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Abstract

The lives of Aboriginals, as an indigenous form of a subaltern identity, have been less documented in narratives so far. Indigenous subaltern identity forms an alter-identity in which indigenous women’s identity is even more silenced in the social order of gender hierarchy. Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva in their book Ecofeminism locate the “Third World Woman” (in India) as a stakeholder of indigenous identity. The knowledge of Third World women in nurturing biodiversity drastically differs from both the Androcentric and Eurocentric models of bio-conservation. Indigenous women and the indigenous flora are both objects of genocidal violence, identity dissolution, and cultural extinction as their contribution to conservation is not recognized. As Gayatri Spivak in her seminal book Can the Subaltern Speak? voices, “The subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in the shadow.” Mahasweta Devi, renowned Indian author and social activist, portrays the marginalized Indigenous and their struggle for survival. The Indigenous are dispossessed and the indigenous women are even more displaced. Indigenous women characters of Devi’s selected works such as The Book of the Hunter and The Witch, belonging to the Shabar, Santal, Oraon, and Munda tribal communities, live in tune with ethnocentric ecological order. They are the forest dwellers who think of the forest as a unique bio-habitat in harmony with women, thereby preserving Mother Nature.

Author Biography

1. Bholanath Das is registered as a Doctoral Research Fellow in the School of Humanities, KIIT (Deemed to be University) Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. Besides research, he is engaged in teaching English Literature at Debra College, Vidyasagar University. He was the short-listed poetry prize winner in 2017 for the poem Marble Temple in the All India Poetry Competition and also won the fourth position in the Rabindranath Tagore International Poetry Contest Prize in two consecutive years for the poem Throes in 2022 and Pearl Dew in 2023. He presented a paper virtually on Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies at the London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (LICR), St Annes College, University of Oxford in 2020, and at Trinity College, Dublin, he presented a paper on Double Displacement of Indigenous Women in Selected Works of Mahasweta Devi in 2022. He is a published author (books). He can be reached at dasbholanath11@gmail.com (Personal) | 2081158@kiit.ac.in (Office).

2. Sahel Md Delabul Hossain is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (Deemed to be University) Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. He received his M. Phil and Doctorate degrees in English from the Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India. He has presented research papers in National/ International conferences in India and abroad and has published papers in indexed journals of repute. His determination for knowledge has contributed to his success at winning the Inder Mohan Thapar Research Award 2017 at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad for his research publication. His research interests include Postcolonial Studies, Film Studies (Literary Perspectives), Race Relations, Gender Studies, Migration and Diaspora, ELT/ ESP, Educational Technology, and Professional Development. He can be reached at smdhossain@gmail.com (Personal) | sahel.hossainfhu@kiit.ac.in (Office).

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