NATURE OF 'POLITICAL': MAHASWETA DEVI'S MOTHER OF 1084 (original) (raw)
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ILLUMINATING MULTIPLE OPPRESSIONS IN THE PLAY OF MOTHER OF 1084 BY MAHASWETA DEVI
English Studies International Research Journal Volume 7 Issue 2 ISSN 2347 - 3479 , 2019
Mahasweta Devi’s play Mother of 1084 (1973) tried to expose the exploitation of an essentially unorganised people whose lives are deep-rooted in history and to offer a vivid portrayal of the rural underclass along with their suffering. Her work analyses subaltern politics and their unending struggle to bring to light their exploitation. Mahasweta Devi, the champion of the downtrodden, was continuously occupied with the diverse struggles and was a part of several organisations despite the travails of her advancing age. She took up these diversified roles throughout her life and the zeal in her was alive until her last breath. Keywords: Exploitation, Marginalisation, Binary Oppositions, Subjugation, Sublernity Etc
MAHASWETA DEVI’S MOTHER OF 1084: AN EXPLORATION
‘Dramatic Realism’ means ‘objective experience’ and ‘social truth’ and in that drama becomes a powerful weapon for exposing and demolishing social evils and injustices. As an anti-establishment artist Mahasweta Devi always committed herself socially and ethically in order to give voice to the marginalized and the downtrodden. Like Shaw she employed drama not merely for faithful documentation of contemporary social evils, but as active medium for revolting against authority and other social constraints. The play Mother of 1084 (1997), actually a translation of her early Bengali novel, titled Hajar Churasir Ma, conscious of the political happenings of Naxalite Bengal, focuses on the exploitation and deprivation of the tribal and the marginalized people, the landless and the curse of landlordism and feudalism, and aboveall the neglected and subjugated fate of women. The plot, a diatribe against decadent social institutions articulates ‘the awakening of an apolitical mother’, which has an urban middle class setting. Through Brati’s (the protagonist) whose commitment to the revolutionary Communist ideology led to his killing in an ‘encounter’, self-sacrifice the dramatist debunked the ‘spent-up intellectuals’, ‘cocktail parties’, the meaningless ‘Godmen’ and the so called radicals. Somehow the play mirrors the whole gamut of a hypocritical culture with its brooding over the Bangladesh war, amorous scandals, a world of ‘affluence’, of ‘pseudo-religion’, selfishness, of drinking, whoring and abnormal relationships. Yet in Sujata, the deprived mother, ‘a new woman is born’. Sujata’s past life, her isolation, her philandering husband, her unwanted motherhood all ultimately ends up in her self-realization which itself becomes a convenient and powerful protest against the rotten societal value system. Key Words Social reality, problem play, anti-establishment, political, subaltern,
Rebels and Biopolitics: Mahasweta Devi's Mother of 1084
Biopolitics—the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regulated under regimes of authority—is ordinary currency in society, and ruling political systems exercise surveillance, incarceration and killings to a great extent in this regard. Michel Foucault's work on the regulation of human beings through the production of power serves as an initial medium of investigation into biopolitics. Yet, Giorgio Agamben probes the covert and overt presence of biopolitical violence in society, particularly through his concepts of state of exception and bare life. The Indian playwright Mahasweta Devi's Anglophone play-text Mother of 1084 (1973) enables scholars to participate in a critical forum on biopolitical praxis, because of its pervasive and explicit representation of state violence and rebels. Nonetheless, the play-text is often renowned for its reference to feminist ideology and mother-son relationship. Existing scholarship has overlooked the manifestation of torture and dead bodies on-stage represented in it. The play is also on the periphery of the mainstream literary criticism. By engaging with a textual portrayal of the play through Foucauldian and Agambenian critical lenses, this article interrogates the ways in which biopolitics coerces populations within the contemporary socio-political milieu. The analysis implies a potential to understand the biopolitical logic more meaningfully, and to be resistant to its stratagems of coercion. It adds to the existing body of literature on biopolitics by creating a specific account of life-politics as characterised in postcolonial theatre, provides a supplemental standpoint to debates on biopolitical subjugation and specifically contributes to current discussions of the play.
