LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 25:11 November 2025
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Silence as Feminist Resistance: Re-Reading Draupadi in Hindu Mythological Retellings Through Body, Shame, and Narrative Refusal

Maitray Kaushik

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the silence of Draupadi across the Mahabharata and its contemporary feminist retellings to argue that silence, contrary to dominant critical discourse, can function as a powerful mode of resistance rather than submission. While traditional scholarship often associates empowerment with articulate speech, I believe Draupadi's strategic refusal to speak in certain narrative moments disrupts patriarchal expectations more effectively than verbal protest. By withholding speech, she forces interrogators, institutions, and male authority figures to face moral discomfort without guidance, thereby destabilising the cultural logic of shame. Through a close reading of primary texts and feminist reinterpretations by writers such as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Volga, I analyse how silence moves beyond the courtroom spectacle into the interior spaces of trauma, introspection, and self-construction. I also consider how Western frameworks, which frequently conflate silence with passivity, risk flattening cultural specificity and overlooking embodied forms of dissent. Methodologically, I draw from feminist theory, trauma studies, and comparative mythology, while utilising digital tools such as ChatGPT strictly as language-level support. Ultimately, my findings suggest that Draupadi's silence operates simultaneously as emotional boundaries, psychological survival, and political sabotage. Instead of signalling defeat, her refusal to perform humiliation becomes a radical assertion of agency. This research contributes to an underexplored scholarship gap by repositioning silence not as absence, but as a deliberate presence, an acoustic void that compels patriarchal structures to speak instead. I conclude that silence deserves renewed critical attention as a resistant narrative strategy in Indian mythological discourse.

Keywords:Draupadi, feminist resistance, narrative silence, body politics, mythological retellings

Introduction

For generations, Hindu mythology has shaped cultural understandings of gender, power, and morality within Indian society. While epics like the Mahabharata are revered as foundational narrative frameworks, they also carry deeply ingrained patriarchal logic that often reduces women to symbolic functions rather than complex individuals. In recent decades, however, feminist writers have begun revisiting these mythic structures, not merely to retell them but to interrogate and subvert them. One of the most compelling strategies they employ is silence, not as absence or submission but as an active form of resistance. I find this shift fascinating because it forces us to rethink what counts as “voice” in a culture that rewards women for speaking only when it suits the patriarchal order. In this research, I explore how silence becomes a political weapon in mythological reinterpretations and why feminists deliberately choose it to challenge narrative authority.

Among the numerous figures who exemplify the politics of silent resistance, Draupadi stands out powerfully. Traditionally, she is framed through male-authored lenses in the Mahabharata; her anger is legendary, yet her silences are rarely acknowledged. Feminist retellings, particularly Mahasweta Devi's Draupadi, reorient our gaze. Instead of speech, Devi foregrounds Draupadi's refusal to be articulated by men. In my view, this shift is significant because it undermines the male narrator's monopoly over meaning. Silence, in Devi's hands, becomes a refusal to perform expected femininity. It is an interruption. It is defiance. And most importantly, it is self-definition.

A great deal of feminist criticism on mythological rewriting focuses on vocal reclamation—women speaking, yelling, narrating their trauma. But as I reviewed scholarship published by Routledge and Taylor & Francis, I noticed a blind spot: scholars rarely treat silence itself as an autonomous rhetoric. Silence is usually coded as oppression. I believe this is a conceptual limitation, especially considering Indian cultural norms where silence can signify dignity, mourning, withdrawal of consent, or moral superiority. By focusing on silence, we can access what Judith Butler might call a “performative refusal”, a denial of patriarchal legibility. This, for me, is the intellectual gap driving this paper.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Maitray Kaushik
Net Qualified, Independent Researcher, Delhi
U220/Shakarpur/ Block U
Delhi – 110092, India
maitraykaushik@gmail.com

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