Since time immemorial, women have always been the victim of humiliation, marginalization and sexual objectification. In the stream of marginalization, women are in worse situation. They are marginalized on the basis of unspoken and unwritten laws of the man constructed society. Women’s positions in society, particularly those of marginalized/peripheral one’s are very preoccupied with the sense of docility and negligence. Marginalized woman, the tribe or the poor women, do not have any ‘decent’ or ‘proper’ position and identity in society. In Mahasweta Devi’s short story ‘Draupadi’ where a Santhal tribe woman Dopdi is subjected to third degree in sexual violence and depicts how a marginalized tribal woman derives strength from her body and her inner feminine core to fight against her marginality. In an attempt to subjugate her mind, body and soul, Dopdi is raped repeatedly by a number of men as she loses consciousness time and time again during her ordeal. She displays an unusual form of resistance by subverting the gaze in such a way that it is her oppressors who are made to feel the shame.
The story has its backdrop, the Naxalbari movement of Bengal, which started as a rural revolt of landless workers and tribal people against landlords and money lenders. Mahasweta Devi’s tribal Dopdi is fighting for her survival, for food and for water. The writer etches out the plight of the tribal in words. She depicts how utter helplessness can finally lead to resistance or even rebellion-
“Dulna and Dopdi worked at harvests, rotating between Birbhum, Murshidabad and Bankura. In 1971, in the famous Operation Bankura, when three villages were cordoned off and machine gunned, they too lay on the ground, faking dead. In fact, they were the main culprits. Murdering Surja Sahu and his son, occupying upper caste wells and tube wells during the drought, not surrendering those three young men to the police.”
They went underground for a long time and they are on the list of wanted. They used the technique of guerilla warfare to compete with their enemy. Guerilla warfare is supposed to be the most despicable and repulsive style of fight- ing with primitive weapons. Dopdi and Dulna belong to the category of such fighters, for they too killed with hatchets and scythes, bows and arrows.
Operation Jharkhani gains momentum under the leadership of Senanayak, ‘a specialist in combat and extreme left politics.’ He is a seasoned military strategist with mastery over ‘theories’ on how to defeat the enemy by learning their language, using tribal informants and ‘countering’ technique.
Very soon Dopdi Mejhen is apprehended and understanding her defeat she readies herself for the next action of warning her comrades:
“Now Dopdi spreads her arms, raises her face to the sky, turns towards the forest, and ululates with the force of her entire being. Once, twice, three times. At the third burst the birds in the trees at the outskirts of the forest awake and flap their wings. The echo of the call travels far.”
With her capture, the process of co modification of her body starts. She is no more treated as an activist with a cause but a mere body, a possession or war booty. But before going for his dinner, Senanayak, issues orders to his men- of course after her ‘official interrogation to make her and do the needful’. In an attempt to subjugate her mind, body and soul, Dopdi is raped repeatedly by a no. of men as she loses consciousness time and time again during her ordeal.
Dopdi’s denial of shame imposed to her by the oppressor through the act of rape reveals her courage and strength in spite of being a rape victim.
“Draupadi’s shakes with an indomitable laughter that Senanayak simply cannot understand. Her ravaged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is terrifying, sky splitting and sharp her ululation, What is the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you cloth me again? Are you a man? What more can you do? Come on,
Unlike other passive rape victims, Devi does not let her heroine ‘Droupadi’ suffer in silence. With unconquerable spirit, the naked and bleeding Draupadi faces all her rapists defiantly, out resisting the sexual flouting of her body. Mahasweta Devi gives voice to the voiceless unfortunate of the earth, her liter- ary output is an attempt to shake the conscience of the citizens, to make them notice, identify and analyze what goes unnoticed, unheard by the naked eye.
When in literature one comes across a character like Dopdi who decides to take her revenge in her own way. She is an example about to what extent a woman can be pushed that it comes to her mind to raise her voice after being brutally gang raped. Conquering her pain and humiliation, she emerges as the most powerful ‘subject.’ Her tale presents the bitter realities of the revolutionary movements of the tribal in an unabated manner.
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