The character of Senanayak in ‘Draupadi’ by Mahasweta devi.

⇒ Mahasweta Devi is probably the most widely translated Indian writer while working in an
indigenous language today. She has taken up the case of the tribal people of India through
political activism and writing. She becomes more and more involved with the lives and
struggle of the underprivileged tribal women and the atrocities inflicted on them. Her works
hint at a particular kind of change in the discourse of sexuality where it no longer oppresses
the marginalized women but becomes the very ground of political liberation. In her famous
short story Draupadi, about the rape and mutilation of a tribal woman called Dopdi, the
protagonist threatens the masculinities of her oppressors by refusing to be ashamed of her
mutilated body forcing them to debiance that exhibits her survey her nakedness with a
defination that exhibits her power and autonomy.

Draupadi is translated by Gayatri Spivak. It opens with an ironic counter pointing of different
modes of official discourse through which the central character, a tribal woman called Dopdi
Mejhen. Devi's Draupadi is a unique recreation of Draupadi of The Mahabharata. Draupadi is
at once a Palimprest and a contradiction. In the story, Dopdi 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 is represented before the readers, between two versions of name Dopdi (tribal
name) and Draupadi (Classical ancient name). The tribalized form Dopdi is the proper
ancient name of the ancient Draupadi. Dopdi in the story is a revised and demythicised
incarnation of the epical Draupadi who belongs to the Santhal tribe. In her reincarnation, she
is placed within in treated to contemporary historical contemporary contexts where ancestry
is treated to Champabhumi of Bengal and her present status is described to that of an
activist the naxalite movement of the 70s, in the area of the northern part of West Bengal, a
fugitive on the run from the police. Dopdi as a woman belonging to the lowest of the low
economic clan, she is subjected to double subalternization*. Mahasweta Devi, once again,
inverts and revises the legacy of cultural nationalism by reinterpreting the story of the most
powerful female character of The Mahabharata, Draupadi, in her Story Draupadi. She
displaces Draupadi from her place in royal kingdom to put her into the forest area of the
Jharkhani belt as a tribal woman. Dopdi gets disrobed in the dark, dreaded, wild world of a
forest where no divine male power comes to her rescue. She is in a place and situation
where she must act for herself. Force, physical violence, verbal abuse and other forms of
aggressions have always been used to control women's bodies and gain their obedience. It
is always ‘the female body’ which is both the object of desire and the subject of control.

Even Mahasweta’s Draupadi raises her voice against extreme torture and atrocities inflicted
on the tribals. Her way of protest is very different and makes it an extremely shocking,
powerful and innovative narrative. She seems to be an ordinary tribal woman but in reality
she has created stir among military authorities who are on massive hunt for her. The Indian
forces succeed in capturing the long wanted Dopdi with the tactics of the Bengali army
officer, Senanayak. She is cross interrogated for an hour but she remains firm and does not
utter a word. Then Senanayak commands the soldier, “Make her. Do the needful”. Finally,
apprehended by the army, Draupadi is tortured and raped throughout that endless night and
mutilated by infinite Iustful men. After the tragic incident, Draupadi does not howl or behave
like a helpless victim. In the morning, she refuses to put on her clothes, tears her*, piece of
her clothes with her teeth, and washes herself. Her behaviour is incomprehensible, rather
strange. In refusing to obey the command, she appears bigger than life to the all too
calculating Senanayak, the army commander. She walks naked towards him in the bright
sunlight, very uplifted and sure. She says “...What's the use of clothes? You can strip me, but
how can you clothe me again? Are You a man?... There isn't 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… Draupadi pushes Senanayak with her two mangled breasts and for the first time
Senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid”. Senanayak feels
absolutely powerless and totally shaken. The story very successfully portrays what actually
happens to women when they are seen as the objects. She stresses on the materiality of
what women are for men; literally a ‘target’ on which they can exercise their power.
Rajeshwasi Sunder Rajan in The Story Of Draupadi’s Disrobing has rightly pointed out-
“Sexual molestation of any form happens to be patriarchy's method of social control rather
than pathology of sexual violence as such”.

Instead of being saved by a miraculous incident, Mahasweta Devi allows multiple rape of
Dopdi. She remains naked at her own insistence. Her nakedness becomes an affront to the
masculinity of the attackers. She does not let her nakedness shame her, torture her,
intimidating her, or let the rape diminish her. This is how, she acquires a new self-definition
and becomes the active maker of her own meaning. She refuses the object of a male
narrative, asserts herself as ‘subject’ and emphasizes on the truth her own presence. She
constructs a meaning which Senanayak simply cannot understand. She becomes that which
resists counter male knowledge, power and glory, therefore he is “terribly afraid”.