Failure of Institutions and the Ethics of Non-Redemption in Mahasweta Devi’s Fiction

Md. Ghulam Sarwar; Binay Shanker Roy

Failure of Institutions and the Ethics of Non-Redemption in Mahasweta Devi’s Fiction

Author(s)	Md. Ghulam Sarwar, Dr. Binay Shanker Roy
Country	India
Abstract	This paper examines the fiction of Mahasweta Devi through the critical lens of institutional failure and the ethics of non-redemption. It argues that Mahasweta Devi deliberately constructs narratives in which institutions conventionally associated with protection and moral order—such as the state, law, family, and socio-economic systems—consistently collapse in their responsibility toward marginalized women. Rather than offering narratives of rescue, reform, or justice, her fiction foregrounds unresolved suffering and structural violence, positioning the absence of redemption as a deliberate ethical and political strategy. Drawing on subaltern studies and feminist criticism, the paper reads key texts including Draupadi, Breast Giver, Behind the Bodice, and Douloti the Bountiful to demonstrate how institutional power operates as an instrument of exploitation rather than redress. Law enforcement agencies appear as perpetrators rather than protectors, family structures commodify women’s bodies and labour, and economic systems normalize bonded labour and sexual slavery. In these narratives, women encounter institutions not as sources of relief but as mechanisms that legitimize violence and erase accountability. The study emphasizes that Mahasweta Devi’s refusal to provide narrative closure or moral consolation should not be interpreted as pessimism or narrative incompleteness. Instead, non-redemption functions as an ethical mode of realism that exposes the limits of reformist thinking and challenges readers to confront the persistence of injustice. By denying the comfort of resolution, Devi resists sentimental representations of suffering and refuses to convert trauma into symbolic victory or catharsis. Through close textual analysis supported by existing critical scholarship, the paper positions Mahasweta Devi as a writer who transforms literature into a site of ethical witnessing. Her fiction does not promise healing or transformation; it demands recognition of institutional complicity and historical neglect. The paper concludes that the ethics of non-redemption in Mahasweta Devi’s work constitutes a powerful feminist intervention, one that insists on accountability rather than hope, and exposure rather than consolation, thereby redefining the political responsibility of literary narrative.
Keywords	Mahasweta Devi; institutional failure; ethics of non-redemption; subaltern studies; feminist realism; state violence; caste and gender oppression; narrative ethics
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 5, September-October 2025
Published On	2025-10-22

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Failure of Institutions and the Ethics of Non-Redemption in Mahasweta Devi’s Fiction

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