Indigenous Ecocentrism, Jungle Satyagraha and the “Judgment Imaginary”: Mahasweta Devi’s “Madhu: A Fairy Tale”

Abstract

Mahasweta Devi’s short story “Madhu: A Fairy Tale” is an eco-dystopian narrative that tells the story of ecocidal violence and cultural crisis experienced by a forest-dwelling community owing to the clear-cutting of trees in an Adivasi-populated area in Maharashtra to facilitate the expansion of rail network by the British. The story recounts how the destruction of the local forest on which the Korju community depends for shelter, sustenance and survival, causes an existential crisis for them and how the ecology-economy disintegration leads these “ecosystem people” to start a “silent satyagraha,” a nonviolent resistance to interventionist politics and context-insensitive developmentalism, in the form of self-imposed starvation. This story representing indigenous plight and the crisis of traditional ecocentric culture takes an apocalyptic turn when Madhu, the titular character, was transformed into a gigantic figure swallowing almost the entire city of Mumbai after the experiment with his famished body in a scientific laboratory to decode the mystery of the death of the Korjus due to malnutrition. This paper reads Mahasweta Devi’s “Madhu: A Fairy Tale” to show how the reckless felling of trees in colonial India threatened the existence of certain forest resource-based indigenous communities with gradual extinction. It focuses on how the Korjus’ silent protest against the destruction of their immediate natural forest embodies the practice of jungle satyagraha which is an important component of the forest protection movement in both colonial and postcolonial India. It also looks into how the uncanny metamorphosis of Madhu into a monstrous figure is an ecohorror trope in suggesting the revenge of nature against its reckless appropriation and exploitation.