International Research Journal of Humanities, Language and Literature, 2017
Tughlaq, a thirteen-scene play, by Girish Karnad, about the turbulent rule of Muhammad Bin Tughlaq is all about politics of power and political power. The play, at the outset seems to be a historical play, but politics of power with constant conflict between human relationships demonstrated through class and caste distinction is evidently palpable. The play is also known for its contemporary relevance where Karnad considers the rotten condition of Tughlaq's era to be synonymous with Nehru's vision of modern India during his-era of idealism in the country‖. It is a play of the sixties and reflects political mood of disillusionment which followed the Nehruvian era. Karnad critiques Nehru's government where people felt the disappointment after all the tall promises came to naught The protagonist, Muhammad Bin Tughlaq, was known for his reformist, ‗ahead of his times' idea that had a grand vision, but his reign was an abject failure. He started his rule with great ideals of a unified India. Yet in twenty years, his reign had degenerated into anarchy and his kingdom had become a ‗kitchen of death'. The two characters, Aziz and Azam, represent a section of lower class people who are clever enough to identify and exploit the loop holes to their gain. Throughout the play, one finds Aziz flipping through his identity and twisting the political strategies to etch out his personal motives. The thrust of the paper is to focus on the socio-cultural and political issues exhibited in the play and to examine how power and politics can be reconsidered as a faculty that does not necessarily come from the colonizer's ‗thrown', but rather develops from the character of the resistance in the colonized. The paper is also an attempt towards tracing man's quest for identity and power through politics during two different eras.
Antithetical Perpetuation in Society A Study in the Selected Modern Indian Plays (2).pdf
The selected Indian playwrights have questioned the modernity and its implications especially in context of the sanskritization, westernization and transformation of Indians due to the impeccable industrialized, material, secular, mechanized culture. In India, modernity has changed the concept of existence and it has driven Indians to the life of glamour and glitz of technology, gadgets, metropolis and enslavement to mechanics of machinery. Their day to day life is beset with a paradigm shift in their notions of being equipped at the best with techno-world. The playwrights’ concern is not just to expose the reality of developing people, but they are also a part of that same change. The plays sensitize the readers and spectators with the individual unhappiness, despite the breaking of their weak boundaries and the building of their self-capacity. On one hand there is self-reliance, while at the same time there is heart of ruin. The authors question the value-added Indian legacy of humanity, which is fallen to hypocrisy and usury. These authors poignantly examine human life within the man-made dimensional laws that has wrought human sense eco-critically to understand nature’s laws and human rights. Therefore these playwrights suggestively are self-critical to raise human intellect in order to do away with their cynical and skeptical concepts for the advancement of their lifestyle and life patterns. Metaphysically, they make aware Indians—how does their inner thought process relate their primary needs with the social milieu, external impressions, environmental issues and existential choices? How do Indians in contemporary reality of human existence correspond with free-will that is mostly in contradictory conflict due to greed, selfishness, and human need? How does their alliance with power, sex and religion trap them into the labyrinth of delusive aspirations? Keywords: concept of existence, enslavement to mechanics of machinery, labyrinth of delusive aspirations
Antithetical Perpetuation in Society: A Study in the Selected Modern Indian Plays
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 2018
The selected Indian playwrights have questioned the modernity and its implications especially in context of the sanskritization, westernization and transformation of Indians due to the impeccable industrialized, material, secular, mechanized culture. In India, modernity has changed the concept of existence and it has driven Indians to the life of glamour and glitz of technology, gadgets, metropolis and enslavement to mechanics of machinery. Their day to day life is beset with a paradigm shift in their notions of being equipped at the best with techno-world. The playwrights' concern is not just to expose the reality of developing people, but they are also a part of that same change. The plays sensitize the readers and spectators with the individual unhappiness, despite the breaking of their weak boundaries and the building of their self-capacity. On one hand there is self-reliance, while at the same time there is heart of ruin. The authors question the value-added Indian legacy of humanity, which is fallen to hypocrisy and usury. These authors poignantly examine human life within the man-made dimensional laws that has wrought human sense eco-critically to understand nature's laws and human rights. Therefore these playwrights suggestively are self-critical to raise human intellect in order to do away with their cynical and skeptical concepts for the advancement of their lifestyle and life patterns. Metaphysically, they make aware Indians-how does their inner thought process relate their primary needs with the social milieu, external impressions, environmental issues and existential choices? How do Indians in contemporary reality of human existence correspond with free-will that is mostly in contradictory conflict due to greed, selfishness, and human need? How does their alliance with power, sex and religion trap them into the labyrinth of delusive aspirations?
Prathama Banerjee Chanakya-Kautilya history, philosophy, theatre and the 20th century political
This essay is part of an ongoing project on possible histories of our political present, written from perspective of colonial/postcolonial Bengal. Here I explore how in the early twentieth century, Chanakya/Kautilya, an ancient Indian political figure and putatively the author of the Arthasashtra, a treatise on statecraft, gets re-imaginedthough not quite successfullyas the figure of the quintessential political man of India. At stake in the story is the question of how to think the political in the first place.
Portrayal of Motherhood in Mahasweta Devi's Mother of 1084
THE CREATIVE LAUNCHER: An International, Open Access, Peer Reviewed, Refereed, E-Journal in English, 2017
Mahasweta Devi is a prolific writer who has used her pen for the causes of the most deprived sections of the society. She has written about the pangs and plights of tribals, women, dalits and other marginalized sections of society. Her novel, Mother of 1084, is the depiction of the miserable condition of a mother who tries to search for the causes of her son's commitment towards Naxalite movement during 1970s after his brutal killing. She comes across many layers of hidden things which a mother from upper class may not bother to know in normal situations. She explores that her son was like her who cared for others, wanted equality in the society and therefore he had sacrificed his life. She finds her life akin to the thoughts of her son as she herself is excluded in her own family. She has to bear the oppression of exclusion in her own house. These things have made her stronger and able to understand those causes for which her son has sacrificed his life. Unsympathetic behavior of the husband and some of the children, double standard of morality and civil laws, the gap between the proletariats and the bourgeois, Naxalite movement and its aftermath, indiscriminate brutal killings of Naxalites, lust for materialistic life and hollow prestige among the upper class society are well documented by Mahasweta Devi in her most popular work, Mother of 1084.
Women's Theater and the Redefinitions of Public, Private, and Politics in North India 1
A bstr act T his e ssay explore s the inte rse ctions be twe en pe rf ormanc e, ma te ria lity, a nd mar ginaliz e d women's struggles by de lving into the me anings of public a nd pr ivate , and the nua nc e d and var ied me anings of gende r ed r e sista nc e. Foc using on thre e ver y dif fe r ent kinds of the atric al pe rf or mance s by w omen in N orth I ndia , I a na lyz e how e ac h per f or ma nce a ppropriate s, c omplic ates, or r einf orc es the inter w oven pa tr iar cha l conce pts of public a nd priva te on the one ha nd, a nd f e mininity a nd ma sc ulinity on the other . In so doing, I also c onsider how both spa ce a nd kinship ar e str ate gica lly de ploye d in these per f or ma nce s, and the diff er e nt me anings of re sista nc e a nd fe minist politics e mbe dde d and implie d in ea c h per for ma nc e . I argue that a focus on these processes allows us to grapple with the ways in which gendered materialities -shaped by class, caste, and geographical locationbecome central to the articulation of politics. This framework opens up new "spaces" to examine how multiple publics are constituted and reconfigured in terms of their sociopolitical identities and provisional alliances in and through publicization/privatization struggles, without essentializing or fixing the meanings of either public or private or of the spaces in which public/private acts are enacted.