Voicing the Voiceless: Breast Stories (Draupadi, Breast-giver and Behind the Bodice)

Chapter 2

Voicing the Voiceless: Breast Stories

Mahasweta Devi, the noted Bengali writer disgusted by the modes of

humiliation that the lower castes, especially the womenfolk, are subjected to and the
champion of the cause of the ‘untouchables’, is horrified by the game of politics that
tries to break the spirit of men and women who fight for emancipation from slavery
on behalf of their caste and clan. Hence she embarks on a project of presenting the
shocking realities that happen behind the socio-economic and political iron curtains,
through her most powerful work Draupadi. The three stories in Breast Stories
namely Draupadi, Breast-giver (Stanadayini) and Behind the Bodice (Choli ke
Pichhe) deal with exploitation. The stories have a common theme, the Breast. The
translator points out in her introduction that the breast is far more than a symbol in
these stories. It becomes a means of harsh comment on an unfair social system. If in
‘Draupadi’ it is transformed into a commodity, and in ‘Behind the Bodice,’ an object
that stands for the supposed ‘normality’ of sexuality as male violence. It is the
metonymic part object standing for the ‘other’- the woman as subaltern. Devi, the
activist- writer, challenges the grand narratives of the nation and presents counter
narratives that challenges the official/state position of silence and engineered
exclusion.

Draupadi, which was published in Mahasweta Devi’s work Agnigarbha

(1978) and translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her collection titled Breast
Stories 1997, is an extra-ordinary and rare document of violence on and resistance by
a poor, illiterate tribal woman who, in her ultimate denial to clothe herself, not only
exposes the ugly and horrifying face of political repressive forces including
government, bureaucrats, feudal masters and the state sponsored delinquents, but

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also challenges the might of callous post-colonial state embodied in the figure of
Senanayak.

The play documents the economic, political, social and sexual oppression of
the dalit women in tribal areas who suffer from triple marginalization in terms of
caste, class and gender. It is about the 1967 peasant rebellion in the Naxalbari area of
West Bengal by the landless peasants and the itinerant farm workers against the
unofficial state-feudal nexus.

The tragedy of the exploitation of the landless peasants in India, and

particularly West Bengal is an ageless one. So is the history of revolt from the
sanyasis and the indigo cultivators to the Naxalbari explosion. The people near
Naxalbari in Bengal are mostly tribals- the Medis, Lepchas, Bhutias, Santhals,
Orangs, the Zamindars extend the petty bait of paddy seeds, the oxen team, a handful
of rice and negligible wages. In return, they reap a lion’s share of the harvest, at the
cost of the landless laborer’s back breaking toil. In great Bengal Famine of 1943,
starving people died in front of well stocked food shops. A peasant differs from a
landless laborer in terms of ownership position since he cultivated his own land. The
migrants like Dopdi or her husband Dulna Majhi are forced to work for wages well
below government fixation of minimum wages. They are not fighting for bigger
academic issues. They are fighting for bare minimum needs to survive. The target of
these movements was the long established oppression of the landless peasantry and
itinerant farm workers, sustained through an unofficial government- landlord
collision. The Indian government was able to crack down the rebellion with
exceptional brutality on the Naxalites destroying the rebellious sections of the rural
population, most significantly the tribal.

The whole plot revolves around Dopdi Mejhen’s career as a Naxalite. The
term ‘Naxalites’ also referred to as the ‘Naxals’ describes groups that adopt violent
strategies against feudal landlords and others in power who exploit the poor landless
laborers and the tribal people. Their claim is that they are fighting exploitation and
oppression in order to create a society devoid of class structures and hierarchies.

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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 Draupadi 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 (tribal name) 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. It is worth mentioning, that
various other Indian women writers forayed into the realm of writing essays, novels,
poetry etc. to give voice to the silent screaming of a woman’s soul that is common all
round the world wherever women exist in a patriarchal system of society.
Mahasweta as being a writer with a social cause, her stories and novels are a caustic
comment on India as a nation the socio-political trajectory of the country which has
happened since independence. Mahasweta Devi has been actively working for years
for tribals and marginalized communities. Her activism effortlessly translates into
her writings, endorsing this view Radha Chakhravorty writes: “Mahasweta’s current
reputation as a writer rests largely on her own self-projection as a champion of the
tribal cause and decrier of class prejudice”(Chakhravorty 2008: 94). Championing
the cause of tribals in India she is particularly devoted to ensure their economic,
political and social security. Her stories bring to the surface not only the misery of
the completely ignored tribal people, but also articulate the oppression of women in
the society.

