Conflict of the Unheard Voices: A Study of Mother of 1084 | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

In this age of hyper-active awareness, there are some chances for an issue to be lost in the limelight of some highly discussed issues but being an important and stubborn torch bearer in the pan-Indian literary world, Mahasweta Devi does not allow any of the ideas that she observes in the society to be highlighted to lose it in the obscurity, merely because it is not much discussed by the majority of the writers. Mahasweta Devi in her play Mother of 1084, takes a view on a complex issue, conflict in human heart whether to go with intense human feelings or to go with much trodden path of pragmatic wisdom which kills human feelings in the name of discilpline, peace and order. Mahasweta Devi aptly presents the picture of dilemma way of life and basic human kindness. Mahasweta Devi, a social activist, is one of the most noted Bengali writers of this century. Her works often contain what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak calls “Problematic representations of our society.” Her writings are concerned with many grass roots level social movements around the question of bonded labor, persisting feudalism in rural polity, state negligence etc. Mother of 1084 is a dramatization of Mahasweta’s Bangla novel Hajar Chaurashir Ma, in which she provides a documentation of the Naxalite movement of the seventies. The Naxalites raised their voice against the established order, and fought for the cause of the poor, exploited by the landlords, industrialists and bureaucrats. In the battle between Naxlites and establishment many young people are killed and thus leaving their mothers, wives and sisters destitute.