Who is Dopdi Majhen in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi?: A Study of Tribal Women’s Plight and Subaltern Resistance

Abstract

Identity is an integral part of the historical trajectory inherent in the realm of power. It is understood by its normative forces and dynamic association with uncertainties of the power structure that is classified as political. Sometimes it has been problematized by enacting heinous activities like violence, oppression, discrimination, humiliation, and othering to clarify the division irrespective of caste, class, and gender in economic, social, and political scenarios. Its multilayered nature commits the being to perform myriad acts with full vigour in the private and public spheres. This study aims to understand the normative forces of identity and its political representations entangled with the female protagonist Dopdi, in Draupadi by Mahasweta Devi, translated by Gayatri Chakravarthy Spivak, an eminent Postcolonial critic. Mahasweta Devi is a well-known writer and activist who articulated those brutalities committed against subalterns, especially the tribal people in the Indian society, in her writings. Moreover, it also seeks to understand the tribal people, especially the tribal women, and their identical trajectories which are carried out by the diverse groups of organizations, and the peoples’ uprisings which help to foreground the convoluted connection between identity and power.