Political Suppression in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi

Abstract

“I think a creative writer should have a social conscience. I have a duty towards society…. I ask myself this question a thousand times: Have I done what I could have done?”- Mahasweta Devi. Mahasweta Devi is a reputed Indian writer who was born in the year 1926 into a middle class Bengali Hindu Brahmin family in Dacca now in Bangladesh. She writes within the parameters of classis Marxist ideology and evinces a keen interest in history in many of her novels. In fact, her novel ‘Jhansir Rani or Rani of Jhansi’ demonstrates an interest in both history and her woman protagonist. She is a noted Bengali writer disgusted by the modes of humiliation that the lower castes, especially the womenfolk, are subjected to and the champion of the cause of the ‘Untouchables’, is horrified by the game of politics that tries to break the spirit of men and women who fight for emancipation from slavery on behalf of their caste and clan. Hence she embarks on a project of presenting the shocking realities that happen behind the socioeconomic and political iron curtains, through her most powerful work ‘Draupadi’.