From Marginalisation to Resistance: A Critical Study of Subaltern Consciousness in Mahasweta Devi’s Selected Novels

Abstract

Mahasweta Devi occupies a significant position in Indian English literature for her powerful representation of marginalised communities and their struggles against social, economic, political, and cultural oppression. Her writings foreground the lives of tribal and subaltern communities whose voices have historically remained excluded from dominant social and literary narratives. This paper, entitled “From Marginalisation to Resistance: A Critical Study of Subaltern Consciousness in Mahasweta Devi’s Selected Novels,” examines the emergence of subaltern consciousness through the experiences of dispossession, exploitation, poverty, caste and class discrimination, gender oppression, and political marginalisation. The study explores how Devi transforms the experiences of the oppressed into narratives of resistance, agency, and collective consciousness. Her selected novels reveal the systematic exploitation of tribal communities through feudal structures, state institutions, economic domination, and patriarchal practices. At the same time, her characters challenge these structures by asserting their identity, dignity, rights, and agency. Drawing upon the theoretical perspectives of Subaltern Studies, particularly the ideas associated with Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the paper analyses how marginalised subjects negotiate power and articulate resistance within oppressive social structures. The study argues that Devi’s fiction does not merely document suffering but also exposes the mechanisms that produce marginalisation and emphasises the transformative potential of resistance. Her representation of subaltern consciousness therefore creates an alternative space for silenced voices and challenges dominant constructions of history, identity, and power. The paper concludes that Mahasweta Devi’s selected novels remain significant for understanding the relationship between marginalisation, consciousness, resistance, and social justice in contemporary Indian society.