Mahasweta Devi is one of India s foremost literary figures, a prolific and best-selling author in Bengali of short fiction and novels, and a deeply political social activist who has been working marginalized communities for decades.
"Mother of 1084," one of Devi s most widely read works, was written in 1973 74, during the height of the Naxalite agitation a militant communist uprising that began, like the leftist youth movements in many parts of the world, in the late 1960s and was brutally repressed by the Indian government, leading to widespread murder of young rebels across Bengal. This novel gives form to the trauma of a mother who awakens one morning to the shattering news that her son is lying dead in the police morgue, reduced to a mere numeral: Corpse No. 1084. This awakening propels her on a journey of discovery, in the course of which, struggling to understand her son s revolutionary commitment as a Naxalite, she recognizes her own alienation as a woman and a wife from the complacent, hypocritical and corrupt feudal society her son had rebelled against.
Written in Devi s uniquely hard-hitting yet sensitive prose, "Mother of 1084" is an insightful exploration of the complex relationship between the personal and the political and a significant milestone in India s feminist literary landscape. In 1998, it was adapted into a feature film, "Hazaar Chaurasia Ki Maa," by one of India s best-known film-makers, Govind Nihalani.
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