This paper discusses briefly the structures of power exercised by the heroic woman character,

Draupadi in the epic Mahabharata and in Mahasweta Devi s story "Draupadi" translated by
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1). Disrobing of Draupadi in both the cases is taken as the point
of discussion. Draupadi of Vyasa s masterpiece, the Mahabharata (2), obviously, has
influenced the present day writer. By weaving different situations around her, she portrays
woman-power through her. Before analyzing the situations it is imperative to know the different
structures of power. None is powerless. All living organisms exercise power to enjoy a
meaningful and comfortable life; however, the degree of usage may be different.
The term "Power" is multidimensional since it masks itself with many faces according to the
context and interest. In general power, a personal process, empowers the individual to hasten or
halt or facilitate the course. To support this, the writer, Lisa VeneKlasen y Valerie Miller (3)
quotes Srilatha Batlliwala s definition of power in her work A New Weave of Power, People &
Politics: The Action Guide For Advocacy And Citizen Participation.
Power can be defined as the degree of control over material, human, intellectual and
financial resources exercised by different sections of society. The control of these
resources becomes a source of individual and social power. Power is dynamic and
relational rather than absolute - It is exercised in the social, economic and political
relations between individuals and groups. It is also unequally distributed-some
individuals and groups having greater control. The extent of power of an individual or
group is correlated to how many different kinds of resources they can access and control.
(41.http://www.justassociates.org/sites/justassociates.org/files/new-weave-eng-ch3-power
-empowerment.pdf).
The author indicates that an individual / group has access to different modes of resources, that
certainly includes inner sources. She further discusses the different structures of power in her
work. The human being who has Power over -- a commonly recognized power -- dominates
others. On the other hand, the person having Power with co-operates with others. Power to
provides the individual with abilities to succeed in her / his endeavor. Power within makes
the woman / man recognize her / his self-worth.
Power Over: . . . [This type of] power involves [the person] taking it from
someone else and then using it to dominate. . . .
Power With: Based on mutual support, solidarity and collaboration power with

multiplies individual talents and knowledge.. . .

