Interplay of art and activism in Mahasweta devi’s seeds

Mahaswea Devi is one of the few authors who have an unflinching commitment and passion for the underdog. She has been writing about the dispossessed people of India for fifty years. She not only depicts their lives in her writings but also tries to change the conditions of their lives through various social welfare activities – it is here that her uniqueness as a creative thinker lies. The present paper analyses the connection between the works of Mahasweta Devi and her social work. In fact most of her writings are an outcome of her activism. Seeds, one of her short stories, can be interpreted as a story of rebellion; the seeds which are sown in the form of corpses. In a sense, this story describes an inversion of civilized norpms by the very people who are supposed to sustain them. Violence in turn is suggested the only way out. In this story, the landlord manipulates the political machinery, even getting away with murder, until Dulan Ganju, a poor peasant and the protagonist retaliates at the end by smashing his head with stone. After the killing, Dulan buries the headman under a pile of stones, which is an exact reversal of what the headman got Dulan to do, to the victims of his oppression. This is the natural outcome of years of silence, which should not be equated with acceptance and condoning of suppression of rights. Though Devi does not glorify violence, yet she is deeply aware of the way the mind of an oppressed works. The human spirit has its limitations to bear oppression and victimization and the consequence violence.