“Where is the time to sleep?” Orientalism and citizenship in Mahasweta Devi’s writing

Abstract

This article discusses the close relationship between Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi’s literary work and her activism in support of indigenous people in India, and considers the two activities as interventions in the field of law. Devi’s emphasis on the continuity between colonial and postcolonial legal frameworks invites us to look at law as a governing discourse that stigmatized Adivasis. The criminalization of indigenous people via the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) and the presumption that they belonged to a “state of nature” form part of an orientalist bias against the tribals that was legally sustained during colonialism and also through Nehru’s discourses on the modern nation. Through analysis of the short story “Operation? – Bashai Tudu”, where law appears as a non-democratic instrument for governing the poor, and using extracts from a hitherto unpublished conversation between the author and Devi, it argues that Devi’s work can be considered as a crucial analytical tool with which to explore the genealogy of Adivasi marginalization.

Keywords:

• Adivasi
• law
• activism
• Mahasweta Devi
• denotification
• discrimination

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was done with the help of funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement No. 249,379. Moreover, for her time, generosity and wit I thank Mahasweta Devi.

Notes

1. For more details about the case and its reconstruction see Kumar Roy (2011).

2. This article incorporates parts of an interview with Mahasweta Devi that I recorded in her house in Calcutta on 11 September 2011. The inspiration for this article, though, came from a series of conversations with the author that took place between September 2011 and January 2012.

3. Devi’s activism spread awareness of Budhan’s case well beyond Purulia. A play and a theatre company solely formed by denotified tribals were then dedicated to Budhan and carry his name. Henry Schwartz’s Acting Like a Thief (2010) explores the creativity of this initiative against the background of the colonial construction of criminality.

4. During the Empire, forests were a hub for outlaws, dacoits and bandits, so Adivasis were increasingly regarded as thieves. A number of well-known tribal figures that were charged with banditry, such as Tantia Bhil in Madhya Pradesh, have been rehabilitated by more recent historiography as early freedom fighters.

5. My use of the word orientalist here follows Said and differs from its use in the “Anglicist/Orientalist debate” over Indian education. In this dispute over which educational policy to adopt in the colony, Macaulay was the biggest opponent of the Orientalists (see Moir and Zastoupil 1999).‬‬‬

6. Devi has written extensively on the tribals and their ignorance of law, highlighting how this ignorance is exploited by the authorities in cases of land disputes. Her article “Land Alienation Among Tribals” is particularly important in this respect (1997, 99–113).

7. As Bashai affirms: “You can go to court if the jotedar refused to pay your wages. But will you dare? The administration is indifferent. Will you protest? The jotedar is not afraid of the administration” (Devi 1990, 103).