Theoretical overview
Draupadi is a story about Dopdi Mehjen, a woman who belongs to the Santhal tribe of West Bengal. She is a Robin Hood-like figure who with her husband, Dhulna, murders wealthy landlords and usurp their wells, which is the primary source of water for the village. The government attempts to subjugate these tribal rebel groups through many means: kidnapping, murder, rape. Dopdi is captured by Officer Senanayak who instructs the army officers to rape her to extract information about the rebel uprising.
The story of Draupadi is set among the tribal’s in Bengal. Draupadi or Dopdi as her name appears in dialect, is a Santhals tribe girl, who is vulnerable to injustice but resist the burnt of social oppression and violence with strong will and courage and even try to deconstruct the age old structures of racial and gender discrimination.
The most interesting part of the story is that Dopdi Mejhen is portrayed as an illiterate, uneducated tribal woman. Yet she leads the politicized life amongst all because she is engaged in an armed struggle for the rights and freedom of the tribal people. Draupadi and her husband Dulna are on the ‘most wanted’ list in West Bengal. They murder wealthy landlords to claim wells and tube-wells which are their main sources of water in the village. They fight for their right to basic means of nourishment. Dulna is eventually gunned down by policemen; however Draupadi manages to escape and begins to operate helping fugitives who have murdered corrupt property owners and landlords, escape. She tactfully misleads the cops who are on her trail, so that the fugitives’ campsite remains a secret. However, she is finally caught and kept in police custody. This is where the story actually begins.
Over the course of a few days, Draupadi is repeatedly raped, deprived of food and water and tortured by multiple officers who state that their orders to “make her” have come from their Bade Sahib, officer Senanayak, in charge of her case.
The Senanayak, an officer appointed by the Government to capture Draupadi and stop her activities. The Senanayak the military official, is a senseless, cruel officer for whom murders, assaults, counter-assaults and sadistic tortures on the tribal activists reaches a point where if anyone is captured, their eyeballs, intestines, stomachs, hearts, genitals and so on become the food of fox, vulture, hyena, wild cat, ant and worm.
After days, the policemen take her back to the tent and tell her to clothe herself, because it is time for her to meet Senanayak. As the guard pushes a bucket of water forward, for her to wash herself, she laughs, throws the water down and tears the piece of cloth on her body. She proceeds to walk out of her tent, towards Senanayak, naked and with her head held high.
Senanayak is taken aback and quickly turn away his eyes from her body. She walks right up to him, hands on her hips and says When Senanayak asks where her clothes are, she replies angrily, that clothes were useless because once she was stripped, she could not be clothed again. She spits on Senanayak with disgust and says
“How can you clothe me? Are you a man? There isn’t a man here, that I should be ashamed.”
She pushes Senanayak with her exposed breasts and for the first time, he is afraid to counter an unarmed woman.
In that moment, though Draupadi has no weapons, she uses her body as her greatest weapon. The body which was abused, tortured and seen as the cause of her downfall becomes the very weapon with which she stands up for herself.
She refuses to let them take advantage of her emotions, even though she has been physically assaulted. Draupadi realizes that raping women does not make the male species ‘masculine’.
In fact, it neutralizes the very purpose. Here Mahasweta Devi presents Draupadi as a strong female character, transgressing sexual orientation and social standards. The story ends with a magnificent final scene in which she faces her abusers, naked and bloody, but fiercely strong.
Theme
The tale of a young tribal woman who is part of the rural resistance against corrupt landowners and government officials, it explores themes of gender discrimination and violence, political resistance, and the status of the subaltern in late 20th-century Indian society. Devi renders Dopdi as a “racialized recreation” of the Mahabharata tale, “If women like Draupadi were doubly colonized by patriarchal society and the colonizer, Dopdi is triply colonized, considering that to these two layers of submission a third one should be added, as she is racialized by the upper castes and classes.”
Explain-gender discrimination, racial discrimination and exploitation of lower caste by upper caste.
Points to remember
- Draupadi is a story about Dopdi Mehjen, a woman who belongs to the Santhal tribe of West Bengal.
- She is a Robin Hood-like figure who with her husband, Dhulna, murders wealthy landlords and usurp their wells, which is the primary source of water for the village.
- Dulna is eventually gunned down by policemen; however Draupadi manages to escape and begins to operate helping fugitives who have murdered corrupt property owners and landlords, escape
- Dopdi is captured by Officer Senanayak who instructs the army officers to rape her to extract information about the rebel uprising.
- The Senanayak the military official, is a senseless, cruel officer for whom murders, assaults, counter-assaults and sadistic tortures on the tribal activists reaches a point where if anyone is captured, their eyeballs, intestines, stomachs, hearts, genitals and so on become the food of fox, vulture, hyena, wild cat, ant and worm.
- After days, the policemen take her back to the tent and tell her to clothe herself, because it is time for her to meet Senanayak.
- As the guard pushes a bucket of water forward, for her to wash herself, she laughs, throws the water down and tears the piece of cloth on her body.
- She proceeds to walk out of her tent, towards Senanayak, naked and with her head held high.
- Senanayak is taken aback and quickly turn away his eyes from her body.
- She spits on Senanayak with disgust and says “How can you clothe me? Are you a man? There isn’t a man here, that I should be ashamed.”
- In that moment, though Draupadi has no weapons, she uses her body as her greatest weapon. The body which was abused, tortured and seen as the cause of her downfall becomes the very weapon with which she stands up for herself.
