35. Dr. Bindu Nair

35. Dr. Bindu Nair

Re-defining Gendered Roles: A Selective Reading of Mahasweta Devi’s Fiction

Abstract

The celebrated Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi’s narratives articulate dissent and resistance on the levels of tribe, class and gender within the specific socio-historical context of the interface between the dominant and subaltern groups in India. Her portrayals of women -as mothers, bonded labourers, witches, prostitutes, revolutionaries and rebels – have encompassed different historical periods and diverse social milieu. This paper looks at how she locates the resistance of three women characters on the sites of myth, history and contemporary life, investing them with agency and power, and providing a space for the insertion of alternative cultural codes into the dominant ones.

Tejota, the tribal matriarch from The Book of the Hunter, the tribal Nishadin from “Kunti and the Nishadin” and the prostitute Bedanabala from “Bedanabala” are subaltern, yet resistant characters who engage with the discursive and hegemonic structures of society that define and perpetuate gendered subjectivities, disrupting and re-defining them in the process.