Mahasweta Debi was mother to the oppressed
At a time when the idea of left-wing thought and politics has fallen into utter disrepute, the life and work of Mahasweta Debi reminds us what it once meant to be truly progressive. The Bengali writer who passed away on July 28 at the age of 90 years belonged to that old generation of thinkers and activists who genuinely cared for the downtrodden and the marginalised, and were truly committed to the welfare cause without seeking to spawn a cottage industry that preyed on the poor for profit. No, Mahasweta Debi wasn't part of today's armchair elite that sheds copious crocodile tears in the name of the poor while working out of plush air-conditioned offices or speaking at foreign junkets. Instead, she worked on the ground and travelled extensively around the country. She fought against injustice in every form and in every place, and did so with intellectual honesty and moral integrity of the sort that is becoming increasingly hard to find in today's world. Perhaps, this had something to do with the traditions and ethics she learnt in her early days at Visva Bharati under the tutelage of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. In particular, Mahasweta Debi advocated consistently for tribals long before it was fashionable to do so, and she remained true to the cause till the end. She worked extensively with different tribal communities particularly in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh and her pathbreaking efforts towards the Kheria Sabars of West Bengal's Purulia district earned her the name the title of ‘The Mother of the Sabars’. She also worked closely with the lodha tribals of Midnapore. Both these groups had been notified as ‘criminals' in 1871, and though the tag was abolished upon independence, the stigma remained, and both communities were routinely discriminated against. Mahasweta Debi took up their cause and made real impact on the ground. She also highlighted the legacy of tribal leader Birsa Munda who revolted against the British, in Aranyer Adhikar which won her the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award. Other stellar works in this genre include Choti Munda Evam Tar Tir, Bashai Tudu and Titu Mir.
Of course, it was Rudali and Hajaar Churashir Ma that made Mahasweta Debi a household name outside Bengal, after these were made into award-winning feature films. The former told the compelling tale of Rajasthan’s lower caste women hired to mourn at the funerals of upper caste men while the latter explored the Naxalbari movement from the point of view of a mother who had lost her son to militancy. Notably, Mahasweta Debi was and remained sympathetic to the Maoist cause even though she disapproved of the violence, It goes without saying that her works were intensely political, and yet she never allowed herself to be boxed in with any political party or ideology. Sure, she was leftist and a old-school Communist, but that didn't prevent her from taking on the CPI(M) Government in West Bengal during Nandigram protests.