A society in which a woman has been reduced to commodity in the wake of

consumerist culture. As keen observers of history, if we analyze writings of Devi we
have a feeling whether it may be Bengal or any other part of the country, the

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situation of the oppressed and violence of contemporary meted out to women

throughout India remains the same: “The continuation of sexual assault of feudal-
patriarchal society in the form of state violence is the experience of contemporary
feudal society” (Jyoti and Katayani 1998: 127).

Mahasweta Devi is one of those rare writers who always aspire to find and
explore something challenging and new and never accept the existing ideals. Her
short fiction ‘Draupadi’ is primarily, the story of a Santhal tribal women raped by
men in power, that is her sexual torture in police custody. Rape is considered as a
bolt on the forehead of an innocent woman. As it is given:

Rape is worse than death

Rape is always spoken through the lips of dead women

For a live woman rape means dishonor

Silence is the only choice for a victim

Rarely do families give victims the space to speak about their

Condition.(Qtd. In Hameed 2005: 312)

Draupadi, on the surface, seems to tell a familiar tale from the most revered
Indian epic, Mahabharata. Draupadi in the epic, the most celebrated heroine married
to the five sons of Pandu, provides an example of polyandry, not a common system
of marriage in India. (Spivak 1990: xiii)

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. The misery of a tribal woman as compared to aristocratic woman is far more
dreadful. Rape is the worst recognition of sexual violence against women. Giving all
the vital information about the famous criminal Draupadi right at the beginning of
the story, Mahasweta Devi states:

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NAME DOPDI MEJHEN, age 27, husband

DulnaMajhi [deceased], domicile Cherakhan,
Bankrahjarh, information whether dead or alive and/or
assistance in arrest, onehundred rupees…(Devi 2010:
19)

Mahasweta Devi’s tribal Dopdi is fighting for her survival, for food and for
water. The writer etches out the plight of the tribals 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.
(Devi 2010: 19-20)

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 fighting with
primitive weapons. Dopdi and Dulna belong to the category of such fighters, for they
too killed with hatchets and scythes, brows and arrows.

Dopdi is called by Senanayak and she is flooded by confused memories of

drought in Birbhum. There was hardly any drop of water for her and for her people
but there was ‘Unlimited water, at Surja Sahu’s house, as clear as a crow’s eye’
(Devi 2010: 29). The only way out of this situation was to kill Surja Sahu. The
killing was carried out by Dulna, Dopdi and other comrades. Their fight was for
survival and when that is at stake than any action and every action is justified. The

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feudal and imperialist mindset fails to give a human character to a tribal who is
perceived only as a dark bodied and wild untouchable who can’t even have the right
to draw water from the wells. He is the proverbial ‘other’ who has been given a
marginalized identity by the dominant hegemonic Hindu society.

Surja Sahu’s house was surrounded at night. Surja was

tied up with cow rope. His whitish eyeballs turned
and turned, he was incontinent again and again. Dulna
had said, I will have the first blow, brothers. My great-
grandfather took a bit of paddy from him, and I still
give him free labour to repay that debt. Dopdi had said,
His mouth watered when he looked at me. I will pull
out his eyes. (Devi 2010: 30)

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 informats and ‘kountering’ techniques;

In order to destroy the enemy, become one. Thus he

understood them by (theoretically) becoming one of
them. He hopes to write on all this in the future. He has
also decided that in his written work he will demolish
the gentlemen and highlight the message of the harvest
workers. (Devi 2010: 22)

Very soon DopdiMejhen 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, ululates with the force of her
entire being. Once, twice, three times. At the third burst

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the birds in the trees at the outskirts of the forest awake

and flap their wings. The echo of the call travels far
(Devi 2010: 34).

