A Postcolonial Analysis of Mahasweta Devi's Select Works

Abstract A prominent writer, Mahasweta Devi has penned many books on tribal life, culture, and their struggle. She has worked for the welfare of the tribal community. Among her short stories and novels, the present study emphasises the select works such as the short story “Salt” and the novel Chotti Munda and His Arrow, which have been translated from Bengali into English by Sarmishta Dutta Gupta and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, respectively. The tribal communities in these works witness the oppression and colonial exploitation. They depict the plight of the tribal people under the harsh conditions of society. In the colonial period, tribal people were marginalised and subjugated by both the colonisers and the local landlords. This resulted in the cultural, economic, and social upheaval among the tribal communities of India. Thus, the paper analyses colonialism, exploitation, marginalisation, inequality, injustice, identity, and resistance within the postcolonial framework.