Summary
The first part is written in the form of a dossier: Dopdi Mejhen is twenty-seven and wanted by police. Her husband was Dulna Majhi, now deceased. Information is wanted about this “most notorious female.” She and her husband were the main culprits in murdering Surja Sahu and his sons, and managed to escape capture by pretending to be dead during Operation Bakuli, an attack by Special Forces. The two went underground and stories of the “hair-raising details” of the “black-skinned couple” and other rebels circulated.
Captain Arjan Singh is frustrated and feels like Dopdi has exacerbated his diabetes. He has so “irrational a dread of black-skinned people that whenever he saw a black person in a ballbag, he swooned, saying ‘they’re killing me,’ and drank and passed a lot of water.”
He meets with Mr. Senanayak, a Bengali specialist in combat and extreme Left politics. He “knows the activities and capacities of the opposition better than they themselves do.” He touts the value of the Army Handbook, which says all guerilla fighters must be eradicated. Dopdi and Dulna are this type of fighter. Senanayak should not be trifled with; he respects the opposition, though he is trying to get rid of them.
After escaping from Bakuli, Dopdi and Dulna worked at the houses of landowners to inform the killers of everything about the targets. Dulna was killed when soldiers infiltrated the forest and shot him dead. As he was dying he yelled out “Ma-ho,” a phrase which flummoxed the Department of Defense. The soldiers left his body as bait and hoped that someone would come claim him and they could shoot them, but no one did.
The search for Dopdi now continues. Initially the fugitives were easy to catch, but now they are not. There is not much information about what is happening, about how many there are, how many were killed, if it is worth the expense of keeping the battalion in the forest. It is also unclear how Dopdi fits in. Thus, the Operation Jharkhani Forest cannot stop.
Dopdi is walking through the forest. She hears her name and does not respond; she never does, as she is not going by that name now. She was talking to Mushai’s wife earlier, who suggested she run away. Dopdi replied that she has run away so many times, but promised that she will reveal no one’s name. She knows what she would do if she is tortured, which is to bite off her own tongue.
She is walking and hears “Dopdi!” again, but she is Upi Mejhen now. Her mind flicks through who it might be. Maybe it is someone from Bakuli, as only Mushai and his wife know her real name here.
She thinks of Operation Bakuli and the corrupt Surja Sahu. His house was surrounded at night and the rebels tied him up and he loosed his bowels. Dulna wanted the first blow because his “great grandfather took a bit of paddy from him, and I still give him free labor to repay that debt.” Dopdi said she would be next and would pull out his eyes because “His mouth watered when he looked at me.” Then messages came that the army was near. There was burning, guns, flame throwers, men women and children dying, Dulna and Dopdi crawling on their stomachs to escape. They made it to Bhupati and Tapa’s house. It was decided they would work around the forest belt. Dulna told Dopdi it would mean they would not have family and children, but they could wipe out landowners, moneylenders, and policeman someday.
Dopdi keeps walking. She only wants to make it to the forest. It will be time to change hideouts soon. She thinks with pride of her forefathers, the “pure unadulterated black blood of Champabhumi.”
It is two miles to the camp. The footsteps maintain their distance but are still following her. She decides she will not try to lose him or outrun him in the forest, this “fucking jackal of a cop, deadly afraid of death.” She cannot go to the hideout as she has been compromised, but it will be clear to her where Arijit has moved it. Dopdi decides to lead the cop to the burning ghat.
But a moment later lumps of rock stand up and yell out to apprehend Dopdi. Senanayak is elated, for clearly he still knows the enemy well. Yet Dopdi could not trick him, which is bothersome. Dopdi raises her arms and her face to the sky and ululates “with the force of her entire being” and “the echo of the call travels far.”
She is apprehended at 6:53pm and taken to the camp. Senayayak tells his men to “make,” or rape, her. She wakes from a daze and feels her arms and legs tied to posts. She has no gag but is incredibly thirsty. Her vagina is bleeding and her bottom and waist are sticky. She does not know how many men came. Her breasts are raw and her nipples torn. She hopes for a moment that she’s been left for the foxes to devour but she hears more men. They come to her and rape her again.
Morning comes and she is brought to the tent and a piece of cloth is thrown over her body. A man comes in and orders her to Burra Sahib’s tent. She stands, and instead of drinking the water brought to her, pours it on the ground. Instead of wearing the cloth, she tears it with her teeth. The man thinks she has gone crazy and runs for orders.
