Imaginary Maps Quotes

“Once there was forest, hill, river, and us. We had villages, homes, land, ourselves. In our fields we grew rice, kodo, kutki, soma, we lived. Then there was game to hunt. It rained, peacocks danced, we lived. People grew, community grew, some of us moved to a distance. We asked the earth’s permission, we are setting down stakes to build a roof, settling land to grow crops… We worshipped the tree that was the spirit of our village. The we lived, only us.

… Why did the foreigners come? We were kings. Became subjects. Were subjects, became slaves. Owned nothing, they made us debtors. Alas, they enslaved and bound us. They named us, as bond slaves… Our land vanished like dust before a storm, our fields, our homes, all disappeared.”
― Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps

“These people are fully in exile. They have not received anything from modern India. This metal road has come to them to serve the interests of those very moneylenders from Bhalpura and Rajaura who will snatch their harvests to recover their loans, those patient customers who wait like vultures for the moment when starving parents will sell their children in the extremity of despair, and fall to feeding on carrion, the advance men of those labor contractors who will make the aboriginals their bond slaves with the seduction of 'ten rupees a day and a full stomach.'

Modern India only gives them posters for family planning. The birth of children increases rather than decreases as a result of starvation, until the bodies of the man and the woman go on strike permanently.”
― Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps