Titu Mir

Author: Mahasweta Devi
Publisher: Seagull Books
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 121
ISBN/UPC (if available): 817046174x

Description

In this warmly told historical adventure tale, Mahasweta Devi brings history alive in the person of a charismatic hero.

Titu Mir, a peasant leader, led a revolt against the British in Bengal in 1830-31, in the course of which he was killed. He has remained a hero in the popular imagination. This was a period of transition in agricultural Bengal. The evil effects of the Permanent Settlement were beginning to be felt by the rural people. Traditional Zamindars were being replaced by absentee landlords. Indigo plantations were eating up fertile agricultural land. Titu, a hotheaded, headstrong young man, a natural leader, found himself defending the rural poor against the exploitation of the landlords and the British, at the cost of his own life.

We get to know Titu as a young boy, fearless, and restless, always standing up for victims of injustice, and then trace his gradual development into a rebel leader after his conversion to the Wahabi sect.

THE TRANSLATOR:

Rimi B Chatterjee is an editor and translator based in Calcutta.