Militarized Patriarchy and Subaltern Revolt in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi

Abstract

This paper has focused on the marginalization and militarization of the state that creates gendered
violence; one can witness that Mahasweta Devi's Draupadi is relevant. Revisited in light of global discourses on
bodily autonomy and current feminist movements, it emphasizes how trauma may become radical political
resistance. The writer wanted to reveal how patriarchal power impacts physical dominance, rather than
institutional monitoring, bureaucratic control, and ideological conditioning in the author's novel of Dopdi Mejhen,
a tribal woman who was sexually abused while in custody. This study examines the intersectionality, indigenous
rights, and feminist resistance with reference to Draupadi as Simone de Beauvoir's idea of women as the "Other,"
Judith Butler's theory of ‘Gender performativity, Michel Foucault's framework of disciplinary power, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak's ‘subaltern theory, ' and bell hooks ‘intersectional feminism. Dopdi's unwillingness to dress
herself becomes a symbolic rejection of both patriarchal shame and state-imposed silencing in an era of MeToo
movements, digital activism, and renewed efforts against authoritarianism. Her body challenges prevailing myths
that connect suffering with passivity by evolving from a violated site of oppression into a potent tool of rebellion.
This paper emphasizes that Devi's work foreshadows modern feminist tactics that recover agency with visibility,
resistance, and unity among groups. Draupadi redefines feminist agency for the contemporary era and continues
to stimulate critical engagement with institutional and gendered power structures by rediscovering the subaltern
female body in a patriarchal post-colonial perspective, presented as a site of double-erased existence subjected to
extreme patriarchy, caste and class exploitation it and voiceless and excluded from body politics. Gayatri Spivak
emphasizes that the body is often portrayed as a commodity or passive subject. However, Maheswata reclaims the
body as a site of radical resistance, where marginalized woman like Draupadi use their violated bodies to protest
state and patriarchal power.