Subaltern Voice In Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi

Abstract

Mahasweta Devi is one of the most distinguished writers of India. She writes a large number of plays, short stories and novels. In her writings she portrays women as victims of the politics of gender, class and caste. She writes on the rights of the marginalized and
the empowerment of women. Devi through her characters tries to show that women do not only speak from a position of marginalization but also from a position of resistance/power. She has to her credit several plays, more than twenty collections of
short stories and around one hundred novels in Bengali. ‘Draupadi’ is one of the courageous narratives by Mahasweta Devi, where her revolutionary passion captures the experiences of a subaltern woman within the context of the Naxalite. Subaltern voice or
in other words the voice of the oppressed in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi is clearly visible in her main protagonist - Draupadi, who rebelliously struts back to the police officer to move away their eyes in shame after she was gang raped by them. Here she makes a space where private becomes the public and the political.