The Silenced “Other” Talks Back from Jungle: A Study of Hunting Ritual by Indigenous Women in Mahasweta Devi’s “The Hunt”

Abstract

The idea of “nature” as something pure, pristine, untouched by humans, a pastoral piece of land, creates an exclusivist version of nature preservation. Likewise, performance is also thought to be exclusive, executed only on stage, removed from ordinary life, but in reality, the human body is continuously in a state of performance; we are continuously acting according to or “performing” our cultural beliefs, functions, gender roles, politics, etc. This paper intends to present a postcolonial ecocritical study of the short story “The Hunt” (1995) written by Mahasweta Devi, by focusing on the Indigenous ritual of hunting or performance of hunting named Jani Parab and its importance in the scenario of postcolonial environmentalism. At the “Jani Parab” festival, the tribal protagonist of this story hunts (or performs the hunting ritual) the capitalist broker who had been deforesting their land. This hunting alters several metanarratives regarding colonizer/colonized, hunter/prey, civilized/uncivilized, male/female. The story’s protagonist, an illegitimate, tribal woman, becomes “other” in every possible way. By hunting, she moves from being the “other” and becomes the hybrid subject. She becomes oppressor and oppressed, hunter and prey, nature and culture at the same time. She is the voice talking back from the jungle. This paper will focus on cultural and environmental issues, ecological and sociological aspects of tribal communities in modern India, and how they are structurally dehumanized altogether by the Caste system, capitalism, government corruption and colonial legacy. It brings together colonial inheritance, environmental issues, caste issues and capitalism – all the concerns of postcolonial ecocriticism very clearly.