Reverberations of Socialist Ecofeminism in Mahasweta Devi’s "The Book of the Hunter"

This study tends to explore the tacit Ecofeminist voices in the situatedness present in Mahasweta Devi’s The Book of the Hunter, which was originally written in Bengali as Byadhkhanda in 1994 and was later translated into English by Sagaree and Mandira Sen Gupta, in 2002. It reflects how the Tribal community of Shabars celebrated nature and life by unveiling the nurturing essence and powerful aspects of nature, as well as their aboriginal, egalitarian approach to life. The novel celebrates the tenets of Ecofeminism while reifying them. Contrary to totalitarianism, the novel flourishes and advances with the idea of equity by dismantling the center, periphery, and binary oppositions. Moreover, it shatters the dualism between man and woman as well as nature and culture, while simultaneously challenging hierarchical structures by depicting how Megha Shabar faces catastrophic consequences after killing a pregnant doe. Devi’s works mirror the Indigenous lives of the Tribal world; this oeuvre reflects the sixteenth-century arboreal lives of the Shabars. This article will explore the implicit Ecofeminism present in medieval times, as opposed to the highfalutin anthropocentric standpoint of today’s time. With time, forest dwellers suffered development-induced dispossession regardless of their vital wisdom of Mother Nature, and in the hierarchical apotheosis, women suffered the worst.