Mahasweta was born in Dhaka (current Bangladesh) in an artistic family. Her father, Manish Chandra Ghatak, was a famous poet, her mother was a writer. Many of her relatives were actors, journalists and directors. Women in Devi’s family were involved in the fight against analphabetism. Devi loved books, music, theater and film. She was influenced by the experimental school that was established in 1901 by Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 1924, the Indian National Congress began the ‘Quit India’ campaign. The British began a series of reprisals and arrests. Members of Devi’s family also fell victim to the reprisals. In Bengal, which was cut off from food supplies, people suffered from starvation. Simultaneously, the conflict between Hindus and Muslims intensified. When India became independent in 1947, Bengal was divided between India and Pakistan, which resulted in a bloody civil war. Devi recalls that there was blood everywhere in Bengal. This period, as the writer admits, changed her and made her wiser.

As for her age, Devi was extraordinarily brave and independent. She married a scriptwriter who was a member of the communist party against her parents’ will. After India became independent, communists were on the carpet. Members of the party were persecuted. Devi’s husband couldn’t find a job. In order to support her family, Devi was selling dye powders, teaching in a school. Later, she even became a high official. However, when someone found the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin in her desk, she was accused of promoting communism and immediately expelled from her work.

After the incident, she started writing. Her first major work was ‘Jhansir Rani’ (The Queen of Jhansi) – a story based on the biography of an Indian princess who led a rebellion against the British in 1857.

Devi divorced her husband and left him with their 14-year-old son. She suffered from severe depression and survived a suicide attempt, which made her stronger. She wrote more: novels, short stories, plays, fairy tales for children. She also adopted folk tales. At the same time, she taught English in a school for refugees from Bangladesh, former Indian Bengal.

A turning point came in 1965, when Devi went to Palam in the Indian state of Bihar. While being there, she discovered the world she hadn’t known before – without roads, education, healthcare and chance for development. It was the world of tribal population and lowest castes in India – 80 million people, approximately 17 percent of India’s whole population. Since then Devi wrote about the things she saw: about slavery work, exile of indigenous tribes from their land caused by greedy landowners, about the lack of access to water, healthcare and infrastructure.

The main theme of her works became the main theme of her life. She abandoned her post as a lecturer of English literature and found employment in a Bengalese newspaper, Jugantar, as a wandering reporter in the region inhabited by indigenous tribes. She wandered from village to village, collected stories and legends. In her reports, she depicted police misconduct, incompetence of the authorities, mistakes and scams during the implementation of governmental assistance programs. She wrote about the exploitation of farmers and miners, the harm of the unemployed and those without land, environment degradation and the need to protect indigenous languages and cultures.

Mahasweta Devi became an advocate of the unprivileged in the whole India. As she claims herself, she lives among ‘her own people.’ They call her Didi – the older sister. Her home in Calcutta became the place of pilgrimages of the poor and people in need from all over India. Mahasweta listens to them, gives advice, consoles them and incessantly writes: articles to various newspapers, letters to the court and complaints to police.

In 1986, she created pan Indian Ancient Tribes Union. She is a one-woman institution, but seems to be alone in her struggle for a just cause. She claims she does all of this out of a sense of duty and for propitiation. She argues that her work is a form of redress for thousands of years of exploitation of indigenous tribes in India. She confutes allegations that she portrays Indian poverty too bluntly arguing that the shock of the middle class is caused not by her portrayals, but by their ignorance.

In 1997, as a form of recognition for her constant artistic crusade for the benefit of fair treatment of indigenous tribes by Indian society, Mahasweta Devi received Ramon Magsaysay Award, the most prestigious distinction in the field of journalism, literature and art in Asia.