Portrayal of Motherhood in Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084

Abstract

Mahasweta Devi is a prolific writer who has used her pen for the causes of the most deprived sections of the society. She has written about the pangs and plights of tribals, women, dalits and other marginalized sections of society. Her novel, Mother of 1084, is the depiction of the miserable condition of a mother who tries to search for the causes of her son’s commitment towards Naxalite movement during 1970s after his brutal killing. She comes across many layers of hidden things which a mother from upper class may not bother to know in normal situations. She explores that her son was like her who cared for others, wanted equality in the society and therefore he had sacrificed his life. She finds her life akin to the thoughts of her son as she herself is excluded in her own family. She has to bear the oppression of exclusion in her own house. These things have made her stronger and able to understand those causes for which her son has sacrificed his life. Unsympathetic behavior of the husband and some of the children, double standard of morality and civil laws, the gap between the proletariats and the bourgeois, Naxalite movement and its aftermath, indiscriminate brutal killings of Naxalites, lust for materialistic life and hollow prestige among the upper class society are well documented by Mahasweta Devi in her most popular work, Mother of 1084.