Resistance to Capitalism : A Subaltern Reading of Mahasweta Devi's Chotti Munda and His Arrow

Abstract

This research focuses on the communal violent resistance of the marginalized groups to the mainstream capitalistic culture in Mahasweta Devi's novel, Chotti Munda and His Arrow. Moreover, this project is an attempt to explore how elitist ideology operates to make a scapegoat of poor adivasis and the untouchable who live in the margin on the basis of socio-economic strata. Mahasweta Devi has depicted the exploitation of the tribes by landlords and contractors in a capitalist's conservative society in post-colonial India and its affect on each and every aspects of life of the poor. She brings into center the subaltern people and their typical lived experiences, ignored by elitist historiography of India. She valorizes lucid and colloquial terminologies to show the actual reality of subaltern people's experience that is, how they live in extreme poverty and even extreme domination. Capitalistic system is an evil as it exploits the poor by creating different false promises with the help of economic status. The capitalists knit a web to entangle the poor on the basis of capital. The dialectical relationship between capitalists and workers has prevailed in the novel. The extreme domination and exploitation has been answered in the form of violent resistance through communal solidarity at the end of the novel.