Power To: Power to refers to the unique potential of every person to shape his
or
her life. . . .
Power within. . . Power within is the capacity to imagine and have
hope.
(Miller, 45)
Vyasa and Mahasweta Devi view their protagonists in an unusual circumstance and show how
they surface their Power within in the most crucial moment, and establish their feminine
identities. In the epic, the stubborn Draupadi is a bonus to King Drupad, when the issueless
King performs a yajna to have an heir to take revenge on his childhood friend, Drona. Along
with his son, Dhrishtadyumna, the full grown Draupadi springs from the fire. The granite-willed
Draupadi rejects Karna during svayamvara and becomes the wife of Pandavas. In spirit she is in
no way less than Bhima and Arjuna. Duryodhana, the eldest of the Kauravas and the Pandavas
 cousin considers them as rivals to the throne and schemes to win the wealth as well as Pandavas
kingdom. By an unfair dice game, Duryodhana wins everything including the Pandavas and
their wife, Draupadi.
The head strong Duryodhana sends a door-keeper to bring Draupadi to the Sabha, since she is a
slave to them. Unmindful of the consequences, the door-keeper orders the Queen Draupadi to
come to the court hall, as she is won by the King Duryodhana. Now, Draupadi directs her
Power to authority and interrogates the man whether his master is mad and further she demands
to know who the Prince loses first, either her or him.
"Who are you, door-keeper," said Draupadi,
"to speak to me like this?
Which prince is there
who stakes his own wife?
Was the raja out of his senses?
Was there nothing else to stake?" (II:67:5)
"Go back to the sabha, . . .
and ask that gambler who he lost first--
himself or me." (II:67:- 7)
She is not answered but she is dragged to the court by the inhuman Duhsasana. In the hall she
never hesitates to question the elders the legality of the right of Yudhistira. The power
structure Power over is exhibited on the part of Draupadi. Now she comprehends the position
of her spouses and her wretched condition. She hardly waits for others to stretch a helping hand
to her. As a queen she dominates the scene usurping the power of her husbands. Her brilliant
mind boldly enquires the Kuru elders about dharma: "Tell me, members of this sabha, answer
me: / what do you think - / have I been won or not won - / tell me, O lords of the earth?"
(II:67:42).
Karna, instructs Duhsasana to strip Draupadi naked, because a slave should not have the upper
garment. When the wicked Duhsasana starts pulling her single dress, the forlorn Draupadi prays
to Lord Krishna to protect her: "Govinda! / I am losing my senses in the clutches of the
Kauravas! / O save me!" (II:68:47). The mutual understanding between Krishna, the nephew of
Kunti, and Draupadi supports her, that is Power with saves her from the disgrace. During
exile the stubborn Panjali follows her husbands to the forest, leaving her sons in the custody of
Subhadra. When Yudhistira opts for peace, it is she who persuades him to take arms against the
perpetrators and thus takes revenge for her humiliation in the open sabha. Draupadi employs
Power over , Power to and Power with to save herself from the dishonor.
Vyasa s Draupadi is saved by the Lord whereas in Mahasweta Devi s story the main character
Dopdi is stripped naked by the officials. No god comes to save her honor. The power
composition Power over makes her question Senanayak, who alone directs his police to
humiliate the tribal woman. It is not an ordinary humiliation; it is a gang-rape ordered and
performed by the leader himself. This heinous act of disrobing and making her naked,
empowers the lady. Miller s quotes from Srilatha Batliwala, defines the features of
empowerment. When a woman /man experience the oppression, she/he swings into action to free
herself / himself from the oppression. The change is possible because of her / his power that is
empowerment.
The term empowerment refers to a range of activities from individual self-assertion to
collective resistance, protest and mobilization that challenge basic power relation. For
individuals and groups where class, caste, ethnicity and gender determine their access to
 resource and power, their empowerment begins when they recognize the systematic
forces that oppress them, but act to change existing power relationships. Empowerment,
therefore, is a process aimed at changing the nature and direction of systematic forces
that marginalize women and other disadvantaged sectors in a given context. (Miller, 53)
Dopdi, a twenty-seven year old tribal woman, is named by her mistress and she is in the list of
wanted persons who had killed the mistress husband, Surja Sahu a land-owning money lender,
because he refuses to share water with untouchables. A reward of two hundred rupees is
announced for her head. Dopdi herself seen that notice at the Panchayat office. Mr. Senanayak,
an official, moves with the tribal as their friend and successfully corners Dopdi in the evening.
