Saturday, September 18, 2010

WOMEN WRITERS OF INDIA

MAHASHWETA DEVI-I

Born - 1926
Achievements - Mahasweta Devi is an eminent Indian Bengali writer, who has been studying and writing incessantly about the life and struggles faced by the tribal communities in the states like Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Mahasweta Devi is a reputed Indian writer who was born in the year 1926 into a middle class Bengali family at Dacca, which is located in present day Bangladesh. She received her education from the prestigious Shantiniketan set up by great Indian philosopher and thinker, Rabindranath Tagore that went on to become a part of the Visva Bharti University later on. Mahasweta Devi graduated from the University of Calcutta and this was followed by an MA degree in English from the Visva Bharti University.

Read on to know more about the biography of Mahasweta Devi. Since her entire family had shifted to India by now, Devi began teaching at the Bijoygarh College in 1964. In those times, this particular college was a forum operating for elite female students. This phase was also utilized by Mahasweta Devi to work as a journalist and a creative writer. Of late, Mahasweta Devi is known to have been studying the life history of rural tribal communities in the Indian state of West Bengal and also women and dalits.

Mahasweta Devi is a social activist who has wholly involved herself to work for the struggles of the tribal people in states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In the fiction themed on Bengal which Devi writes, she often narrates the brutal oppression faced by the tribal people at the hands of the powerful upper caste persons comprising landlords, money lenders and government officials in this belt.

During the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair when India happened to be the first country to have been invited to this fair for a second time, Mahasweta Devi made a very touching inaugural speech which moved many among the listeners to tears. Inspired by the famous Raj Kapoor song, she said: "This is truly the age where the Joota (shoe) is Japani (Japanese), Patloon (pants) is Englistani (British), the Topi (hat) is Roosi (Russian), But the Dil (heart) is always Hindustani (Indian)"



 MAHASHWETA DEVI-II 
Mahasweta Devi (Bengali: Môhashsheta Debi) (born 1926 in Dhaka in what is now Bangladesh) is an Indian social activist and writer.





BIOGRAPHY

Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in Dhaka, to literary parents in a Hindu Brahmin family. Her father Manish Ghatak was a well known poet and novelist of the Kallol era, who used the pseudonym Jubanashwa. He also happened to be the elder brother of the noted filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak. Mahasweta's mother Dharitri Devi was also a writer and a social worker whose brothers were very distinguished in various fields, such as the noted sculptor Sankha Chaudhury and the founder-editor of the Economic and Political Weekly of India, Sachin Chaudhury. Her first schooling was in Dhaka, but after the partition of India she moved to West Bengal in India. She joined the Rabindranath Tagore founded Vishvabharati University in Santiniketan and completed a B.A. (Hons) in English, and then finished an M.A. in English at Calcutta University as well. She later married renowned playwright Bijon Bhattacharya who was deeply involved with the IPTA.

 CAREER

In 1964, she began teaching at Bijoygarh College (an affiliated college of the University of Calcutta system). During those days, Bijoygarh College was an institution for working class women students. Also during that period, she also worked as a journalist and as a creative writer. Recently, she is more famous for her work related to the study of the Lodhas and Shabars,the tribal communities of West Bengal, women and dalits. She is also an activist who is dedicated to the struggles of tribal people in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In her elaborate Bengali fiction, she often depicts the brutal oppression of tribal peoples and the untouchables by potent, authoritarian upper-caste landlords, lenders, and venal government officials. She has written of the source of her inspiration:
I have always believed that the real history is made by ordinary people. I constantly come across the reappearance, in various forms, of folklore, ballads, myths and legends, carried by ordinary people across generations....The reason and inspiration for my writing are those people who are exploited and used, and yet do not accept defeat. For me, the endless source of ingredients for writing is in these amazingly, noble, suffering human beings. Why should I look for my raw material elsewhere, once I have started knowing them? Sometimes it seems to me that my writing is really their doing.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair 2006, when India was the first country to be the Fair's second time guest nation, she made an impassioned inaugural speech wherein she moved the audience to tears with her lines taken from the famous film song by Raj Kapoor (the English equivalent is in brackets):
This is truly the age where the Joota (shoe) is Japani (Japanese), Patloon (pants) is Englistani (British), the Topi (hat) is Roosi (Russian), But the Dil... Dil (heart) is always Hindustani (Indian)... My country, Torn, Tattered, Proud, Beautiful, Hot, Humid, Cold, Sandy, Shining India. My country.

Recent Activism

 

Mahasweta Devi has recently been spearheading the movement against the industrial policy of the government of West Bengal, the state of her domicile. Specifically, she has stridently criticized confiscation of large tracts of fertile agricultural land from farmers by the government and ceding the land to industrial houses at throwaway prices. She has connected the policy to the commercialization of Santiniketan of Rabindranath Tagore, where she spent her formative years. Her lead resulted in a number of intellectuals, artists, writers and theatre workers join in protesting the controversial policy and particularly its implementation in Singur and Nandigram.
Recently she praised Gujarat for strides made in development at the grassroots level and criticised the West Bengal government saying that 30 years of Left rule has achieved "very little" in that state.

 Works

  • Hajar Churashir Ma
     
    (No. 1084's Mother, 1975)
  • Aranyer Adhikar (The Occupation of the Forest, 1977)
  • Agnigarbha (Womb of Fire, 1978)
  • Bitter Soil tr, Ipsita Chandra. Seagull, 1998. Four stories.
  • Choti Munda evam Tar Tir (Choti Munda and His Arrow, 1980)
  • Imaginary Maps (translated by Gayatri Spivak London & New York. Routledge,1995)
  • Dhowli (Short Story)
  • Dust on the Road
     
    (Translated into English by Maitreya Ghatak. Seagull, Calcutta.)
  • Our Non-Veg Cow
     
    (Seagull Books, Calcutta, 1998. Translated from Bengali by Paramita Banerjee.)
  • Bashai Tudu
     
    (Translated into English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and Shamik Bandyopadhyay. Thima, Calcutta, 1993)
  • Titu Mir
  • Rudali
     
  • Breast Stories (Translated into English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak. Seagull, Calcutta, 1997)
  • Of Women, Outcasts, Peasants, and Rebels (Translated into English By Kalpana Bardhan,University of California, 1990.) Six stories.
  • Ek-kori's Dream (Translated into English by Lila Majumdar. N.B.T., 1976)
  • The Book of the Hunter (Seagull India, 2002)
  • Outcast (Seagull, India, 2002)
  • In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (Translated into English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak. Methuyen and Company, 1987. New York, London)
  • Till Death Do Us Part
     
  • Old Women
     
  • Kulaputra (Translated into Kannada by Sreemathi H.S. CVG Publications, Bangalore)
  • The Why-Why Girl (Tulika, Chennai.)
  • Dakatey Kahini
     

 Films based on Mahasweta Devi's works

Posted by Surinder Singh Darvesh at 12:31 PM
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