Paper short abstract:

The Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi commits herself to the interests of Adivasis in fiction and action. By analysing her most powerful stories the paper gives an account of what the author herself calls the “naked brutality, savagery, and caste and class exploitation” Adivasis have to suffer in India.

Paper long abstract:

Mahasweta Devi, feminist writer and activist, pitilessly exposes in her stories the humiliation, neglect and even harsh violence Adivasi groups in the Eastern regions of the country are forced to suffer. Adivasis are subjected to forms of economic dependence (bonded labour), deprived of land and natural resources and often displaced as a result of so called development projects; especially women and girls are sexually abused or forced to prostitution.

Mahasweta Devi claims that her writings are based on truth; that does not mean that her characters necessarily represent real individuals, but "they could have existed as subalterns in a specific historical moment imagined" (Spivak). Thoroughly researched, Mahasweta Devi work represents history turned into fiction.

Emotions dominate the work of Mahasweta Devi and show in her forceful language - she claims to be "perpetually angry" in view of the exploiting system, and with regard to the Adivasi she believes "in anger, in justified violence", which she understands and represents in her stories.

The paper focuses on translated stories of Mahasweta Devi (English, German). It will explore the multiple forms of oppression of Adivasi and their manifold ways of reacting to it as represented in the fiction (aggression, surrender, hope); it will also confront it with non-literary accounts (e.g. ethnographic work). Finally it will ask about the ultimate message behind Devi's stories, the question whether tribal life is a bygone form of human existence or whether there might be spaces of co-presence and redefinition.