Tuli is
preparing to hold her engagement party. Although it is her brother’s birth
anniversary, the date has been determined by her future mother-in-law’s
American guru—her own mother’s feelings be damned. Between attending to
the necessary arrangements in the house, Sujata will make two excursions that
will help fill in some of the missing information she craves, but not necessarily
bring any peace.

In the afternoon she travels out from central Calcutta to the colony where the
mother of Somu, one of Brati’s friends, lives. The young men killed had spent
their last hours in her house. Sujata had first met Somu’s mother when she went
to identify her son’s body and she had found in this poor woman a kind of a
kindred spirit, another mother who understood the loss. But face to face with the
graphic details of that fateful night and the absolutely devastating effect it has
had on this impoverished family, she is reminded that her social status will
forever be a barrier that cannot be wished away. The two women, brought
together in shock and pain at the morgue and the crematorium, share an affinity
that can never be more than temporary:

Time was stronger than grief. Grief is the bank. Time the flowing river, heaping
earth upon earth upon grief.
Later that afternoon, Sujata makes another outing, this one closer in location
and class, but again one with a divide that cannot be breached. For the first and
last time, she visits Brati’s girlfriend Nandini who has recently been released
from prison, bearing the injuries of torture and incarceration. In this encounter
there is a bitter demonstration of the activist’s unshakable resolve, something
the grieving mother will never fully appreciate. Upon returning home to where
guests are gathered, Sujata is clearly affected by her experiences, and all of the
memories and details that have come back to her over the course of that day.
But even as pain rips through her abdomen, she must once more attempt to play
her role as wife and mother. At least for the moment.

One of Devi’s most widely-read books, Mother of 1084 is not explicitly

concerned with the broader political context of the Naxalite insurgency, rather it
turns its attention to the intimate human experience—the appeal of the
movement to individuals from different backgrounds, the reality of betrayal, the
brutality of the violence, and the wide range of responses from the families and
communities affected. That is not to suggest that this is not an intensely political
work, but by centring an apolitical protagonist who finds herself navigating the
space between the shocking indifference of her family and social class, the
devastation of the bereaved who exist in the midst of conflict and destitution,
and the anger of the activist committed to the cause at all costs, Devi crafts a
powerful, unforgiving narrative. Sujata is the troubled conscience of this tightly
woven novella but one is ever aware how very small she is against society’s
pretense of normality in a time of upheaval.

Mother of 1084 by Mahasweta Devi is translated from the Bengali by Samik

Bandyopadhyay and published by Seagull Books.

Overall, "Mother of 1084" is a poignant and thought-provoking novel that

delves into themes of maternal love, social justice, and the struggle against
oppression. Mahasweta Devi's powerful storytelling and nuanced
characterizations make it a compelling read that resonates with readers long
after they have finished the book.
Mahasweta Devi has mainly focused on the process of roles assigned to women
in the male dominated society. She has tried to discuss the question of
individual space and socio-economic independence of women. She has
beautifully narrated how they are deprived of their rights and are treated as
secondary citizens. She has connotatively satirized the failure of marriage and
education. Through this she has even pointed out the issue of sexual exploitation
and their use as commodity in the Indian society. The book is an excellent
depiction of woman’s struggle in violation of patriarchal norms and its
subsequent effects.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the significance of the number 1084 in the title?
In the novel, the number 1084 holds a symbolic meaning. It represents the
identification number given to the dead bodies of the political activists who
were killed during the uprising. The title "Mother of 1084" signifies Sujata's
role as not only a mother to her son but also a mother figure to all those who
have lost their lives fighting for justice.
2. How does the novel portray the social and political landscape of India?
"Mother of 1084" provides a stark portrayal of the social and
political realities of India. It sheds light on the struggles faced by the
marginalized sections of society and highlights the deep-rooted inequality and
corruption that permeates the system. The novel also explores the impact of
political unrest on individuals and their families.
3. What are some major themes addressed in the novel?
The novel delves into various themes, including social injustice, political
activism, motherhood, sacrifice, and the power of love. It also highlights the
importance of raising one's voice against oppression and the consequences that
come with challenging the status quo.
4. How does Sujata's character evolve throughout the story?
Sujata's character undergoes a transformation as she confronts the harsh realities
of her son's arrest. Initially portrayed as a gentle and timid woman, she emerges
as a fierce and courageous figure, determined to seek justice for her son and
others like him. Her journey showcases the strength and resilience of a mother's
love.
5. What is the author's message in "Mother of 1084"?
Mahasweta Devi uses "Mother of 1084" as a means to shed light on the
systemic injustice prevalent in society. She urges readers to question the
established norms, fight for justice, and stand up against oppression. The novel
serves as a powerful reminder of the indomitable human spirit and the need for
collective action.
6. Can you provide a brief conclusion for "Mother of 1084"?
"Mother of 1084" is a remarkable literary work that explores the complexities of
society, politics, and the human spirit. Through vivid storytelling and
compelling characters, Mahasweta Devi offers a poignant commentary on the
struggles and sacrifices made by individuals in their pursuit of justice. The
novel serves as a reminder of the power of love, the strength of a mother's
determination, and the need for collective action to bring about social change.