Struggle
of Class and Conflict of Ideas as Seen from the Familial to Social Surface in
Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084: A
Marxist Study
Dipak Giri
Assistant
Teacher of English
Katamari High
School (H.S.)
West Bengal,
India
Abstract:
Translated into
English by Samik Bandyopadhyay from its original Bengali version, entitled as Hajar Chaurasir Ma, the play Mother of 1084 tries to present the
class struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat on the dramatic
surface against the background of Naxalite Movement of 1970s. The expansion of
the peasant revolution into a mass revolution against the Neo-colonial
bourgeois capitalist government in March, 1967 in Naxalbari of Darjeeling
District of West Bengal serves as the dramatic background behind all the action
in the play. The paper endeavours to bring into surface this widespread class
struggle that had taken the form of mass revolution during the time impacting
almost every sphere of life from familial to social. The paper as a whole not
merely discusses how Mahasweta Devi presents the class struggle and conflict of
ideas but also shows how sympathetic Devi had during her life-time for the
Naxalites to whom she had earnestly tried to win the heart of majority. The
paper discusses Devi’s humanistic standpoint from both social and political
perspectives. With blend of literature and history, the paper has tried to
infuse realism into the mass revolution of 1970s in order to seek plea for the
Naxalites taken by majority as social enemy.
Keywords: Class; Conflict; Marxist;
Society; Naxalite; Movement
The very opening line
of the legendary text The Communist
Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “The history of all
hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles” (Marx & Engels 473) is the hard
reality that is at the core of all existing and pre-existing human societies.
Even though the writers have died hundred years ago, the legacy still
continues. This continual and endless process of struggle has been going on
since the very origin of our civilization. One class of our society is always
made victim by another oppressive bourgeois class and this sub-ordination of
one class of people to another class turn one class to the state of
proletariat. “Oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one
another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that
each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,
or in the common ruin of contending classes” (ibid 474). In Marxism, human society combines of two
classes- ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’. The ‘superstructure’, the bourgeois holds
the rein of the ‘base’, the proletariat who, in spite of being behind all human
productions, is denied to freedom of life. The injustice and domination of the
‘superstructure’ over the ‘base’ is well-illustrated in Bernard Shaw’s most
celebrated essay “Freedom”:
If
you like honey you can let the bees produce it by their labor, and then steal
it from them. If you are too lazy to get about from place to place on your own
legs you can make a slave of a horse. And what you do to a horse or a bee, you
can also do to a man or woman or a child, if you can get the upper hand of them
by force or fraud or trickery of any sort, or even by teaching them that it is
their religious duty to sacrifice their freedom to yours. (Shaw 120)
Translated
into English by Samik Bandyopadhyay from its original Bengali version entitled
as Hajar Chaurasir Ma, the play Mother of 1084 tries to present the
class struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat on the dramatic
surface against the background of Naxalite Movement of 1970s. The expansion of
the peasant revolution into a mass revolution against the Neo-colonial
bourgeois capitalist government in March 1967 in Naxalbari of Darjeeling
District of West Bengal serves as the dramatic background behind all the action
in the play. As per the ideals of Marxian class struggle, the rebels worked to
realize the movement forming a new party CPI (ML) out of CPI (M) and followed
the footsteps of Marxist leaders to establish the socialism in place of
capitalism. This was a time of crisis when “the middle class is fast losing its
balance, and going over to the other class”, and “a brutally complacent and
ignorant richer class has come into being” (Bandyopadhyay viii-ix). It gave
birth to two classes which came in conflict to each other. As a socially
responsible writer, Mahasweta Devi could not overlook the spirit of the time
and took her pen to meet the demands of the time and the result was her Mother of 1084. “After thirty one years
of independence, I find my people still groaning under hunger, landlessness,
indebtedness, and bonded labour. An anger, luminous, burning and passionate,
directed against a system that has failed to liberate my people from these
horrible constraints, is the only source of inspiration for all my writing”
(ibid). The success of this celebrated play lies not in giving scattered
information about the revolution but in bringing out the hard realities of the
revolutionists who suffered inhuman tortures at the hand of law and state
machinery.
