Mapping Female Consciousness and Resistance in Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084

Abstract

Mahasweta Devi, renowned for her revolutionary and activist literary vision, has always used her writings to expose social injustices, gender oppression and political violence in postcolonial India. Hers is a unique set of writings, which blend literary aesthetics with social activism. This paper seeks to examine the delineation of female consciousness and resistance in Mahasweta Devi’s play Mother of 1084 through the lens of feminist and subaltern discourse. Set against the socio-political turbulence of the Naxalite movement in 1970s Bengal, the text dramatises the emotional and ideological transformation of Sujata, a middle-class mother whose search for truth after the death of her revolutionary son exposes the violence embedded within patriarchy, state machinery, and bourgeois morality. The study argues that the dramatic structure intensifies the articulation of female subjectivity by foregrounding silence, memory, dialogue, and confrontation as performative acts of resistance. The paper adopts the theoretical framework of postcolonial feminism, drawing upon the ideas of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Judith Butler. Spivak’s notion of the subaltern provides a critical scaffold for analyzing Sujata’s gradual movement from domestic marginalisation to political awareness, while Butler’s theory of performativity helps interpret how gender roles and maternal identity are enacted, questioned, and subverted within the dramatic space. The study explores how personal grief becomes a medium for collective political consciousness. Through close textual analysis, the paper demonstrates that Mother of 1084 redefines motherhood as a site of dissent rather than passive suffering. Sujata’s awakening emerges as a critique of patriarchal nationalism and middle-class complacency, transforming female consciousness into a powerful mode of ethical and political resistance. The study highlights how the dramatic rendering of the text amplifies women’s voices within histories of violence, memory, and social injustice.