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.

The most important question that this text poses is not only why Dopdi was
raped, but it also analyses why women fall as an easy prey to be raped? Through this
story, the author challenged the ‘Co modification’ and ‘Subsequent victimization’ of
a woman’s body.

Shaming her, a tear trickles out of the corner of her

eye. In the muddy moonlight she lowers her lightless
eye, sees her breasts and understands that, indeed, she
is made up right. Her breasts are bitten raw, the nipples
torn. How many? Four-five-six-seven- then Draupadi
had passed out (Devi 2010: 35).

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?

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What more can you do? Come on, Kounter me –come

on, Kounter me-? (Devi 2010: 37)

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 literary 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.

There is no doubt that this story is a hard hitting comment on the grim
situation of the tribal and marginalized in the face of democracy. The condition of
women in the present patriarchal society remains the same irrespective of time and
place. The tribal woman is marginalized in more than one way as she lives in a
constant fear of victimization. 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 tribals in an unabated manner and highlights the irony that in 21 st
century tribal women still have to fight the unjust world order for bare survival.

Through the compelling interplay of politics and history, Devi exposes the
irony of the patriarchal hegemonistic societies that eulogize the idea of protecting a
woman’s honor at all cost but given a chance, violates her without having any qualm.
Dopdi, the central character, is representative of millions of tribal women who are
oppressed, marginalized and victimized by the agents of politics.

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Breast-giver
Women’s role in species reproduction has rendered ‘natural’ a
process that is deliberately constructed in order to dominate
them. (Bagchi 1995: 1)

The second story “Breast-Giver” in the collection of Breast Stories is the

story that builds itself on the cruel ironies of caste, class and patriarchy. The
protagonist Jashoda, a poor Brahmin woman became a professional wet nurse to
support her family. Jashoda’s husband met with an accident and got crippled. She
started breast feeding the whole Haldar family’s grand children in order to earn
money. She had to breed annually to make breast yield milk so that she could earn
more money to make both ends meet; this means that she had to suffer endlessly.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in ‘Breast-Giver’: For Author, Teacher, Subaltern,
Historian … says regarding the (exchange) value and its immediate appropriation:

The milk that is produced in one’s own body for

one’s own children is a use-value. When there is a
super- fluity of use-values, exchange values arise. That
which can not be used is exchanged. As soon as the
(exchange) value of Jashoda’s milk emerges, it is
appropriated. Good food and constant sexual servicing
are providedso that she can be kept in prime condition
for optimum lactation. The milk she produces for her
children is presumably through ‘necessary labor.’ The
milk that she produces for the children of her
master’s, family is through ‘surplus labor.’ Indeed, this
is how the origin of this transition is described in the
story. ( Spivak 2010: 87-88)

In the Breast-Giver or Stanadayini, motherhood takes on a totally different

dimension- of the professional mother- whose only means of survival lies in her

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ability to produce children and be in a process of continuous lactation. In fact

‘motherhood’ and ‘mothering’ here merge into one another. It is only through the
biological action of ‘motherhood’ that enables, Jashoda to indulge in ‘mothering.’
Motherhood here includes in its purview all the children - own and fostered - that
have that have suckled at her breasts.

Jashoda works for the Haldar family unit, and this is noteworthy.
Systematized caste structures of society frequently implied that numerous Brahmin
family units would just utilize hirelings of a similar position, all together that the
alleged "sanctity" is not defiled and societal status is maintained. Despite what might
be expected, for the lower rank yet privileged Haldars, utilizing Jashoda is a
cognizant, seen from their point of view as an image of their development upwards
in the society however maybe in an alternate way. Jashoda is utilized as wet nurse
simply because she is a Brahmin. Having her amidst the family involves incredible
prestige, and furthermore gives the Haldar family a strange sense of authority and
strengthening. For whatever length of time that her memory serves her, Jashoda has
been pregnant, with Kangali drilling himself into her consistently. For the generally
crippled Kangali, Jashoda's pregnancies fill in as "proof" of his virility and sexuality.
As is outstanding, Indian society has constantly attached tremendous significance to
women’s numerous times is nothing short of ‘divine’. Jashoda obviously, thereby
gets a divine status, in spite of the fact that for her motherhood is not a matter of
choice but rather of sustenance:

