The news of Mahasweta Devi’s death appeared with the suddenness of a great Nor’wester — raging, fierce and devastating in its effect. This is a huge loss for the Indian literary world: the kind of loss where you feel a big void in the room with the sudden departure of a prominent voice. When I discovered Mahasweta Devi’s work, “Hajar Churashir Maa (loosely translated to ‘Mother of 1084’), which she published years before I was born, it made me realize the crucial role of literature in a society torn by injustices and brutalities. It showed me how by the simple acts of seeing, listening and writing one could become the conscious keeper of society. “Hajar Churashir Maa,” went on to win the Jnanpith Award and later it was made into a National Award winning Hindi film.
There is a group of writers I personally look up to as my literary guardians to lead and inspire me from time to time when words fail me and I falter. It’s a long list of luminaries and Mahasweta Devi featured prominently among them. My acquaintance with this group of writers is strictly limited to their works; and in their expressions and words, I have found a sense of my being, my voice and lifelong guidance. They helped me make sense of the world that I live in and saved me in more ways than one.
On reading her books, for the first time, I could see my life and myself in the world of writing. She wrote about women and the marginalized and the stirring life of Bengal. Even though her life and mine were separated by many decades, her outlook on life and women’s role in society resonated with me. She wrote about the lives of both men and women but mainly emphasized on the subaltern experience.
“Her stories, including Draupadi, and specially her Palamau Stories give voice to tribal – Santhals, Lodhas, Shabars and Mundas — and the junction of folk and the modern, the mainstream and the margin, colonialism and post-colonialism. Her stories and novels are deeply rooted in her own experiences with the people about whom she writes. Devi has portrayed the travails of women in the patriarchal system in which woman is treated as mere non entity, a subaltern.”
She had a mighty capability as a writer to focus the lens on the downtrodden so that the reader could see the pain and the struggle and the places where the battered bodies of the brutalized fell and how they wriggled to rise again.
Mahasweta Devi’s writings revealed to me, something that I was not fully aware of — that my voice was steeped in the pulse and verve of women’s storytelling. She gave her readers an immense insight into the workings of ‘power’ and ‘authority’ in society through her remarkable sway of eloquence, her words piercing and her voice compelling. Her writings confirmed to me the pulling power of a great story, which when well articulated, could change history. And for that alone, I owe her a huge debt.
In her Bengali fiction, Mahasweta Devi often depicted the brutal oppression of indigenous people and the untouchables by controlling upper-caste landlords, nefarious moneylenders, and corrupt government officials. When questioned about her source of inspiration, she said:
“I have always believed that the real history is made by ordinary people. I constantly come across the reappearance, in various forms, of folklore, ballads, myths and legends, carried by ordinary people across generations... The reason and inspiration for my writing are those people who are exploited and used, and yet do not accept defeat. For me, the endless source of ingredients for writing is in these amazingly noble, suffering human beings. Why should I look for my raw material elsewhere, once I have started knowing them? Sometimes it seems to me that my writing is really their doing.”
Through her works and social activism, Mahasweta Devi fought against the practice of witch hunting and expressed her concern for the exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen. Public backlash did not cumber her down. She personified a firebrand combination of revolutionary creativity and sweeping social action. In a world, where people are eager to proffer lifehacks and easy philosophies to others but seldom follow them in their own lives, she was a glowing exception. She lived by her words. True to the very end.
Mahasweta Devi will be remembered for her writing and social work. She was a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay award and the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honour. But I will remember her as a literary forerunner, in whose shadow I stand and continue to learn.