Subaltern Defiance in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi: A Re-assessment of Political Vision

  • Unique Paper ID: 190209
  • PageNo: 3876-3881
  • Abstract:
  • Mahasweta Devi is one of the most distinguished writers of India. She writes a large number of plays, short stories and novels. In her writings she portrays women as victims of the politics of gender, class and caste. She writes on the rights of the marginalized and the empowerment of women. This paper examines Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi as a powerful literary and political statement that redefines resistance through the figure of Dopdi Mejhen, a tribal woman caught in the violence of state oppression. This article attempts to evaluate the resistance to the ethnic and gender subalternity portrayed by Mahasweta Devi’s story Draupadi. By portraying Dopdi’s journey from a hunted rebel to a fearless symbol of defiance, Devi exposes the complex intersections of gender, caste, class, and political power in contemporary India. The analysis highlights how Dopdi’s violated body becomes both a target of patriarchal and military brutality and, ultimately, a site of radical empowerment when she refuses to submit to her oppressors. Through feminist and postcolonial perspectives, the article reassesses Devi’s political vision, revealing her commitment to giving voice to the subaltern and challenging dominant structures of authority. Draupadi thus emerges not only as a critique of systemic violence but also as a transformative narrative that asserts the agency, dignity, and resistance of marginalized women.

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Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{190209,
        author = {Usha Ruidas},
        title = {Subaltern Defiance in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi: A Re-assessment of Political Vision},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {8},
        pages = {3876-3881},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=190209},
        abstract = {Mahasweta Devi is one of the most distinguished writers of India. She writes a large number of plays, short stories and novels. In her writings she portrays women as victims of the politics of gender, class and caste. She writes on the rights of the marginalized and the empowerment of women. This paper examines Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi as a powerful literary and political statement that redefines resistance through the figure of Dopdi Mejhen, a tribal woman caught in the violence of state oppression. This article attempts to evaluate the resistance to the ethnic and gender subalternity portrayed by Mahasweta Devi’s story Draupadi. By portraying Dopdi’s journey from a hunted rebel to a fearless symbol of defiance, Devi exposes the complex intersections of gender, caste, class, and political power in contemporary India. The analysis highlights how Dopdi’s violated body becomes both a target of patriarchal and military brutality and, ultimately, a site of radical empowerment when she refuses to submit to her oppressors. Through feminist and postcolonial perspectives, the article reassesses Devi’s political vision, revealing her commitment to giving voice to the subaltern and challenging dominant structures of authority. Draupadi thus emerges not only as a critique of systemic violence but also as a transformative narrative that asserts the agency, dignity, and resistance of marginalized women.},
        keywords = {Political, Subaltern, Tribal Women, Violence, Patriarchal, Empowerment, Post-colonial Perspective, Marginalized.},
        month = {January},
        }

Cite This Article

  • ISSN: 2349-6002
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 8
  • PageNo: 3876-3881

Subaltern Defiance in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi: A Re-assessment of Political Vision

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