Festschrift for Mahasweta Devi: three books by marginalised voices

Mahasweta Devi always looked out for the poorest of the poor. The writer and activist, who would have turned 100 on January 14, 2026, spent her life seeking a life of equality and justice for the dispossessed, particularly Adivasis, and the impoverished people of urban and rural India.

She wrote several books, Aranyer Adhikar (Rights of the Forest), Hajar Churashir Ma (Mother of [prisoner number] 1084), Rudali, Titu Mir, Chotti Munda and his Arrow, anthologies of short stories which include tales like ‘Draupadi/Dopdi’, ‘The Breast Giver’ and more.

Drawn to people who were forced to lead a “subhuman existence”, she wrote about people with no access to education, health care, and income. In 1997, when Mahasweta Devi was honoured with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, she said: “My India still lives behind a curtain of darkness. A curtain that separates mainstream society from the poor and the deprived.”

Mahasweta Devi passed away in 2016, but her chronicles will always feel urgent and contemporary as long as there is oppression and injustice in the world. She also always encouraged people to tell their story — the manner in which she played a role in Manoranjan Byapari becoming a writer and narrate his life as a Dalit in Bengal is well-documented.

The three books we feature in this article, by Sushila Takbhaure, Rakshit Sonawane and Mayyu Ali, would have struck a chord with a writer who always kept an eye out for the marginalised.

A Dalit and a woman

Sushila Takbhaure foregrounds the Dalit experience and women’s concerns in her work. Her autobiography, My Shackled Life, translated by Deeba Zafir and Preeti Dewan from the Hindi ‘Shikanje ka Dard’, is first off all, as rightly noted by the translators, an act of courage. And this is the first autobiography in Hindi by a Dalit woman writer to be translated and published in English, thus reaching a wider audience. Kannada, Telugu, Marathi translations are in the works.

In the preface to the Hindi edition, she explains why she chose to call her autobiography, ‘Shikanje ka Dard’. “Merely speaking of the ‘shikanja — the vice of caste and patriarchy — would have been inadequate; what pressed upon me to tell was the pain [dard] that ‘shikanja’ inflicted.”

In general, she writes that women encounter far greater challenges than men. Her book expresses the pain of being both Dalit and a woman. Sushila was born in 1954 in Banapura, a village in Madhya Pradesh, where “discrimination based on caste was widespread, and untouchability was deeply entrenched.” What made her life different though is that her parents and grandmother valued education and ensured that all the children — there were several — studied as far as their resources allowed.

But life was harder for girls, and it seemed that they existed only to do housework. “What was worse, not only men but women too reinforced patriarchy by giving preference to sons.” Sushila refused to give in and persevered with her education against all odds, even going on a hunger strike to ensure that her father and brothers agreed to her college admission.

Her life took another turn when she got married to a much older man, Sunderlal Takbhaure, from Nagpur who was a high school teacher. She writes in detail about everyday humiliations, but also her immense joy at being able to pursue her education and earning a PhD degree. Her purpose, she says, is to show how education can become a tool of liberation for women.

The die is caste

Rakshit Sonawane tells the story of Avinash Gaikwad who grew up in a one-room hut in the slums of Mumbai, and how he clawed his way out of poverty and caste discrimination. The story, Scum of the Earth: A True Story From the Margins (HarperCollins), mirrors his own.

Sonawane grew up in a slum, worked in a factory and at the port but continued his studies alongside. He got a postgraduate degree in literature, besides studying law and journalism, and finally became a reporter in 1985.

His protagonist, Avinash, never forgets the story about his father, Dagadoo, who was beaten for asking for leftover puranpoli, a Marathi delicacy. Dagadoo joined Ambedkar’s social revolution to fight caste oppression and moved to Mumbai, with the belief that his son would have a better life with education. Avinash didn’t disappoint his parents. Once he had a job, he began teaching students for free on Sunday, telling them to never discriminate on the basis of caste, gender, class or religion. He didn’t want to adopt illegal means to earn a little extra just because he had “experienced poverty, illiteracy, humiliation and injustice.”

Sonawane documents the urban Dalit experience, in which comments like “the caste system is a thing of the past” or that “the caste system was just a division of labour” were commonplace. To each, Avinash patiently explained that casteism was alive and kicking in forms both obvious and subtle.

Against a genocide

In the country he hails from, Myanmar, poet Mayyu Ali’s existence is not recognised; in fact, the word ‘Rohingya’ is prohibited. Mayyu and his family fled to Bangladesh when the atrocities against the Rohingya began. But life wasn’t any easier in the refugee camps. Yet, he never stopped writing poems, dedicated to his people. “I want to be their voice,” he told Emilie Lopes. Together, they wrote Eradication: A Poet at the Heart of the Rohingya Genocide (Pan Macmillan India), translated from French by Siba Barkataki.

“The earth orbits with two different worlds;/The hell and heaven/I left one, to discover other,” Mayyu writes in ‘A New Heaven’. He had experienced the worst that man can do — “the scent of death, the sound of bullets, the taste of erasure, the sight of blood flowing over the bodies of my brother.”

In 2021, as he opened the door to his new apartment in Toronto, he finally realised he was free. Though he has been forced to live in hiding, he has promised himself that he will never forget to be the voice of his people. The publication of Eradication is proof of that.

Published – January 14, 2026 08:30 am IST