The
very air of class struggle is felt from the beginning of the play Mother of 1084 and goes on till end. A
voice repeating three times ‘Seventeen January Nineteen Seventy’ in Scene 1 and
the police morgue littered with dead bodies of Brati and his group in scene 2
link the play to the Naxalite Movement of 1970s in which many youth lost their
life in their attempt to bring social change driven by Marxian idealism of
classless society: “ Reference to the Barasat killing in November 1970, when
the bodies of eleven young men with their hands tied behind them, were found
slaughtered on the road to Barasat, and the Baranagar killing on 12 August 1971
when more than a hundred Naxalites were hounded out from their dens and
decapitated and killed in broad daylight, connect the killing of Brati and his
group to the organized massacre of the Naxalites in 1970-71, perpetrated by the
police, the party in power, hired assassins, and even parties of the Left
Establishment acting in unholy collision”
(ibid xi). The 1970s was the witness of inhuman and ruthless torture on the
revolutionists by the repressive forces. It was a time when the tide of
revolution reaching from North Bengal to South Bengal covered the entire
Bengal. The revolution that started in northern parts spread like a flame and
reached every nook and corner. Fusillade, massacre and death were common
occurrences. Youth of one locality is forbidden to roam about freely in another
locality. The day Brati visits Somu’s house before the night that follows his
death gives the hint how risky was to move about freely in those days. When
Brati seeks permission for his departure from Somu’s house, Somu warns him:
“Why? Are you dying to get killed? Stay here. I too joined in, Don’t go, dear,
stay here for the night. They were killing the young men of the locality
itself, a stranger would be a surer target” (Devi 10). Ironically Somu’s
warning and denial against Brati’s departure invites an unexpected turn of
event and Brati is killed that night by the hooligans through unexpected
reversal of situation. This hard and shocking realization is well conceived in
the words of Somu’s mother to Sujata, “Who knows, sister? If we had let him go
that night, he might have escaped death” (ibid).
The
play Mother of 1084 chronicles the
time of 1970s, the rise and fall of Naxalites. The movement was started with
the great idealism of Marks that transformation of society can only be possible
by the active participation of majorities against the minorities: “All previous
historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interests of
minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent
movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The
proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot
raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society
being sprung into the air” (Marx & Engels 482). The zeal of revolutionary spirit
was so high among the revolutionists that they openly faced the police fire and
the attacks of the hooligans. There are many references regarding open challenges and fights in the play.
Somu, Bijit and Brati sacrifice their life for great social cause. They face
death as if they are going to marry it holding ‘one another’s hands’ and
‘shouting slogans, ‘Long live…! Long
live…!”(Devi 16) Nandini’s sacrifice is greater than Brati and his
group. She becomes the victim of inhuman police torture at the prison.
“NANDINI. The prison. The solitary cell. The worst torture…Yes, the worst kind”
(ibid 22). She faces “the gleams of
the thousand watt lamps” (ibid 26)
which made her almost blind. Then comes the worst form of torture. Saroj Pal
dishonours her physically. Nandini hints it to Sujata, “I won’t be able to tell
you all that happened after, (Pause). The sores on skin have healed but I’ll
never be normal again” (ibid 25).
Sujata also realizes this hard and unbearable fact that “It’s more
tragic for a living Nandini than for a dead Brati” (ibid). We are left in
surprise seeing Nandini still upright even after all these nightmarish
occurrences. Hopes of sparks are still living inside her. She makes it clear
when Sujata seeks permission of re-arrival in Nandini’s house at the time of
her departure. “NANDINI. No. What do you gain out of coming to me? You live
with your past. I have to harness my present, and think of the future” (ibid 26). Here Nandini appears to be a true and ardent follower of
Marxian ideology. A true Marxist dreams in all situations that a time will come
when society will be transformed from class-division to classless.
The
play Mother of 1084 reveals how a lot
of humanity is living a life of illusion. Majority of people of modern society
believe that the laws and orders regulated by the government are always for the
welfare of majorities but the picture of reality is totally different. These
laws and orders are regulated by few bourgeoisies for the same class of people.
