Mahasweta Devi

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Mahasweta Devi bigraphy, stories - Activists

Mahasweta Devi : biography

January 14, 1926 –

Mahasweta Devi (Bengali: মহাশ্বেতা দেবী Môhashsheta Debi) (born 14 January 1926) Ramon Magsaysay Award. is an Indian social activist and writer.

Major awards

  • 1979: Sahitya Akademi Award (Bengali): – Aranyer Adhikar (novel)
  • 1986: Padma Shri
  • 1996: Jnanpith Award – the highest literary award from the Bharatiya Jnanpith
  • 1997: Ramon Magsaysay Award – Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts Ramon Magsaysay Award.
  • 1999: Honoris causa – Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)
  • 2006: Padma Vibhushan – the second highest civilian award from the Government of India
  • 2010:Yashwantrao Chavan National Award
  • 2011: Bangabibhushan – the highest civilian award from the Government of West Bengal
  • 2012: Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Sahityabramha – the first Lifetime Achievement award in Bengali Literature from 4thScreen-IFJW.

Biography

Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in Dhaka, to literary parents in a Hindu Brahmin family. Her father Manish Ghatak was a well-known poet and novelist of the Kallol era, who used the pseudonym Jubanashwa. Noted filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak was the youngest brother of Manish Ghatak. Mahasweta’s mother Dharitri Devi was also a writer and a social worker whose brothers were very distinguished in various fields, such as the noted sculptor Sankha Chaudhury and the founder-editor of the Economic and Political Weekly of India, Sachin Chaudhury. Her first schooling was in Dhaka, but after the partition of India she moved to West Bengal in India. She joined the Rabindranath Tagore-founded Vishvabharati University in Santiniketan and completed a B.A. (Hons) in English, and then finished an M.A. in English at Calcutta University as well. She later married renowned playwright Bijon Bhattacharya who was one of the founding fathers of the IPTA movement. In 1948, she gave birth to Nabarun Bhattacharya, currently one of Bengal’s and India’s leading novelist whose works are noted for their intellectual vigour and philosophical flavour. She got divorced from Bijon Bhattacharya in 1959.

Works

  • The Queen of Jhansi (biography, translated in English by Sagaree and Mandira Sengupta from the 1956 first edition in bangla Jhansir Rani)
  • Hajar Churashir Maa (No. 1084’s Mother, 1975)
  • Aranyer Adhikar (The Occupation of the Forest, 1977)
  • Agnigarbha (Womb of Fire, 1978)
  • Bitter Soil tr, Ipsita Chandra. Seagull, 1998. Four stories.
  • Chotti Munda evam Tar Tir (Choti Munda and His Arrow, 1980) Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
  • Imaginary Maps (translated by Gayatri Spivak London & New York. Routledge,1995)
  • Dhowli (Short Story)
  • (Translated into English by Maitreya Ghatak. Seagull, Calcutta.)
  • (Seagull Books, Calcutta, 1998. Translated from Bengali by Paramita Banerjee.)
  • (Translated into English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and Shamik Bandyopadhyay. Thima, Calcutta, 1993)
  • Titu Mir
  • Breast Stories (Translated into English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak. Seagull, Calcutta, 1997)
  • Of Women, Outcasts, Peasants, and Rebels (Translated into English By Kalpana Bardhan, University of California, 1990.) Six stories.
  • Ek-kori’s Dream (Translated into English by Lila Majumdar. N.B.T., 1976)
  • The Book of the Hunter (Seagull India, 2002)
  • Outcast (Seagull, India, 2002)
  • Draupadi
  • In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (Translated into English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak. Methuyen and Company, 1987. New York, London)
  • Kulaputra (Translated into Kannada by Sreemathi H.S. CVG Publications, Bangalore)
  • The Why-Why Girl (Tulika, Chennai.)

Films based on Mahasweta Devi’s works