Motherhood was always her way of living and

keeping alive her world of countles beings. Jashoda
was a mother by profession, professional mother.
Jashoda was not an amateur mama like the daughters
and wives of the master’s house. The world belongs to
the professional. (Devi 2010: 38)

The protagonist Jashoda in this story turns into the image of the ultimate
exploitation of woman as woman – an exploitation of her supporting body, while the
society avoids all duties regarding the frightful, results she harvests. In 'Breast-giver'

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Mahasweta Devi's omniscient narrative technique incorporates ironical remarks

about Indian womanhood. She watches that Jashoda is the typical Indian woman
whose unchallenged commitment to her husband other makes no sense and reason.
Her affection for her children, her unnatural ability to make sacrifices is a part of
Indian womanhood extending from the mythic figures of Sati, Savitri and Sita to the
movie stars enacting mother roles in the films. The irony turns out to be further
disenthralled as Mahasweta Devi expounds that seeing such women one and all
comprehend that in India the tradition still streams thus keeping such women in mind
such moral maxims have been composed:

‘A female’s life hangs on like a turtles’ – ‘her heart

breaks but no word is uttered’ – ‘the woman will burn,
her ashes will fly/only then will we sing her/praise on
high’. (Devi 2010: 46)

Naturally and expectedly, Jashoda is the biological mother of all the children
born out of her womb. This maternal feeling is then further extended towards the the
daughters- in-law of the Haldar household whom she breast feeds and thus a bond is
formed between them. However, Jashoda also feels a strange kind of motherly love
for her husband Kangali:

Her mother-love wells up for kangali as much as for

the children. She wants to become the earth and feed
her crippled husband and helpless children with a
fulsome harvest.(Devi 2010: 46)

Ironically for Jashoda, an offensive reap can just occur if the land is furrowed
legitimately. However no genuine exertion is made to sustain her body and take
great care of it. In her longing to become Mother Earth, Jashoda equates herself with
the ides of Mother as 'Nation'. Her body is misused by the nouveau–riche Haldars,
similarly as the postcolonial nation space has been ruled and exploited by the rich
upper classes. Jashoda's body subsequently turns into a commodity with its sticker
price. Like the Kamiya-prostitutes bound by the bond slave framework, she too has

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no alterative if her family should be sustained. Jashoda's passing from breast tumor
at the hospital may not be as outwardly and viciously horrifying as that of Douloti,
yet it is as difficult and maybe substantially more pitiful.

During her lifetime, Jashoda is truly Jashoda 'Devi'. In the Indian setting, the
term Devi has different levels of text and context. A Devi is a Goddess, 'Devi is
likewise frequently a marker of a woman’s married status in many parts of India and
"Devi" is additionally Goddess manifest – an uncommon eternality that is agreed to
Indian woman by divinity of their capacity to bear children. It is likewise significant
to point out that "Maa" or mother is frequently a term of regard for Indian women
and a woman's identity is carved out of her capacity to conceive an offspring more
than once. Krishnala Shridharani composes:

It is motherhood more than womanhood … that the

Hindus glorify … An Indian artist will prefer to paint a
picture of a woman with a child at her breast … Paying
greater honor to motherhood than towomanhood
implies emphasis on creation rather than recreation.
Accordingly, marriage becomes more work than play.
The Indian marriage still centers around the progeny.
(Shridharani 1941: 198 – 200)

Similarly, Mahasweta Devi comments:

Such is the power of the Indian soil that all women turn
into mothers here and all men remain immersed in the
spirit of holy childhood. Each man the Holy child and
each woman the Divine Mother. (Devi 2010: 46)

Jashoda's divinity is along these lines developed by the Haldar family,

generally in light of her caste, foundation. She is "divine" since she is a 'faithful',
"unwavering" wife who utilizes her unique position in the public eye to create new
life. Her divine status is additionally derived from her name. Jashoda is obviously a
legendary – historical figure, the Sanskritised Yashoda – the foster-mother or milk-

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mother of Lord Krishna, who raises him and rearshim like her own particular child.
Mahasweta's Jashoda is introduced upon this character, with the additional
dimension of economic aspects with regards to the circumstances. Be that as it may,
her godliness and uncommon position has in no way, shape or form been diminished
in this period.

