Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

A Study of Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi

The history of tribal oppression in India is an older one
...

Even after sixty six years of independence, India’s rural poor and tribals are lamenting under the
curbing effects of destitution, unemployment, undernourishment, illiteracy and human
trafficking
...
Though the country is free from the bondage of foreign rule, their repression and prejudices
still continue leaving them dependent on their new masters
...
Giving voice to such oppressed subalterns,
the gendered subaltern (women of the deprived sections) and Indian women in general, Gayatri
Chakvarty Spivak says: “For if, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history
and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow
...

Mahasweta Devi, always writes for deprived section of people
...
Her stories bring to the surface not only the misery of the completely ignored tribal
people, but also articulate the oppression of women in the society
...
Rape is considered as a bolt on the forehead of an innocent woman
...
in Hameed 312)
In the present paper, an attempt has been made to show how Dopdi, a tribal woman, brutally
raped, resists the typical silence adopted by many women in our country
...
to give voice to the silent screaming of a woman’s soul that is common all round the world
wherever women exist in a patriarchal system of society
...
Rape, is the worst recognization of sexual
violence against women
...
(19)
The female protagonist, Draupadi, who is a tribal insurgent, gets captured during her outrageous
tribal uprisings against the government
...
Because of her dedication, she is subjected to third degree in police
custody; till the government officer “Senanayak” gives orders to “Make her
...
She is brutally subjected to gang-rape through the endless silent suffering night
...

Dopdi and Dulna Majhi are representatives of her native community, who are forced to
serve their masters and get petty wages
...
Therefore, through Draupadi’s story, Devi reveals
the cold-heartedness of upper-class feudal lords
...
No water anywhere, draught in Birbhum
...
These tribal poor people,
even have no right to drink water, to satisfy their thirst
...
Surja was tied up with cow rope
...
Dulma had said, I’ll have the
first blow, brothers
...
Dopdi had said, his mouth watered when he looked at me
...
(30)
The above mentioned incident is thought-provoking
...
Though the story is about the exploitation
of the tribes, but it predominantly focuses on the oppression of woman through the flouting of
their bodies, especially tribal women who repay the price of raising their voice (5)
...
The most important question that this text poses is not
only why Dopdi was raped, but it also analyses why women fall as an easy prey to be raped?
Through this story, the author challenge the “commodification” and “subsequent victimization”
of a woman’s body
...

Realistically, “unlike diku women, Santhali women are not ashamed of being women nor they
afraid of their sexuality ” so, the writer through her Santhal female protagonist, Draupadi
hammers home the point that it is not the woman, who is wronged, should be ashamed (Kumar
140)
...
When Senanayak sees wounded Draupadi, he looses his calm temper and asks
instantly, “What is this
...
Draupadi comes near to him and says
“The object of your search, Dopdi Mejhen
...
Tearing them”
...
Growling and threatening, she challenged the
Senanayak’s theory and addresses the army chief, “What’s the use of clothes? You can strip me,
but how can you cloth me again? Are you a man?” She spits on his shirt and says, “There isn’t a
man here that I should be ashamed
...
Turning the dreadful wounds of her breasts
into defensive attack, she “pushes the Senanayak with her two mangled breasts, and for the first
time he is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid”, he is (37)
...
With
unconquerable spirit, the naked and bleeding Draupadi faces all her rapists defiantly, out
resisting the sexual flouting of her body
...

The present paper concentrates on that woman is considered as an epitome of strength in
our society
...
But the
heroine of Devi’s short story “Draupadi” is not a meek and passive one
...

In her story, Mahasweta Devi shows how Draupadi resists and inverts this fear and disgrace of
Rape towards her exploiters
...
She shows
no trace of shame on her face, instead, her oppressors felt ashamed
...
Key Concepts in Post Colonial Studies
...
Print
...
Syeda
...
“Sexual Abuse in Revenge: Women as Targets of communal Hatred”
...
Ed
...
New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2005
...

Kumar
...
“The Agitation Against Rape”
...
1800-1990
...
Print
...
“Draupadi”, Breasts Stories
...
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
...
2008
...




---