Renowned activist writer and Magsaysay Award winner Mahasweta Devi passed away on Thursday. She was 90.
The writer-cum-social worker who had has also won the Padmashree, Padma Vibhushan and Sahitya Akademi Awards was suffering from old-age ailments and was undergoing treatment at a South Kolkata Hospital.
Devi had suffered a heart attack on July 23 and was being treated at a South Kolkata nursing home for the past two months. Her condition worsened as she developed a blood infection and her kidneys failed, doctors said.
The writer who got the Sahitya Academy Award in 1979 for her Aranyer Adhikar worked for the development of the tribal and marginalised people of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Born in Dhaka and raised in Shantiniketan the noted writer was involved in people’s causes till the last breath of her life even as she became one of the prominent people who backed Mamata Banerjee’s anti-land acquisition movement at Singur and Nadigram that brought about the downfall of a 34-year left Front Government.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled the death of the Magsaysay winner saying “a voice of compassion, equality and justice she leaves us deeply saddened.” He further said “Mahasweta Devi wonderfully illustrated the might of pen.”
“She was like a guardian to me and our association goes back to many years” said the Bengal Chief Minister who cut short her Delhi tour and rushed back to Kolkata to oversee the funeral arrangement of the departed soul. “I am deeply shocked by her death and have no words to console the people of Bengal and myself,” she said adding “not only Bengal but the whole country suffered a great loss in the field of literature in her death.”
Devi who had actively Banerjee in her anti-left Front movements had after the end of communist rule in Bengal Devi once said that though she had a left background and her husband was a leftist she did not like the present day communists who were a “deviated lot” and who had “distanced themselves from the people’s causes” that “brought about their downfall in Bengal.”
The body of Mahasweta Devi will be kept at Rabindra Sadan on Friday for the people to pay their last respect to the writer, sources said.
Among the major works of the departed writer were Aranyer Adhikar and Hazar Churashir Maa.