Be that as it may, she soon understands, regardless of how abundant, this

milk supply is as yet subject to biology. Her breasts can't yield milk unless she
continues reproducing annually. When her husband being illuminated by the spirit of
‘Brahama, the Creator’ explains, “Now you will have to think of that and suffer. You
are a faithful wife, a goddess. You will yourself be pregnant, be filled with a child,
rear it at your breast, isn’t this why Mother came to you as a midwife?” (Devi 2010:
50)

Jashoda accepts her husband as her guru and does not mind the annuallabor
pains. She consoles herself, “where after all is the pain? … Does it hurt a
tree to bear fruit?” (Devi 2010: 50)

Thus while motherhood may be the greatest joy in the world, it is also the
most painful, as Jashoda soon realizes. She may have fed and brought up the Haldar
children like her own, but when she needs them, they all desert her, including
Kangali:

Is a Mother so cheaply made? Not just by dropping a babe! (Devi 2010: 50)

In the postmodern literature images of women have been destabilized,

deconstructed and reconstructed. No longer does the writing of women concern itself
with the search for identity alone. Increasingly, women’s literature has striven to
establish a separate ethos, an exclusive feminine myth as a counter- point to the
existent myth of male standards. In the past two and a half decades, literature in
general and fiction in particular has reflected the rejection of certain ‘male stream’
traditions and stereotypes summarily. The influence of feminism has meant that
women no longer have to see motherhood, heterosexuality and marriage as the only
possible life, style and myths portraying women’s happiness as being confined

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within these parameters have now been exploded. The efficacy of the institution of
marriage and family life idealized by patriarchy and identified as the woman’s
source of contentment has been exposed by postmodern women writers as a
patriarchal myth. For example, Alice Walker’s Meridian illustrates the manner in
which child bearing makes women vulnerable to male control and manipulation.
Walker affirms women’s ability to challenge the maternal role and achieve
independence by breaking the patriarchal shackles.

Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Breast- giver’ builds itself on the cruel ironies of caste,
class and patriarchy. Motherhood is Jashoda’s way of living and sustaining her world
of countless beings. She is a ‘professional’ mother, forced into the job of breast-
feeding the children of the six daughter-in-law of Haldar household who breed every
year.

It all has started accidentally, when Jashoda is asked by the Haldar Mistress
to breast-feed a grandchild whose mother is sick. The lady observes that Jashoda has
such full breasts and is a ‘Kamadhenu’, the legendary cow of fulfillment herself
while her daughters-in-law do not have quarter of that milk in their nipples. The
Haldar Matriarch’s arrangement of Jashoda’s breast-feeding the whole brood of
Haldar grandchildren and great-grand children, will go quite some way towards
keeping the young Haldar wives slim and attractive, without diminishing their urge
to beget armies of children and it will also discourage the young male Haldar’s from
taking to immoral way.

Mahasweta Devi in her characteristic way is of the view that Jashoda is fully
an Indian woman whose unreasonable, unreasoning, and unintelligent devotion to
her husband and love for her children, whose unnatural renunciation and forgiveness
have been kept alive in the popular consciousness.

Jashoda is well fed by the mistress as she is the ‘Mother Cow’. She is
confined twenty times in thirty years. At the end of it all, she has suckled fifty kids,
including thirteen of her own. Jashoda thereby earns a living not only for herself but
for her entire family dependent solely on her earnings.

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But after the demise of the Haldar Mistresses, her grandchildren are swept
off by the evil wind of family planning. Jashoda understands that her usefulness has
ended not only in the Haldar house but also for Kangali. He has shifted his love to
another woman, Gopali and Shoda is reduced to the state of a mere servant. She also
begins to feel a strange in her breasts; the top of her left tit has grown red and hard
like a stone. The nipple has shrunk, her armpit is swollen. The doctor knows it is
breast cancer and probably because she has borne twenty children and suckled nearly
fifty. She cries, “My lap was never empty, if this one left my nipple, there was that
one, and then the boys of the Master’s House. How I could, I wonder now! (Devi
2010: 65)

Seeing Jashoda’s broken, thin suffering from even Kangali’s selfish body and
instinct and belly-centered consciousness remembers the past and suffers some
empathy. The Haldar sons who do away. There is little hope of her survival since she
is in the secondary stage of interaction and continuous fever. The doctors put her on
sedatives and she hangs on about a month in the hospital.

Jashoda has now no visitors since the stench in the room is insufferable. Even
Kangali stops coming and he has rejected her the moment the doctors have declared
that there is little hope. The scores on her breast keep mocking her with a hundred
mouths and a hundred eyes. She moans spiritlessly, “If you suckle you are a mother,
all lies! Nepal and Gopal don’t look at me, and the Master’s boys don’t spare a peek
to ask how I am doing”. As she lies discarded by all her children and milk-children,
dying of breast cancer, she makes a crushing discovery both about her pathos and
ethos. She has been ruthlessly exploited by all kinds of people-her children, her milk-
children, her husband and her master’s. There is nothing glorious about her mother
image and it is only an effective ploy to exploit her.

Gradually Jashoda’s left breast bursts and becomes like the crater of a
volcano. Yet neither her biological children nor the thirty others she has nursed are
present by her hospital beside when she dies, “Jashoda thought, after all, she had
suckled the world, could she then die alone? … One must become ‘Jashoda’ if one

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suckles the world. One has to die friendless, with no one left to put a bit of water in
the mouth’’. (Devi 2010: 73)

Jashod’s body lies in the hospital morgue for a night and there is none to
claim it. Next day it is cremated by an untouchable and Mahasweta Devi concludes
the story with a poignant statement, “Jashoda was God manifest, others do and did
whatever she thought. Jashoda’s death was also the death of God. When a mortal
masquerades as God here below, she is forsaken by all and she must always die
alone”. (Devi 2010: 74)

Gayantri Chakravorty Spivak locates the story of The Breast-giver firmly

with the cocoon of subaltern history. As she states, Mahasweta Devi herself saw the
novel’ as a “parable of India after decolonization” (Devi 2010: 77) where Jashoda
becomes a mother-by-hire, exploited and abused by everyone, but more especially
the economically affluent socially emerging nouveau-riche, petit-bourgeoisie class of
Indians.

“If nothing is done to sustain,nothing given back to her, and if scientific help
comes too late, she will die of a consuming cancer” (Devi 2010: 77-78). The
motherhood and its subjects, far from being caring and considerate, turn into all-
devouring, exploiting predators, and it is the subaltern, gendered woman – in her role
as wife, mother, daughter, who becomes its greatest victims.

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Behind the Bodice

Behind the Bodice (Choli ke Pichhe), the last story in the "Breast" series is
about a dalit migrant labor Gangor's wrath and resistance against her exploiters. One
day when she was breast feeding her baby, a professional photographer Upin took a
photo of her stunning breasts and sold the photos without acknowledging what might
be the result of it. From the cash he earned by offering the photographs, he provided
for Gangor as and when he took photos. Since he was a photographer, he was excited
and took some natural photographs. By observing the photographs numerous men
moved towards her and she was demolished by them. The people who ruined her
incorporated a police man, a worker contractor thus numerous others. She was
manhandled and exploited, and later she ended up being whore.

Mahasweta Devi opens the story with her trademark tongue, talking about the
colossal, furor over a 'national problem' of that year-1993. This serioussecret
trampled upon other non-issues:

When it became a national issue … crop failure – earthquake,

everywhere clashes between so-called terrorists and state power and
therefore killings the beheading of a young man and woman in
Haryana for the crime of marrying out of caste, the unreasonable
demands of Medha Patkar and others around the Narmada dam,
hundreds of rape-murder-lock up torture etc. non-issues which by
natural law approached but failed to reach highlighting in the
newspapers – all this remained non-issues. Much more important than
this was choli ke pichhe – behind the bodice. (Devi 2010: 134-35)

