CENTRESTAGE

Sandeep Dikshit 

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 28

Mahasweta Devi, 90, an unremitting voice against injustice, suppression and plain political chicanery, fell silent today. The gifted writer and life-long activist suffered a heart attack in May and passed away due to multi-organ failure. Her son and former husband, both noted litterateurs as well, had predeceased her.

Mahasweta Devi’s life could not have taken a different course, nurtured as she was in the formidable school of radical intellectualism within her family itself. On one hand were her maternal uncles, beginning with the renowned filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak, and then her husband of some years Bijoy Bhattacharya, among the founding fathers of the Indian People’s Theatre Association — at a time when personal animosity masked as theological hair-splitting had not led to ruptures in the progressive movement.  

OPED: Gave voice to those on the margins  

Therefore, it was a matter of time before a searing perspective about the lives of the other half began flowing from her pen. The setting was apt. Bengal of the mid-1960s was passing through a ferment that lasted for another decade. The state and the landlords had no human rights concerns to bother about while mainstream political parties were constantly deserting and aligning with each other.  

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But Mahasweta Devi was cut from a different cloth than other doyens of social realism. She spanned a bewildering array of genres — activism in tribal hinterlands, working with denotified tribes, novels that seared the mind, five critically acclaimed films based on her novels, tales for the kids and life-long activism on the streets of Kolkata. Though she was anti-state by instinct, governments of all colours, barring saffron, bestowed her with awards in recognition of the authenticity and legitimacy of her concerns.

Mahasweta Devi’s Hazar Churashir Maa (The Mother of Number 1084) enabled her to vault the boundaries of the language of her choice just like Gurdial Singh’s Marhi Da Deeva or Paash’s Sab Ton Khatarnak. It depicted the inhumanness of police operations during the dark decade in West Bengal by tracing the travails of a distraught mother looking for her missing radical son, who unknown to her lay cold in the morgue with just a sticker on his forehead that identified him as body number 1084.  

Mahasweta Devi chose the language of the Radical Left and along with several others like Gadar and Nagarjun became its icons, just like Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi and Bhisham Sahni were once claimed by the Parliamentary Left.

In the end, she might have made a few errors of judgment, that is perhaps the lot of the permanently antagonised with a utopian streak. She saw salvation of her beloved tribals in Mamata Banerjee, who outsmarted the radical crowd. Mahasweta Devi also contributed to the CPM’s rout in Greater Kolkata (one-fourth of the Assembly seats) in 2011 by taking to the streets over Nandigram and Singur. The Left’s story got over in West Bengal but she must have wondered whether the past was worth dismantling without a worthwhile alternative.