“The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”
(Marx & Engels 475). How people are
lying under the sheet of illusion and betrayal is revealed in Nandini’s speech:
“Betrayal. The prison walls rise higher, new watch towers shoot up, there are
so many young men still in the prisons, and yet a political party will not take
a stand until it has been able to determine how it’ll serve its own interest
and affect its standing with the Centre. Betrayal. The worst reactionaries make
avowals of their sympathy for us, and in the process they spoil our image in
the public eye. Betrayal. We are not allowed the use of the Press, paper,
type-lead to explain our views. And yet there are all those journals that claim
to be sympathetic to our cause. Betrayal. Every supposedly sympathetic piece
tries shrewdly and skillfully to prove us adventurist-romantics. Betrayal. Even
when we were being killed, all the writers and all the periodicals were crying
over Bangladesh, they had nothing to say about West Bengal. And the same ones
now write lamentations about us. Betrayal. And…within the prisons…” (Devi
20-21). This trap of illusion and betrayal is so vast that hardly anyone is
left from it. Proletariat class of people think people involved with the
revolution “hate whatever exists” (ibid 19) and they easily fall upon the trap of illusion and betrayal
laid by few bourgeois. Anindya is among
such people who comes under the temptations of bourgeoisie and betrays Brati
and his group to death. Bourgeoisie class sometimes uses the bait of material
power and benefits to trap the majority of people and its impact proves so high
that they are made easily tempted to. Nandini accepts the fact to Sujata,
“Money, jobs and power didn’t mean a thing to us. But these were the
temptations that seduced those who had joined us only to betray us. You
shouldn’t underestimate the power of those temptations” (ibid). In Mahasweta Devi’s dramatic design Nandini is shown as a
symbol of threat to all those people who are smug and complacent even after
seeing all these injustices. As a Marxist rebel she hurls her sharp arrows of
anger and rage over all mankind during her conversation with Sujata: “How can
you be so smug and complacent? With so many young men killed, so many
imprisoned, how can you wallow in your complacency? It’s your ‘all’s right with
the world, let’s go on nicely’ that frightens me most. How can you carry on
with your pujas, concerts, cultural festivals, film festivals, poetry fests?”
(ibid 26) In her rebellion to all social distinctions
and injustices, Nandini comes between the clever and strategist bourgeoisie and
ignorant and uneducated proletariat favouring one and disdaining other. She
tries to make realize the ignorant masses who find in their actions hatredness
to whatever exists that “behind all our (their) apparent hatred lay a craving
to love and to revere” (ibid 19).
The
class struggle that rose from Naxalbari of Darjeeling district between the land
owners and the peasants soon became a mass struggle in which many young
students irrespective of class division participated. In this regard, Charu
Majumdar, one of the leading leaders of the movement took a crucial role. His
appeal to the students in his article entitled, “The Party’s Summon to the
Today’s Students and Youth” in Deshbrati journal to stand by the peasants
exerted a far-reaching influence. “…in this extremist revolutionary movement,
the educated youth’s association is necessary. The student youth are not only
educated, but they have immense potentiality: courage for sacrifice and power
of adaptability” (Deshbrati, 21st August,
1969). In Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of
1084, Brati and his group are young students. Their social origin varies.
Still, they have same ideals. The ideological bond was so high among the
revolutionists that their class origin did not come in the middle. Brati, a
member of an elite class has the same feeling and sympathy as Somu, a member of
poor refugee has for the helpless peasants. Nandini, Sanchayan, Dipu and Simran
hailing from a high middle class family, Mani and Kushal, members of leftwing
parental origin feel same urge for the poor and exploited class of people as
Somu, Laltu and Bijit, members of apolitical poor refugee family feel for them. In Deshbrati, young students
are not only awakened with revolutionary spirits but they are also invited for
enarmed combat against the bourgeois. “Kill
as many enemies of the poor class possible to take the revenge of our dead
comrade in Srikulum shot down by the bullets of the police, the governmental
dogs” (ibid, 15th January,
1970). In the course of Saroj Pal’s interrogation with Nandini, we come to know
about Nandini and her group’s involvement in arms related activities. We learn
participation of Mani and Nandini in inter collegiate rifle shooting, Nandini’s
strong decision to train up the guerrillas in the village and learn to
manufacture pipe guns with Partha. “…you go to Samiran’s house to collect arms,
and you keep them for Bijit…you learn to manufacture pipe guns with Partha and
another one…” (Devi 23-24).