As Gayatri Spivak observes the aboriginal Dopdi and the migrant proletarian
Gangor are the subjects of resistant rage. Although the power of Gangor’s resistance
and rage is worked out more explicitly than Dopdi’s, the staging of the provenance
of her name is interestingly obscure. ‘Ganagauri’ as the origin of ‘Gangor’ is a bit of
documentation offered by the most problematic character in ‘Behind the Bodice’

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Shital Mallya, Upin’s wife. She is a ‘new’ Indian woman, the mountain-climbing
individualist in a liberated marriage, and an official interpreter for ‘The Festival of
India’. It is however, quite certain that her explanation, given in times of contempt to
an ‘unclutured’ Indian, is ridiculously wrong. “Gangor? You mean Gangor?
Gangauri? … The Gangor festival takes place in Rajasthan, Ganga worship, Goddess
Ganga. Strange! The Ganga River does not run through Rajasthan. Even large rivers
… The name Gangauri has nothing to do with the river Ganga as Shital Mallya has
suggested”. (Devi 2010: 140-141)

'Choli ke Pichhe' was the title of a well known song in a Hindi film released
in 1993. Along these lines everybody got occupied to discover what was there:
national media, censor board, freed anti-bra girls, TV slots, all the religious
gatherings and government officials. In the story, a similar obsession of Upin, a
nomad pro picture taker causes Gangor's disaster and his own particular bizzare end.
Gangor's statuesque breasted rustic lady, is first observed with her breast
imprudently pushed into the child's mouth. Her group has come to Jharoa searching
for work in the kiln for light blocks and tiles. Upin's camera catch's "the cleavage of
her Konarak chest, the resplendent breasts like the cave paintings of Ajanta, against
the backdrop of the sky" (Devi 2010: 142-143), and the photos as normal bring him
best rates abroad and at home.

Gangor's statuesque bosoms get the male look of the meandering photo-
journalistUpin, "No he can't forget those mammal projections. It has become a
seismic upheaval in his brain" (Devi 2010: 143). He doesn't know why Gangor and
her common most complex sweat organs or chest has turned his head. May be, it is
not a bosom favored by fluid silicone like that of Shital, yet by one means or another
a fear for their wellbeing creeps in. He confesses his fear to his friend, “Upin was
stony silent. Won’t keep it … can’t keep it, Ujan … can’t keep such a bodyline …
not a thing will remain – do you realize that the breasts of the girls at Elora are
eroding? Gangor is fantastic! (Devi 2010: 144)

He intuitively feels that Gangor and her chest are endangered and somehow
he must rescue Gangor. His sense of emergency takes him once again to Jharoa. But

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he is rudely shocked to see the consequence of the ‘fame’ his pictures brought to
those breasts. The Caretaker goes on:

You ruined her with your pictures Sir, otherwise

how would she dare? … Gangor made everyone sin
against God … women have to be care in Shiva’s
world. You are punished if you don’t understand this.
The police came here because of the girl so many
times … so many times … when the girl doesn’t
understand the police are men too, they will craze if
you tease them. (Devi 2010: 149-50)

Gangor has been exploited by the police, the labor contractor and others, and now
she has become a whore and an alcoholic. Upin becomes guilt-ridden:

Somewhere a feeling of vulnerability, for some

time now an obsession has been spinning him like a
top. Suddenly he feels he is alone in a place like this –
he is alone everywhere. To live in such solitude, to
have denied the natural demands of life so much was
perhaps not right. Gangor’s developed breasts are
natural, not manufactured. Why did he first think they
were the object of photography? Why did it seem that
chest was endangered? (Devi 2010: 152)

In order to preserve the breast as aesthetic object or implant is to overlook its

value-coding within patriarchal social relationship: it is ‘natural’ that men should be
men. It is therefore natural that women should be modest, and not provoke, “by
making the living breast dance” (Devi 2010: xiii). In the Introduction to Breast
Stories, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak states, “Upin made Gangor self-conscious about
the unique beauty of her breasts, without any thought of the social repercussions. His
political correctness ended with personally not lusting after Gangor’s breasts: ‘Learn
to praise, and respect a beautiful thing, he chides”. (Devi 2010: xiii)

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Upin has made a mistake in assuming that Gangor’s chest is no more than the
object of photography and unwittingly triggered off a train of violence against it. So
with a great sense of emergency, he resolves that he must rescue Gangor at least
now.

