Empowering the Subaltern: A reading of Mahasweta Devi’s After Kurukshetra

Abstract

Mahasweta Devi’s writings are mostly premised on the project of lending space and voice to the unacknowledged presences of the society. Her task is that of retrieving the silences from the grand narratives of history. After Kurukshetra, comprising three stories that imaginatively recreate certain segments of the epic- too, is no exception. In these stories she has attempted a revisionist reading of the Mahabharata, by bringing to the fore the perspectives of a marginalized section of the society. Her short stories attempt a counter historical depiction of the epic through the eyes of women who are also underclassed, thereby debunking the patriarchal brahminic discourse of the Mahabharata. In these stories Devi has not only granted them space but has also accorded them a superior status. The present paper would like to explore the strategies Devi has employed not only to articulate the silenced peripheries but also to give these dispossessed women an edge over their social superiors by virtue of their very marginalization.

Keywords

• subaltern
• epic
• women