This article is written in context with a different perspective about how acts and actions of subaltern men are responsible for the suffering of subaltern women.I have taken two instances from the novel of Mahasweta Devi’s Outcaste. One story is about a widow girl who was Dousadhin by caste and was forced to turn into a prostitute for survival. She was pregnant by upper caste zamindar of the village who were called ‘Mishras’ or ‘Deveta’. The younger Mishra lured Dhouli into love and later betrayed her after sowing the seed of a child in her womb. Another story deals with a tribal girl who was sexually abused and exploited in the lieu of a ‘better life’, and finally, she had to kill herself to save the future of her husband and child from being ‘an outcast’. These two stories show one perspective of the subjugation and exploitation of people who are residing in power such as capitalists and the upper class. Readers are shown reality in a fabricated way, the voice behind closed doors is never heard, but a whimpering murmur is heard with a great deal when it comes to upper-classmen’s subjugation and domination of subaltern women. The question here arises about the eyes being shut on the actions of these subaltern men. This paper intends to show the actions of Sarjom and men around Dhouli, who put their women into jeopardy of the upper class and let them come into direct contact with exploitations of hegemony. The story itself mirrors and reveals how subaltern men play a very important role in the exploitation of their female counterparts. The motives, ambition of power, and search for utopian imagination of subaltern men lead subaltern females like Dhouli and Josmina into exposure and later into abuse and exploitation.
Research Scholar, Department of English, Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith, Varanasi