She is kept at the canvas-camp till the dinner time. Senanayak permits the officials to do
whatever they like. Her hands and legs are tied to four posts. She becomes unconscious. In the
morning she is brought to the tent. On seeing the General the dishonored Dopdi walks towards
him to exhibit what has happened to her.
Draupadi stands up. . . . . Tears her piece of cloth with her teeth. . . . Senanayak . .
. sees Draupadi, naked, walking toward him in the bright sunlight with her head high
What is this? He is about to cry, but stops. Draupadi stands before him, naked. Thigh and
pubic hair matted with dry blood. Two breasts, two wounds. What is this? He is about to
bark. Draupadi comes closer. Stands with her hand on her hip, laughs and says the object
of your search, Dopdi Mejhen. You asked them to make me up; don't you want to see
how they made me? (402).
Her empowerment freezes the General. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (6), the translator and critic
writes that the illiterate and low-born woman teaches the male officials a shocking lesson. They
are unable to face the "Unarmed target".
It is when she crosses the sexual differential into the field of what could only happen to a
woman that she emerges as the most powerful "subject," who, still using the language of
sexual "honor," can derisively call herself "the object of your search," whom the author
can describe as a terrifying super object-"an unarmed target." (Gayatri Spivak, 388).
The strong-willed lady indirectly questions their power. Her "Power over" structure makes her
dominate the scene. They can rape her, but they cannot stop her from remaining naked after the
rape. Further the critic voices:
The men easily succeed in stripping Dopdi-in the narrative it is the culmination of her
political punishment by the representatives of the law. She remains publicly naked at
her own insistence. Rather than save her modesty through the implicit intervention of a
benign and divine (in this case it would have been godlike) comrade, the story insists that
this is the place where male leadership stops (388).
Empowerment makes the two ladies, Draupadi and Dopdi, question the members of the society
of their roles that pulls up the unmitigated hidden power in them that simply jolts the patriarchal
authority. The questioning certainly causes discomfort to the family or to the community but it
is a definite therapy to effect healing operations to the long-drawn infections of the society.
Indrani Singh Rai (4) in her article, "Mahasweta Devi s Draupadi: A Discourse of
Dispossessed" (www.ssmrae.com/admin/.../043757d8e99a09c8b534039890ceda03.pdf) forwards
an apt concluding critique:
Once Dopdi enters, in the final section of the story, the postscript area of lunar flux and
sexual difference, she is in a place where she will finally act for herself in not acting,
in challenging the man to (en) counter her as unrecorded or misrecorded objective
historical monument. The army officer is shown as unable to ask the authoritative
 ontological question, "What is this?" (Breast Stories 36) (6) In fact, in the sentence
describing Dopdi s final summons to the sahib s tent, the agent is missing. An allegory
of the woman s struggle within the revolution in a shifting historical moment can be
seen.
Earlier in the same article Indrani Singh Rai presents the political setting that had provoked the
writer to script her story about the colonial arrogance displayed in dealing with the cracking
down the rebellion in the Naxalbari area in the northern part of the West Bengal. She observes:
The story is a moment caught between two deconstructive formulas: on the one hand, a
law that is fabricated with a view to its own transgression, on the other, the undoing of
the binary opposition between the intellectual and the rural struggles. In order to grasp
the minutiae of their relationship and involvement, one must enter a historical micrology
that no foreword can provide. Draupadi the name takes us in long back in a hall,
where the enemy chief begins to pull at her sari. Draupadi silently prays to the incarnate
Krishna. The idea of sustaining law (dharma) materializes itself as clothing and as the
king pulls at her sari, there seems to be more and more of it. She is infinitely clothed and
can not be publicly stripped. It is one of Krishna s miracles. But Mahasweta Devi s
Draupadi, gang- raped by police, refuses to be clothed by men again. In Draupadi, what is
represented is an erotic object transformed into an object of torture and revenge where the
line between (hetero) sexuality and gender violence begins to blur.
The critic well-explicates the meaning of disrobing - while the Draupadi of the epic gets her
robe miraculously, the modern day defiant Dopti Mehjen refuses to be clothed thus making all
those assembled there puerile and naked. Both the Draupadis are symbols of retaliation and stand
as monumental role-models.

References
1. Devi, Mahasweta. Draupadi trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak "Draupadi" http://ebook
browse.com/gayatri- spivak-draupadi-by-mahasveta-devi-pdf-d138669848#.UQjc8x-A160.email
20 Jan 13.
2. Lal, P, transcreated. The Mahabharata of Vyasa. 18 vols. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 2005.
3. Miller, Lisa VeneKlasen y Valerie. A New Weave of Power, People & Politics: The Action
Guide For Advocacy And Citizen Participation. USA: Just Associates, 2007.
4. Rai, Indrani Singh. "Mahasweta Devi s Draupadi: A Discourse of
Dispossessed". (www.ssmrae.com/admin/ .../043757d8e99a0 9c8b53 4039890ceda03.pdf).
5. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Writing and Sexual Difference." Critical Inquiry Vol. 8, No.
2, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0093-
1896%28198124%298%3A2%3C381%3A%22BMD%3E2. 0.CO%3B2-U 20 Jan 13.
6. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Breast Stories. Kolkata: Seagull 2002.
Devi’s Draupadi is not a prototype of women in war against the traditional image of a woman
because than she would have created a space for another patriarchal or say logo centric
conception, where again what it is to be a woman would have confined again in a sort of
definition.

But in there case there predicament is extended on account of there marginalised status in the
society. Subaltern studies of 1980s has revealed the fact that the Indian national struggle has
not been only an elitist movement. BUT the narrative of nation often hesitates to deliver the
credit to innumerable subaltern voices who sacrificed their lives for the nation.

This custom persisted in independent India and the glimpse of what we can see in Devi’s works

The outspokenness of women in the sociopolitical aspects is not seldom seen Dopdi on hand
reminds us of THE militant struggle of Nandini and the contrast of the timidity of Sujata the
upper class bourgeois women in mother of 1084. Dopdi’ spirit of rebellion also brings to our
mind her contrast with in Amitav Ghosh’s the Hungry Tide.

This legalized version of socio- ethico terms has been projected in one of the recent
mainstream bollywood movie ‘Pink’ where we can discern that how social constructions which
is actually a subjective notion has been objectified and we as viewers has been made aware of
the slight differences between the socio- structural rule book different from the Indian
constitution.

Indrani Singh Rai (4) in her article, "Mahasweta Devi s Draupadi: A Discourse of
Dispossessed" forwards an apt concluding critique:

Once Dopdi enters, in the final section of the story, the postscript area of lunar flux and
sexual difference, she is in a place where she will finally act for herself in not acting,
in challenging the man to (en) counter her as unrecorded or misrecorded objective
historical monument. The army officer is shown as unable to ask the authoritative
ontological question, "What is this?" (Breast Stories 36) (6) In fact, in the sentence
describing Dopdi s final summons to the sahib s tent, the agent is missing. An allegory
of the woman s struggle within the revolution in a shifting historical moment can be
seen.
Sexual violence also became a major concern of second wave feminism. The American feminist
and journalist Susan Brownmiller in her work Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975)
offers a ground breaking study of rape and argues that rape has always been defined from the
patriarchal perspective.

[DALIT FEMINISM]

Devi through her works have explored the militant aggression of the subaltern women and
marked their contribution in the the process of nation building.The entire canonical idea of
feminism itself is quite full of contradiction the reason being that the mainstream culture of
feminism does not take into account the peripheral voices as that of Dopdi in the story
Drupadi.This tribal woman experience Triple marginalization.

My discussion of Devi’s works shall be with reference to Black Feminism which provides us with
a kind of context for assessment of the alternative narrative of feminism. Feminism today
cannot be understood as a linear narrative. Specifically in the postcolonial era it has undergone
many changes and it has proliferated in multiple directions. It is simply because the mainstream
feminism or for that matter if we talk about the American feminists like Showwalter or a more
radical approach to it like the French feminists then of corse they cannot address the concerns
and interests of the womwn of the Third world Countries. Similarly the narratives that Devi has
articulated are woman whose stories whose sufferings do not form a part of the mainstream
feminist culture . They cannot organize themselves in womens organizations and groupd

Devi hs captured this interesting Irony of democracy though it ensures equality among all its
citizens bot it is not ready to accept this peripheral classes within there theory of nation. In the
words of Bauman they are the wasted lives which are not to be taken into considerationand the
tribal women here faces the triple marginalization in terms of caste, class and gender. Devi’s
works are also impregnated with another interesting irony where thogh these tribal women are
being ostracized not to be touched but time and again the upper class bourgeous bhodrolok
come to them for satiating there lust as happens in the case with Dhouli . Dhouli the tribal
women whose virginity has been smudged by Mishrilal is ultimately thrown out of the society
by Mishrilal himself when begins to sell her body for her survival.

Appart from the court episode of disrobing of Draupadi , the epic is relevanyt in this context.
Mahabharata itself provides us with multiple evidences of the marginalization of the ribal
women in multiple forms. Bhim’s wife whom he has married in the forest during his exile has
never been mentioned after this episode whereas ths son produced from this wedlock
Ghatotkach has been called upon to lend his helping hand in the war between the pandavas
and Kauravs.

In case of Shanichari devi deals with Marxist feminism.Feminism has come a lonf way from
liberal feminism to the third world feminism

In fact, she has inverted the rape-shame upon her predators through her naked body.