After a desperate search, he finds her and a sharp experienced smile blooms
on Gangor’s lips on seeing Upin. “She pushes away some man’s hands. Says, the
Camera-Sir has been going around for me for a long time, Contractor. Today he’s
my client” (Devi 2010: 153). When he asks, “you are doing whore work, Gangor?”
pat comes the reply “What’s it to you, son of a whore?” (Devi 2010: 154). In order to
be assured of her breasts safety and security, hesitantly Upin asks, “You … take off
… your blouse …” (Ibid). Gangor breathes hard and says in voice ragged with anger,
“Don’t you hear? Constantly playing it, singing it, setting the boys on me … behind
the bodice … the bodice … choli ke pichhe … choli everything from your pocket
…” (Ibid). As Gangor takes off her blouse and throws it at Upin, what he stares at is,
“No breasts. Two dry scars, wrinkled skin, quite flat. The two raging volcanic craters
spew liquid lava at Upin – gang rape … biting and tearing gang rape … police … a
court case … again a gang rape in the lock up … now from Jharoa to Seopura … the
contactor catches clients … terrorizes a public … plays the song, the song … ” (Devi
2010: 155)

Stunned at the acknowledgment of what he has unwittingly, yet irresponsibly

created, Upin is dying insane and keeps running along the rail-tracks to his death.
The story is an intense scrutinize of kindness without duty of the favored for the
subaltern. Devi quietly diagrams the limits of negligible positive attitude, an
intermittent subject in her works.

To conclude, all these female protagonists of Mahasweta Devi are casualties

of the socio-political, economical and patriarchal framework. In engraving women’s
resistance, in what one could call a female non-verbal communication, Mahasweta
Devi arranges these stories in a continuum with her other work which calls upon the
protagonists to question stereo-epitome. The breast, women’s wailing and their
assault – traits viewed as basically female and therefore parts of the discourse of

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 Voicing the Voiceless: Breast Stories (Draupadi, Breast-giver and Behind the Bodice)

oppression – are utilized by Mahasweta Devi to challenge this very oppression. Her
stories bring to the surface not just the wretchedness of the totally disregarded tribal
individuals, additionally verbalize the oppression of women in the society.

In Devi's short stories women are about to dismiss the social

confinements,advance by wiping out the apparent liabilities of being a woman. These
protagonists from the short stories make a type of resistance that is subversion of
oppressive sex and sexual attribution.

Works Cited

64 A Study of Socio-Political Conditions in the Selected Works of Mahasweta Devi

 Voicing the Voiceless: Breast Stories (Draupadi, Breast-giver and Behind the Bodice)

Bagchi, Jasodhara, ed. Indian Women: Myth and Reality. Sangam Books (India)
Private Limited, 1995. Print

Chakravorty, Radha. Mahasweta Devi: A Luminous Anger in Feminism and

Contemporary Women Writers: Rethinking Subjectivity. New Delhi:
Routledge, 2008. Print.
Devi, Mahasweta. Breast Stories. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spiyak. Calcutta:
Seagull Books, 2010. Print.

Hameed, Syeda. S. Sexual Abuse in Revenge: Women as Targets of Communal

Hatred. The Violence of Normal Times: Essays on Women’s Lived Reality.
Ed. Kalpana Kannabiran. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2005.

Jyothi, Rani T., and K. Katayani. Violence on Women in the Context of

Indian Political Economy: A Study of Mahasweta Devi’s Sri Sri
Ganesh Mahima and Draupadi. Kakatiya Journal of English Studies. Vol.
18, (1998). 123-132. Print

Shridharani, Krishnalal. My India, my America. New York, Duell: Sloane and Pearce,
1941. Print

Spiyak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Trans. Bashai Tudu. By Mahasweta Devi. Calcutta:

Seagull Books, 1990. Print

--- . ‘Breast- giver’: For Author, Teacher, Subaltern, Historian. By Mahasweta Devi.
Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2010. Print.

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