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By:

Dr. Kailash Atkare

24 June 2025 at 1:30:23 pm

When a Mother Questions the Nation

In giving voice to a mother who understands her son’s rebellion too late, Mahasweta Devi transforms private grief into collective conscience. This is the centenary year of Mahasweta Devi, remembered as a fearless chronicler of India’s marginalised communities who fused literature with activism. Through stories that unsettled conscience and demanded justice, she gave voice to Adivasis and the oppressed. One of her major works, Mother of 1084, remains a searing indictment of state violence,...

When a Mother Questions the Nation

In giving voice to a mother who understands her son’s rebellion too late, Mahasweta Devi transforms private grief into collective conscience. This is the centenary year of Mahasweta Devi, remembered as a fearless chronicler of India’s marginalised communities who fused literature with activism. Through stories that unsettled conscience and demanded justice, she gave voice to Adivasis and the oppressed. One of her major works, Mother of 1084, remains a searing indictment of state violence, middle-class apathy, and the erasure of dissent in post-independence India. A deeply human narrative, it redefines motherhood as a moral and ethical awakening rather than a merely biological or sentimental role, set against the backdrop of the Naxalite movement of the 1970s. It opens with chilling bureaucratic detachment. Brati Chatterjee, a young revolutionary killed in a police encounter, is reduced to an entry: corpse No. 1084. The title signals the novel’s central concern—the state dehumanises individuals by converting them into statistics, while society colludes in that erasure through silence and conformity. At the heart of the novel is Sujata Chatterjee, Brati’s mother, whose journey from complacent domesticity to painful awareness forms its emotional core. A passive figure in an affluent, patriarchal household, she lives in the shadow of her husband Dibyanath’s careerism and social ambition. Mahasweta deliberately makes Sujata an ordinary middle-class woman, making her transformation all the more powerful. The novel unfolds through memory and introspection rather than linear action. On the tenth anniversary of Brati’s death, Sujata pieces together fragments of his life—his silences, withdrawal, and ideological commitments she failed to understand while he was alive. This retrospective structure sharpens one of the novel’s key themes: in a society unwilling to hear its youth, recognition comes only after they are silenced. Mahasweta’s portrayal of the urban middle class is unsparing. Dibyanath Chatterjee embodies the moral hollowness of a class obsessed with respectability and proximity to power. After Brati’s death, his concern is not grief but the social embarrassment it may cause. Through Dibyanath and his circle, the novel lays bare the chilling complicity of educated, successful citizens who benefit from the system while disavowing responsibility for its violence. The contrast between Dibyanath’s ambition and Brati’s idealism reveals a generational and ethical rupture at the heart of postcolonial India. One of the most striking aspects of Mother of 1084 is its refusal to romanticise revolutionary politics: Brati is no flawless martyr, and the Naxalite movement is never reduced to a simple moral absolute. Mahasweta Devi focuses on the human cost of political struggle: broken families, silenced voices, and unacknowledged sacrifices. Brati’s friend Nandini provides a counterpoint to Sujata’s sheltered existence, giving voice to the rage and despair of a generation shaped by inequality and state repression. Language and narrative technique are central to the novel’s impact. Mahasweta’s prose is stark, restrained, and unsentimental. Violence is never sensationalised; its horror lies in its normalisation. Police brutality, custodial killings, and surveillance appear to be routine mechanisms of governance. This restraint sharpens the novel’s political critique, forcing readers to confront the banality of oppression. The symbolic power of the title resonates throughout the text. Sujata is not only Brati’s mother; she becomes the symbolic mother of all unnamed, unacknowledged victims reduced to numbers. Her awakening is both personal and political. By the end, her quiet refusal to participate in rituals of forgetfulness, family celebrations, and social pretences becomes a radical ethical stance. She cannot bring Brati back, but she can refuse to let his death be erased. Sujata’s awakening also challenges patriarchal notions of motherhood as self-sacrifice without consciousness. Her grief becomes a form of resistance—an assertion of memory against enforced amnesia. Mahasweta thus links private emotion with public protest, suggesting that true political change begins with the courage to remember and mourn honestly. The novel’s relevance has only deepened with time. In an era shaped by debates over dissent, nationalism, and state power, Mother of 1084 continues to speak with unsettling clarity. It asks enduring, uncomfortable questions: Who gets to be remembered? Whose deaths are mourned, and whose are filed away as numbers? What responsibilities do parents, citizens, and intellectuals bear in times of injustice? As literary art, Mother of 1084 endures through emotional restraint, complex characterisation, and moral urgency. As a political text, it remains a powerful testimony to voices marginalised by both state and society. Mahasweta Devi offers no easy consolation—only a demand for remembrance, accountability, and empathy. By giving voice to a mother who understands her son’s rebellion too late, she transforms private grief into collective conscience. Mother of 1084 is not just about one death but a haunting reminder of countless lives lost to silence—and a call to resist that silence through memory and moral courage. (The writer is an assistant professor of English literature. Views personal.)

Lingua Pragmatica

Updated: Mar 20, 2025

As Southern leaders like M.K. Stalin rage against Hindi, Andhra Pradesh’s Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu offers a model of pragmatism over parochialism.

Chandrababu Naidu
Andhra Pradesh

Amid the cacophony of opposition in southern states to Hindi, Andhra Pradesh CM N. Chandrababu Naidu has taken a markedly pragmatic stance by remarking recently in the state Assembly that there was no harm in learning other languages. Hindi, Naidu noted, was useful for communication across India, particularly in political and commercial hubs like Delhi. His remarks, though avoiding explicit mention of the NEP, were widely seen as an endorsement of multilingualism and a rebuke to the linguistic chauvinism that has gripped parts of the South.


Few issues in India stir political passions quite like language. It is not merely a means of communication but a marker of identity, a relic of colonial resistance, and a source of political mobilization. In the southern states, where anti-Hindi sentiment has long been entrenched, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and its three-language formula have reignited old tensions. No state embodies this defiance more than Tamil Nadu, where the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led by M.K. Stalin has framed the policy as an assault on its linguistic autonomy.


Naidu’s words, welcomed by his ally and Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, mark a sharp contrast with the DMK’s position. Tamil Nadu’s hostility towards Hindi dates back to the 1930s, when C. Rajagopalachari’s attempt to introduce it in schools met with fierce resistance. The anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960s cemented the DMK’s ideological stance, with its first Chief Minister, C.N. Annadurai, famously warning that Hindi imposition could push Tamil Nadu towards secession.


The question, however, is whether this rigid opposition serves Tamil Nadu’s interests. While Stalin, with an eye to the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls, has been relentlessly portraying Hindi as a threat to his state’s regional identity, Naidu, a partner of the BJP-led Centre, is framing it as a tool for economic mobility. His argument is not that Hindi should replace Telugu or English but that it offers a competitive advantage.


The economic case for multilingualism is compelling. Indians who speak multiple languages tend to have better job prospects, higher earnings and greater geographic mobility. Andhra Pradesh’s Telugu-speaking diaspora is a case in point. Telugus make up a significant proportion of Indian-origin professionals in the United States, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia as Naidu pointed out, hinting that this success story was built not on linguistic rigidity but on adaptability.


In a country where inter-state migration is rising and where Hindi remains the most widely spoken language, refusing to learn it amounts to self-imposed isolation. Tamil Nadu’s approach, by contrast, risks limiting its youth. The DMK government has refused to implement the three-language policy, keeping schools strictly bilingual with Tamil and English. Its justification that Hindi is not necessary for global success could be true in a narrow sense but ignores the domestic context. If Tamil filmmakers can dub their movies into Hindi to expand their audience, why should Tamil students be denied access to the language that could open more doors for them within India?


The DMK has accused successive central governments, particularly under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of pushing Hindi at the expense of regional languages. Yet, rejecting Hindi outright is an overcorrection. The reality is that Hindi is an important language in India’s economic and political landscape. Naidu’s position, one of accommodation rather than confrontation, offers a middle ground that other Southern leaders would do well to consider.


Some states already recognize this. Karnataka, despite its own history of linguistic pride, has allowed Hindi to be taught as an optional language. Kerala, whose migrants work in Hindi-speaking regions and the Gulf, has been less hostile to Hindi education. Naidu’s model, balancing regional identity with practical necessity, offers a way forward. Languages should be embraced, not politicized. Southern leaders would do well to listen to him.

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