TheDaak review

Breast Stories; By Mahasweta Devi; Calcutta; Seagull Books; 1997; 166pp; ISBN 8170461405; ₹499

by Namrata Gogoi

Breast Stories, originally written in Bengali by journalist-turned social activist and fiction writer Mahasweta Devi, is a short fiction trilogy. Translated into English by feminist critic and postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, it consists of three stories— Draupadi, Breast Giver (Standayini) and Behind the Bodice (Choli ke Pichhe) — conjoined by employing the breast as a common motif, a “concept metaphor” to indict a culture that denigrates women. Draupadi was first published in Agnigarbha (1978), Breast Giver in Stanadayini O Onnanno Golpo (1979) and Choli ke Pichhe in Devi-r Panchasti Golpo (1996).  The central theme is the weaponisation of the breast by Devi’s protagonists to resist their oppressor — a repressive postcolonial state machinery and oppressive societal norms.

Employing mythical and historical engagement as a narrative tool in each of these micro narratives, Devi illustrates how gendered subaltern subjects are oppressed. Breast Stories begins with the story of the eponymous protagonist Draupadi, a re-creation of the episode in the epic Mahabharata in which Draupadi, wife of the Pandavas, suffered the plight of being publicly stripped, only to be rescued by Lord Krishna. In Devi’s story, Dopdi Mejhen, a landless tribal agricultural labourer, is gang raped in custody. What then becomes her source of strength and resistance is her naked, raped body which transforms her from Dopdi to Draupadi, enabling her to stand as what Spivak calls a “terrifying super object”. Draupadi is set in the backdrop of the Indian state’s anti-Naxalite operations against tribals in the 1970s. Devi oscillates between both versions of the protagonists’ names — Draupadi and Dopdi. Spivak in her foreword interprets this as either Dopdi’s inability to pronounce her own name or the non Sanskrit form Dopdi perceived as the proper name for a tribal. 

Unlike monogamy-privileging Scriptural prescriptions, Draupadi from the Mahabharata was “dependent on many husbands” and could therefore be designated as a prostitute, making Dushana believe that there was in fact, nothing improper in bringing her unclothed into the assembly (p. 10). This Draupadi is rescued from being disrobed in court by Krishna. Devi’s Dopdi, on the other hand, is brutally violated. The state machinery in the postcolonial context can perhaps be seen paralleled with Draupadi’s saviour in the Mahabharata. But in Dopdi’s case, the state is no longer the saviour. While the primitive Santhals stood guard over their women’s modesty, the educated, so-called leftist intellectual Senanayak ordered and enabled Dopdi’s rape— a participant in the production of an exploitative society (Spivak). Draupadi had thus, become the victim of a repressive state machinery in a country where “even a worm is under a certain police station” (p. 20). She however, undergoes a transformation, the one  symbolic of her empowerment. 

Overcoming a sense of shame, Draupadi recognises that her body is in fact,  her weapon, her sole possession in an otherwise deprived existence. She refuses to be clothed and walks with her head held high, bare- breasted, towards a perplexed Senanayak. It is from her torn body that she now derives strength, making Senanayak tremble before his “unarmed target” (p. 37).  The tyrant now stands powerless. Here, one can find Devi’s critical exploration of female subjectivity. Moreover, the intersectionality of discrimination or multiple marginalisation experienced by women at the peripheries is also evident in the plot. This is shown as Dopdi is being exploited not only by the upper caste officers but also by her fellow Santhal men Shomai and Budhna, who cannot come to terms with the fact that following Dulna’s death, Dopdi, a woman, would lead them. This theme of entwinement of gendered identity with one’s socio-economic standing is recurrent in each of the three stories.  

Unlike Dopdi and Gangor, Jashoda, the protagonist in Devi’s Breast Giver, is a Brahmin woman— one who has internalised reproduction and nurturing of children as her sole purpose, believing goddess Durga to have bestowed upon her the responsibility of suckling her own children as well as the babies of the rich Halder family for whom she works as a wet nurse. Exploiting the fact that she was now a “professional mother” who has to lactate continuously for the dozens of Haldar babies, Jashoda’s husband too impregnates her seventeen times, making her a “year breeder”(p.54) and a “fruitful Brahmin wife” (p.51). 