Laying
bare the hard reality hidden behind the repressive mission of the police to
curb the spirit of revolutionists in the decade of the seventies, the play
shows the greed and selfishness of one section of people representing Bourgeois
sentimentality. The police under the cover of safeguarding people were working
for the Bourgeois class of people at the cost of commoners’ life. It was the
decade of violence and bloodshed, torture and repression. The reign of terror
prevailed all over Bengal. “An encounter with numerous heart rending events
became unavoidable in this decade. The taunt excitement of determination, the
helplessness of the shot arrow that had missed the mark, the self-destructive
structure of the headless ideal, and above all, the watchful, advantage seeking
silence of the larger intellectual elite, and the clever inhumanity of the
state machinery- all these contributed to a cloudy silence that absolutely
choked the decade”(Parichay, 1980).
Saroj Pal, the “bloody cur of police”
defines the mass action of youth revolutionists as “a cancerous growth on the
body of democracy” (Devi 9).
Blinded
by the succession of his promotion in his professional career Saroj Pal hardly
foresees any good result in the action of the revolutionists. He is always on
duty to suppress the mass action, now in one place, now another. For
“recognition of his heroic role in the suppression of the Naxalite revolt”
(ibid), he has got a quick promotion. Forgetting all lesson of humanity he
appears as an inhuman brute while treating with the revolutionists. Words like
human feeling and sympathy have no place in his dictionary. At the time of
interrogating Nandini, his immorality crosses all the bounds. He distorts the
image of manhood which is considered and understood as the protector of
feminine virtue. In a solitary cell of the police station, he tortures
Nandini psychologically showing
photographs of dead Somu, Bijit and Brati and then “bends closer to her, lights
a cigarette, presses the lighted cigarette to Nandini’s cheek” (ibid 25) and even does not hesitate to
dishonor her physically. In real life, Saroj Pal leads a life of intrigue and
hypocrisy. His outward appearance does not match with his inward reality. His
speech and action are unmatched as he says one thing and does another. As a
double-faced intriguer- on one hand, he tries to soothe Sujata and her husband
Dibyanath: “I know, I too have a
mother. No, Mr. Chatterjee, it won’t get into the papers,” (ibid 9) and on
the other hand, taking life of many young revolutionists he has turned
unnumbered mothers childless. The dark and distorted image of police sold at
the hand of few powerful bourgeoisies is made clear when no policeman lodges
the report of Somu’s father when his son Somu and his group including Brati is
struggling against the hooligans as we learn from Somu’s mother on the occasion
of Sujata’s visit at her house:
SOMU’S
MOTHER (Shakes her head). Somu’s father ran all the way. He had such
faith in the police, but they wouldn’t even take down his complaint. They
didn’t do a thing. They only sent their vans when it was all over to collect
the dead bodies. When it was all over he had run to the police headquarters at
Lal Bazar too. (She shakes her head again). They didn’t do a thing. That was
more than he could bear, and he died of the shock. O God! Is there no justice
in this country? God! No justice? He went on and on asking till he was dead.
(ibid 17)
Presenting the
distorted image of police, so called protector of democracy and the rights of
citizen, Mahasweta Devi has exposed the illusive world of misguide principles
in which a lot of humanity are left far from reality due to false self made idealism of some bourgeois
class of people.