There is a commotion and Senanayak walks out and is surprised to see Draupadi walking naked towards him with her head held high. The “nervous guards” are behind her. He is about to bark out to ask what this is, but she comes closer with her hands on her hips and laughs that she is Dopdi Mejhen, the object of his search, and he told his men to rape her and they did.
Senanayak asks where her clothes are and the men say she tore them. Draupadi shakes with laughter and in a terrifying voice emanating from her bleeding lips, asks what the use of clothes is—they can strip her, but they cannot clothe her again. She spits a bloody gob on his shirt and says “There isn’t a man here that I should be ashamed. I will not let you put my cloth on me. What more can you do? Come on, counter me—come on, counter me—?”
She pushes her “mangled breasts” on Senanayak and “for the first time Senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid.”
Analysis
“Draupadi” is one of Mahasweta Devi’s most acclaimed short stories. 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.
To begin, Devi’s story and its titular heroine are named for a heroine of the Indian epic The Mahabharata; the wife of Surya Sahu bestows this name on Dopdi, a move which literary critic (and the translator of this story) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak notes is “the usual mood of benevolence felt by the oppressor’s wife toward the tribal bond servant.” The original Draupadi has five husbands, the Pandavas, which is against Hindu law. The men lose everything in a game of dice with their cousins, the Kauravas, and Draupadi, being one of their last possessions, is dragged into court and ordered to be stripped and humiliated. Draupadi prays and Lord Krishna intervenes, preventing the humiliation.
The second thing to note initially is that Dopdi has joined the Naxalites, an armed rural rebellion. The tribes in India are Austro-Asiatic and live an agrarian life in the forests; they have long been exploited and exiled. Dopdi is, as Arunima Ray notes, “not romanticized by Mahasweta . . . she is a normal woman who loves her husband and enjoys ordinary and mundane things of life. But she is an intelligent and determined woman who has experienced exploitation and wants to do away with it. She is a trained guerrilla fighter and adept at self-concealment.”
Devi renders Dopdi as a “racialized recreation” of the Mahabharata tale, Cielo G. Festino and Lilim Christina Marins write, for “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.” This is clearly demonstrated in Captain Arjan Singh’s fear of Dopdi and Dulna: “Learning from Intelligence that the above-mentioned ululating and dancing couple was the escaped corpses, Arjan Singh fell for a bit into a zombielike state and finally acquired so irrational a dread of black-skinned people that whenever he saw a black person in a ballbag, he swooned, saying ‘they're killing me,’ and drank and passed a lot of water.” Dopdi’s “black” skin further marginalizes and others her to Singh and Senanayak.
Dopdi’s subjectivity is suggested throughout the story, but it is her act of resistance at the end that sees her truly embodying her subjecthood. Senanayak orders his men to rape her, and then to bring her before him, clothed. She throws aside the cloth, refusing to put it on, and asserts herself before all of the men: “Draupadi's black body comes even closer. Draupadi shakes with an indomitable laughter that Senanayak simply cannot understand. Her ravaged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is as terrifying, sky splitting, and sharp as her ululation, What's the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man? She looks around and chooses the front of Senanayak's white bush shirt to spit a bloody gob at and says, There isn't a man here that I should be ashamed. I will not let you put my cloth on me. What more can you do? Come on, counter me-come on, counter me-? Draupadi pushes Senanayak with her two mangled breasts, and for the first time Senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid.” Akshaya Ramesh explains that “Draupadi looks like a victim but acts like an agent. Indeed, the binary of victim and agent falls apart as Draupadi effectively separates violation from victimhood. As she stands insistently naked before her violators, Dopdi manages to wield her wounded body as a weapon to terrify them.”
Spivak and Festino/Marins assess the importance of Dopdi’s action and its relation to the ancient Draupadi. Spivak says “It would be a mistake, I think, to read the modern story as a refutation of the ancient. Dopdi is (as heroic as) Draupadi. She is also what Draupadi—written into the patriarchal and authoritative sacred text as proof of male power—could not be,” and Festino/Marins write that through Dopdi’s refusal to let the rapes weaken her or to capitulate to anything that erodes her humanity and subjectivity, “Dopdi rejects the values of dominant and patriarchal society, which leaves the aggressor confused and speechless, and transforms her into a superior being. She becomes a sign that the police officer is unable to translate. The rewriting of the Indian epic through the recreation of Draupadi as Dopdi can be understood as Mahasweta Devi’s tribute to Tribal women.”