Her profession, however, comes to an end as the new generation of Haldars begin to move out of their ancestral home to live as nuclear families. Overwhelmed and shocked, the Haldar matriarch passess away, attaining liberation in a way, while Jashoda continues to suffer. Once Jashoda stops lactating and her breasts are no longer ample, she is neither the object of filial piety, nor of sexual fetishisation. Both her husband and her sons abandon her. None of her “milk sons” come to save her from misery. Stripped of her goddess-like reverence, the Brahmin Jashoda now lives with the low caste maid of the Haldars, who also looks down upon her— an image that powerfully captures the futility of caste superiority when intersected with gender and economic identity.  

Spivak, in her foreword, sheds light on authorial intent, highlighting that Devi seeks to paint in Jashoda, a parable of decolonised India who like a “mother by hire” is being exploited by people who promised to protect her. Jashoda’s breast cancer is a metaphor for the upper class’ exploitative tendencies in the post-colonial context. Moreover, Jashoda’s story highlights how systems of domination and  patriarchy in alliance with capitalism tend to intersect with endless reinforcement of women’s subordination. This theme of the breast as the locus of oppression continues in the third story— Behind the Bodice, albeit with strong overtones of resistance, missing in Jashoda’s narrative.

In Behind the Bodice, the victim protagonist is migrant labour Gangor, her name derived from Ganagauri(Rooted in the term Gana, demos or the people). This story too represents state violence meted out against Gangor by the police and her rage and resistance against it. The breast remains the central motif. Her sexual exploitation becomes the unintended consequence of photographer Upin Puri’s capture and publication of photos of Gangor’s breasts, taken as she was nursing her child. Upin intended, through his photos, a representation of the nation’s pathetic condition. But his project is a non issue for Indian masses preoccupied with uproar over the vulgar Bollywood song Choli ke Pichhe instead — one replete with images of female objectification. When her pictures are circulated, Gangor is viewed with disgust by her  community, and she becomes a victim of the patriarchal gaze of the state agents. Enticed by her bare breasted photos, the local police rape her in custody. She chooses to file a complaint against her offenders. Her rage and resistance is thus more explicit than that of Dopdi. One can note that Devi introduces both Dopdi and Gangor as resistant subjects who challenge a homogenising nation- state myth through an assertion of their identity as subalterns. However, it is only when they experience sexual violence aimed at their degradation and humiliation that their identity as that of a gendered subaltern is underscored. For both of them, nudity is no longer a source of shame and vulnerability but an instrument of agentive resistance. 

In each of her stories, Devi’s interrogation of the exploitation of the marginalised through these graphic narratives vividly etches out prevalent tension between the powerful and the dispossessed. It produces what can be called a powerful emancipatory text. Besides, this piece also adds to public discourse concerning issues of social stratification, structural exploitation and sexual violence. But an important aspect to keep in mind is Spivak’s translation. At certain points in the text, Spivak privileges her own interpretation of what Devi articulates as the intended meaning behind her narrative. In Breast Giver for instance, Spivak calls upon readers to not focus on the subaltern as an allegory of Mother India (Devi’s interpretation) but as a gendered subject. In reading the work thus, one has to be mindful of possible loss of authorial intent owing to the translator’s probable appropriation of the author’s work with her own meaning. On the whole, however, Devi’s fiction presents a trajectory of the gendered subaltern attaining a sense of self-realisation through a process of renegotiation of socio-cultural norms and economic forces, otherwise structured in a manner that limits them. In the Breast Stories, the protagonists are victims of multiple marginalisations but they refuse submission to their plight, presenting instead vivid examples of resistance and rage against their oppressor. Through her method of mobilisation of myth and history, Devi succeeds in producing a work that stimulates the subaltern to assertively question dominant ideology, challenge and change the status quo that exploits and represses them.