ABSTRACT
Mahasweta Devi is a Bengali activist and writer who has worked extensively with tribal communities and Chotti Munda and His Arrow is a novel that chronicles the life of its tribal (Adivasi) protagonist, a famed archer. The reference point is the death of a leader Birsa Munda (in 1900) who has since been appropriated by national history as part of the independence movement when his struggle was against non-tribal Indians as well. In the process the author tries to chronicle the times and demonstrate through her telling that the political processes pertinent to the times (including independence) made no difference to the plight of the community. The tribals distrust the ‘Dikus’ (non-tribals) like peasants, landowners and businessmen who exploit their simplicity and their conditions remain unchanged. The novel concludes with a fictionalised representation of the Emergency under Mrs Gandhi and its end. But what emerges eventually in the vision offered is the novelist’s disinclination to portray change – or conflict within the group – in her effort to make the community seem monolithic and presenting a single face to the world outside. The possibility of tribals joining politics is, for instance, not explored. While unity among the oppressed may be politically desirable, a question that can be put is whether such ‘essentialising’ of the underprivileged tribal serves literature; does it not reduce the agency they are endowed with by the novelist to mere rhetoric.
