27. Arunabha Ghosh

Abstract 27. Arunabha Ghosh

Subverting Myth to Shape Reality: 

Representing the Marginalised in Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” and “Water”

In The Historical Novel, Georg Lukacs says, “What matters . . . in the historical novel is not the retelling of the great historical events, but the poetic awakening of the people, . . . we should re-experience the social and human motives which led men to think, feel and act just as they did in historical reality.” The historical realism that Lukacs theorises in his book is the driving force behind all of Mahasweta Devi’s writings. She once said,  “.  . . I write about men.” Interestingly, these men are always from the marginalised section of the society whose struggle for existence and protest against oppression are yet to find a voice in our ‘mainstream’ culture. Mahasweta presents her characters who become representative of the oppressed and these symbolic characters emerge from an India that we hardly bother to know. Under this historical realism, Mahaweta’s texts become the voice of dissent against the dominant ideology of the state/ government which acts as the agent of oppression that has always tried to subdue any voice from the margins that opposed it.

In our proposed paper we attempted to show how Mahasweta subverts myths to shape reality in two short stories: “Water” and “Draupadi.” Both stories lay bare the nature of ideological juggernaut of the state that crush the dreams and aspirations of the common people to perpetuate the aristocratic hierarchical structure in the society. Our paper studies the power-relation in society as presented in the stories and how the voice of dissent emerges from the margins.