Mahasweta Devi’s Rudali offers one of the most incisive literary examinations of caste, gender, labour, and emotional commodification in postcolonial India. This article reinterprets the novella through an interdisciplinary framework that brings together performance theory, affect studies, subaltern historiography, and feminist political economy. Moving beyond readings that position the text primarily as a representation of caste-based suffering, the study argues that mourning in Rudali functions as embodied practice, affective circulation, and negotiated labour. Through the trajectory of Sanichari—from dispossessed widow to professional mourner—Devi reveals how caste society regulates not only land and labour but also emotion, visibility, and ritual legitimacy. Drawing on the theoretical interventions of Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Arlie Hochschild, and Ranajit Guha, the article contends that the Rudalis’ commodified grief unsettles caste decorum, produces affective counter-publics among marginalized women, and creates contingent forms of subaltern expression through embodied performance. By situating Rudali within debates on emotional labour, ritual economy, and the ethics of representation, this essay demonstrates that Devi transforms grief from private sorrow into a socially mediated and politically charged form of collective visibility.
P.G. Department of English Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
