Of Smoke and Mirrors. Adivasi Women in Postcolonial India

This paper proposes a critical comparative analysis of two literary works dealing with the theme of violence as it is etched in various ways on the bodies of Adivasi women in the Northeastern region of India. Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” and “Behind the Bodice: Choli ke Pichee” (in Breast Stories, 1997) share as common denominator female figures striving against the rapacious legacy of patriarchal feudalism, as well as the opposing forces within the Indian state which frame each other in a game of smoke and mirrors casting confusing shadows over the cultural politics of post-colonial India towards Adivasi women. And while the bodies of tribal women are abused by those who are generally considered violators of tribal land and tradition, they undergo a similar fate even by those purportedly trying to defend or protect them. The women described in Devi’s story, though, seem to provide an important counterpoint to the violence and the tropes used in the production of truth claims by dominant discourses in India. In fact, they articulate an embodied knowledge that appears to reveal the vicious deadlock produced by the erasures and concealments necessary to keep the ideal of the Indian nation legitimate and credible.