Opinion Storyteller vs mob

A students’ production of Mahasweta Devi’s celebrated story, Draupadi, at the Central University of Haryana on September 21 has triggered protests involving sections of the students, ABVP cadres and local villagers in the neighbourhood who claim that it shows the army in poor light. The university has apologised for allowing the play and has instituted a probe against two teachers who helped with the production. The university’s action amounts to insulting the memory of a great writer, celebrated for her powerful articulation of the tribulations experienced by the poor and the oppressed and their resistance. Devi is part of the literary canon. Her writings are bound to be read, studied and staged in campuses. Like most great writers, she wrote to disturb, provoke and reflect. It is shameful that a central university administration chose to cower before the mob. The ABVP students, who reportedly initiated the protests, would have done well to refer to BJP chief Amit Shah’s tweet when she passed away in July. “Her contribution to Indian literature is peerless, Rudali and Hajar Churashir Maa were my personal favourites,” he had tweeted.

Draupadi is a fine example of Devi’s writings. A powerful indictment of state violence, it is the story of Dopdi Mejhen, an Adivasi woman, who is accused of being an extremist and is hunted by the security forces. They brutally rape her but she refuses to be humiliated and confronts her attackers. “You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again!” is her powerful indictment of the men who assaulted her. Years later, Devi’s story, set in the West Bengal of 1970s, was adapted by the Manipuri playwright, H. Kanhailal, for the stage in Imphal, which was under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Four years later, 12 mothers in Manipur stripped off their clothes at the Kangla Fort in Imphal, which housed the security forces, to protest the rape of Thangjam Manorama, who was allegedly raped and killed by Assam Rifles personnel, almost an enactment of the protest of Devi’s Draupadi.

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Down the years, the Draupadi story has been retold and reenacted in many forms, in newer contexts. Pregnant with multiple meanings, artists have found in the Pandava queen’s story a powerful metaphor to highlight the patriarchal nature of political power and the violence it inflicts on women. To interpret Devi’s version narrowly as a criticism of the jawans battling on the border is to misinterpret the writer and misunderstand her art.