When Security Fails the State: Dopdi’s Body as a Literary Site of Human Security in Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi”

This paper provides a literary reinterpretation of the story Mahasweta Devi wrote, as the last piece of rebellion of “Draupadi"by foregrounding the theory of post-colonial human security. Subverting the dominating feminist and subaltern paradigm, which happens to be the mainstream of the modern scholar, this paper will challenge how the narrative structure, symbolic economy and mythic reversals of the short story will play a role in the deindustrialization of the state-oriented definition of protection and power. The close textual examination shows that the Indian state dependency on the requirement of coercive violence is an ethical and functional breakdown of the state security, and the corporeal dissent by Dopdi is a literary exposition of human security, the one that is founded on dignity, agency, and lack of fear. The story therefore makes the violated body resist a textual space that is to be transformed into a determinate field of force, vulnerability and sovereignty. This article places “Draupadi” among those texts which redefine the concept of security as the state of narrative which is in base with literal storytelling and revolves around issues of moral autonomy and institutional control, thus creating a new interdisciplinary intervention in the field of the post-colonial literary criticism.