Sambhavi Gautam
January always feels like a reset. After the festive noise of December, it invites us to slow down, take stock, and reconsider our choices—including what we read. At a time when book culture is quietly resurging and Gen Z is rediscovering reading beyond algorithms and trends, it becomes important to return to the women who shaped Indian storytelling long before modern labels existed. Indian literature is rich with female characters who questioned power, defied silence, and claimed agency in deeply unequal worlds. These five heroines don’t just belong to the past; they offer a lens through which young readers can understand strength, identity, and resistance today.
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Savitri: Negotiating Fate with Wisdom and Resolve
Savitri, as retold in Savitri: A Tale of Ancient India by Devdutt Pattanaik, is one of the earliest and most powerful portrayals of female agency in Indian literature. Drawn from the Mahabharata (Vana Parva), Savitri is celebrated not for passive devotion but for her intellect and moral clarity. When her husband Satyavan is destined to die, she follows Yama, the god of death, and engages him in a dialogue rooted in wisdom, restraint, and ethical reasoning, ultimately reclaiming her husband’s life. In Pattanaik’s retelling, Savitri emerges as a woman who negotiates fate itself, reminding readers that strength in Indian storytelling has long been imagined as thoughtful, articulate, and resolute.
Draupadi: Claiming Her Voice in the Epic
Draupadi, as reimagined in The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, finally gets to tell her own story. Intelligent, ambitious, and deeply self-aware, this Draupadi questions destiny, marriage, and the men who decide her fate. Divakaruni gives her interiority, desire, and anger, writing about a woman who refuses to be reduced to a footnote in someone else’s epic.
Shikhandi: Challenging Gender and Identity Norms
Shikhandi, from Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You by Devdutt Pattanaik, stands at the intersection of gender, identity, and justice. Neither easily categorised nor comfortably explained, Shikhandi challenges rigid binaries embedded in mythology. Pattanaik’s retelling reminds readers that Indian epics have always contained fluid identities and conversations about gender and pride—concepts the Western world is only accepting centuries later, while in India we simply chose not to foreground them.
Sita: Strength, Compassion, and Political Acumen
Sita, in Sita: Warrior of Mithila by Amish Tripathi, is reimagined through a modern narrative lens that blends mythology with contemporary political and ethical questions. Trained in combat, strategy, and governance, this Sita refuses the idea that strength must come at the cost of compassion. Tripathi presents her as morally grounded yet politically astute, offering a counter-narrative to portrayals that reduce her story to endurance alone.
Akka Mahadevi: Poetry as Power and Defiance
Akka Mahadevi’s voice reaches modern readers through contemporary translations that keep her defiance intact. Her vachanas are powerfully presented in Akka Mahadevi: The Questioning Poet-Saint, which frames her not just as a mystic but as a woman who questioned marriage, authority, and social obedience through poetry. Another accessible collection, Songs for Siva: Vacanas of Akka Mahadevi, brings her words into sharp focus, intimate, fearless, and emotionally direct. When read together, these works reveal Akka Mahadevi as a poet-saint who chose literature as her power, using language to claim spiritual freedom and speak in a voice centuries ahead of its time.
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A Legacy of Complex, Unapologetic Female Strength
Together, these women reveal something powerful that the Indian subcontinent has long imagined female strength as complex, questioning, and unapologetic. These stories existed centuries before modern conversations about feminism, identity, or autonomy. If our myths and literature once held space for women like Savitri, Draupadi, Shikhandi, Sita, and Akka Mahadevi—the women who spoke, resisted, and chose for themselves—a quieter question lingers: what changed in contemporary times, and why did we stop listening to the women our own stories once celebrated?
