Hunger, Land, and Resistance: Indigenous Oppression in Mahasweta Devi’s Fiction

Abstract

Mahasweta Devi’s fiction gives powerful literary expression to the suffering, resistance, and historical neglect of indigenous communities in postcolonial India. This paper examines her representation of tribal oppression with special reference to “Little Ones,” “Bitter Soil,” “Draupadi,” and “Duoloti, the Bountiful.” Devi presents hunger, land dispossession, state violence, legal injustice, and gendered exploitation as interconnected forms of oppression. Her stories show that tribal suffering is not the result of accident or natural misfortune. It is produced by exploitative systems of governance, development, law, and social power. In “Little Ones,” starvation becomes a visible sign of state neglect and internal colonialism. In “Draupadi,” the violated female body becomes a site of resistance against military and patriarchal violence. In “Duoloti, the Bountiful,” Devi links the exploitation of women with the destruction of land and community life. The paper also discusses Devi’s use of myth, oral memory, and subaltern history to challenge official narratives of progress and development. Her fiction does not present tribal communities as helpless victims alone. It also records their courage, memory, cultural strength, and refusal to disappear. Through her literary and activist vision, Devi exposes the unfinished nature of freedom in India and calls attention to the moral responsibility of literature in confronting injustice.