Along
with social and public sphere, the play Mother
of 1084 also shows the same picture of Marxist class struggle in the domain
of family. In the domestic sphere, this struggle is not fought as openly as it
is seen in the societal sphere. Still the fire of rebellion is same, rather in
cold and suppressed way. In Dibyanath’s household, Brati’s existence is
overlooked as he has his own ideals contrasted to the rest of the family. There
is also castigation of Sujata from her family only because of her attachment
with her son Brati. This is well-understood through Sujata’s speech:
SUJATA (off). With Brati, they’ve cast
me too in the opposite camp. If Brati had been like Jyoti, or a drunkard like
Neepa’s husband, Amit, or a hardened fraud like Tony, or had run after the
typist like his father, he’d have belonged to their camp. (ibid 9)
Here
the hypocritical self-complacent and self-contented life led by the members of
the Dibyanath’s household comes to its clear revelation in Sujata’s speech.
Untouched from the stream of revolution they are like most of the humanity
leading a self-centered life and alienate from them who live on selfless
idealism. A true Marxist believes in action instead of spending a life of
passivity and inactiveness with other family members in the cosy corner of the
house. Instead of becoming the easy chair critic they are the real heroes of
society who want to bring a social transformation based on the Marxian idealism
of equality through widespread mass revolution. In order to realize their high
idealism, they prefer the path indicated by Chinese Marxist leader Mao Tse-tung
to leading a life of passive onlooker as a home stayer:
A revolution is not a dinner party, or
writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so
refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and
magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one
class overthrows another.” (Tse-tung 2004)
Ironically
people of such high idealism are ill-treated by family members of cheap rated
mentality which measures everything with the scale of power and money. “The
bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced
the family relation to a mere money relation”
(Marx & Engels 476). Confined around the narrow and cheap idealism of the
family circle, both Brati and Sujata
feel a suffocating air of bourgeoisie
sentimentality blowing around us and they feel relief only after escaping from
it. The unwillingness of Brati to stay at ‘home’ which stands for Bourgeois
mentality is clearly expressed in the speech of Nandini while speaking to
Sujata:
NANDINI. Of course. He stayed back home
till the sixteenth of January only to honour your sentiments. Otherwise he
should have left for the base on the fifteenth. (Devi 21-22)
The same conflict of ideas is seen
also in the household of Nandini as we learn from Saroj Pal when he is
interrogating Nandini:
SAROJ
PAL. Fine. (Staring at her.) Do you realize that your parents will have to pay
for your stubbornness?
NANDINI.
I won’t say a thing.
SAROJ PAL. They’ve all left you in the
lurch and are cooperating with us. (Devi 24)
Sujata’s
final speech with which the play Mother
of 1084 comes to an end not only shows the awakening of an apolitical
mother but also gives the social message to the lying and ignorant people to
come in action against injustices and other unsocial practices of the
bourgeoisie class of people. “Why don’t you speak? Speak, for heaven’s sake,
speak, speak, speak! How long will you endure it in silence?” (Devi 31) Driven by rage and anger, she addresses the common folk of people
dead and lifeless corpses, “Corpses, stiffened corpses, all of you!” (ibid) She attacks sarcastically to all those
people who are leading the shadowy existence of still and lifelessness
remaining immovable from all the ill-happenings going on all around keeping
safe distance from those people who are in against of them and sacrificing their
life only for the happiness of others driven by full of life and energy: “Do
the living die, only to leave the world to the dead to enjoy? No! Never!” (ibid)
Sujata’s final speech serves the design of the play, i.e. the awakening
of the ignorant proletariat against the clever and powerful bourgeoisie and at
once brings the final culmination.
Works
Cited
Bandyopadhyay, Samik.
“Introduction”. Mahasweta Devi: Five Plays.
Seagull Books, 1997.
Deshbrati.
21st August, 1969 & 15th January, 1970 issues.
Devi, Mahasweta.
“Mother of 1084.” Mahasweta Devi: Five Plays, Translated by Samik
Bandyopadhyay. Seagull Books, 1997, pp 1-31
Marx, Karl &
Engels, Friedrich. “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. Edited by Robert C.
Tucker, W.W. Norton & Company, 1978, pp. 469-500
Shaw, Bernard.
“Freedom”. Kaleidoscope: Textbook in
English (Elective) for Class XII. NCERT, 2020, pp 119-127
Parichay,
Critical Issue, May-June, 1980.
Tse-tung, Mao. “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement
in Hunan. March 1927” Marxists Internet
Archive. 2004, www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm.