Mahasweta Devi's Mother of 1084: A Subaltern Reading

The play “Mother of 1084” was written by the prominent Bengali literary figure Mahasweta Devi. This work was written at the period when the Naxalite movement was waving across the country specially in the north-eastern parts of India. The focus of the drama is rivaling the brutality of the government towards the youth who follow the Naxalite ideology which is considered as the offshoot of communism. As the focus falls on the murder of the younger son Brati of Sujatha Chatterjee, we can see that he is the representative of a vast young rebels who were brutally murdered by the government. As the play begins Sujata, mother of four children is married to Dibyanath, a chartered accountant and she thinks that all her children are happy in their married life. But, the happily married forever was just a mask. They were not really enjoying life and she also realizes that her marriage was also a lie. Sujata realizes it when she finds out that her son was murdered and it is changing her role from a typical mother to apolitical mother. Then she followed the path of her favorite son’s paths to find out what exactly happened with him. The lady who led an ordinary life of a house wife is turning into a great follower of her son’s ideologies and thereby discovers her own identity. When she met the people, who use to be with Brati during the campaigns she was inspired by his revolutionary ideas and also turns against the political dictatorship