Crusading for A Place in History: A Historicist Reading of Mahasweta Devi’s Selected Fiction

Abstract

Ever since the dawn of critical enquiry, the claims of history and writers of history(ies) had been held under suspension, in favour of alternative truth(s). In the poststructuralist milieu one barely zeroes in on one truth or the absolute truth, but writers like Mahasweta Devi, continually ascertain the claim to ‘unwrite’ the existing history(ies), and rewrite one. She attempts to write the history of those individuals whose existence itself was a hearsay for writers at large and the writers of history(ies) in particular. When Devi took to writing, writing of individuals from the marginal lot was a rare phenomenon. National narratives were held in glory. It took her indomitable spirit and a fighter’s instinct to write for the tribals. All of her narratives are directed towards the most important claim and right of the tribals – to be in history, to have history and to write history.