Champion of the dispossessed

The world of Bengali literature has lost a giant in Mahasweta Devi, who introduced a fresh style of short sentences that defied the complex structure handed down by literary tradition. The loss is, however, greater for India’s tribals whose cause she espoused like her own, and without the pretentiousness of some vocal crusaders of today who like to believe they are champions of the oppressed but find themselves unable to make the sacrifices to live like them — in true simplicity. As life’s innings go, hers was a long one, made rich by its experiences as well as the words she wrote to battle the injustice and exploitation faced by the marginalised tribals and the dalits.

Mahasweta Devi was said to have had no equal for sheer independence as a writer as she neither belonged to the Red Cultural Revolution crowd of the extreme Left, although she was a die-hard Communist, nor those less radical and more favoured by the Establishment. The awards she won — for instance, the Magsaysay and the Padma Vibushan — sat lightly on her as her life mission was all about the adivasis, who she brought into the literary limelight long before espousing the cause of the dispossessed became a formula for winning international awards. She took it up as an advocacy whose principles were greater because its larger aim was to build an equitable society even as it strove to bring about justice and basic rights to the most neglected segment of the population. Her wish to be buried may not have been fulfilled but her soul will rest in peace for having done so much for people who lived very close to nature.