Mahasweta Devi

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Mahasweta Devi at a reading in New Delhi
Mahasweta Devi at a reading in New Delhi

Mahasweta Devi (Bengali: মহাশ্বেতা দেবী Môhashsheta Debi) (born 1926 in Dacca in what is now Bangladesh) is an Indian social activist and writer. Her only son Nabarun Bhattacharya is also a renowned author in his own right.

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[edit] Biography

Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in Dhaka, to literary parents. Her father Manish Ghatak was a poet and a novelist and elder brother of noted filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak, and her mother Dharitri Devi was also a writer and a social worker. Her first schooling was in Dhaka, but after the partition of India she moved to West Bengal in India. She joined the Rabindranath Tagore founded Vishvabharati University in Santiniketan and completed a B.A. (Hons) in English, and then finished an M.A. in English at Calcutta University as well. She later married renowned playwright and actor Bijon Bhattacharya.

[edit] Career

In 1964, she began teaching at Bijoygarh College (an affiliated college of the University of Calcutta system). During those days, Bijoygarh College was an institution for working class women students. Also during that period, she also worked as a journalist and as a creative writer. Recently, she is more famous for her work related to the study of the Lodhas and Shabars,the tribal communities of West Bengal, women and dalits. She is also an activist who is dedicated to the struggles of tribal people in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In her elaborate Bengali fiction, she often depicts the brutal oppression of tribal peoples and the untouchables by potent, authoritarian upper-caste landlords, lenders, and venal government officials. She has written of the source of her inspiration:

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.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair 2006, when India was the first country to be the Fair's second time guest nation, she made an impassioned inaugural speech wherein she moved the audience to tears with her lines taken from the famous film song by Raj Kapoor (the English equivalent is in brackets):

This is truly the age where the Joota (shoe) is Japani (Japanese), Patloon (pants) is Englistani (British), the Topi (hat) is Roosi (Russian), But the Dil... Dil (heart) is always Hindustani (Indian)... My country, Torn, Tattered, Proud, Beautiful, Hot, Humid, Cold, Sandy, Shining India. My country.


[edit] Recent Activism

Mahasweta Devi has recently been spearheading the movement against the industrial policy of the government of West Bengal, the state of her domicile. Specifically, she has stridently criticized confiscation of large tracts of fertile agricultural land from farmers by the government and ceding the land to industrial houses at throwaway prices. She has connected the policy to the commercialization of Santiniketan of Rabindranath Tagore, where she spent her formative years. [1] Her lead resulted in a number of intellectuals, artists, writers and theatre workers join in protesting the controversial policy and particualrly its implementation in Singur and Nandigram.

Recently she praised Gujarat for strides made in development at the grassroots level and criticised the West Bengal government saying that 30 years of Left rule has achieved "very little" in that state.[1]

[edit] Works

  • Hajar Churashir Ma (No. 1084's Mother, 1975)
  • Aranyer Adhikar (The Occupation of the Forest, 1977)
  • Agnigarbha (Womb of Fire, 1978)
  • Choti Munda evam Tar Tir (Choti Munda and His Arrow, 1980)
  • Breast-Giver [2]
  • Imaginary Maps, 1995 (translated by Gayatri Spivak) London & New York. Routledge
  • Dhowli (Short Story)
  • Breast Giver (1998)
  • Dust on the Road
  • Our Non-Veg Cow
  • Bashai Tudu
  • Titu Mir

[edit] Major awards

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Mainstream December 23, 2006: Do We Really Want Rabindranath?

[edit] External links