Deconstructing the Mahabharata: Ekalavya, Land, and Tribal Resistance in Roll of Dice

The paper explores Anand Neelakantan’s The Roll of the Dice as a tribal-centered
reinterpretation of the Mahabharata, one that reconfigures the epic through Adivasi memory,
ecological ethics, and lived experience. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Linda Hutcheon
and Ania Loomba, rewriting is conceptualized here as an intentional political act that interrogates
dominant historiographies and makes space for marginalized voices erased in Brahmanical and
elite narratives. Neelakantan’s retelling intervenes in the epic tradition by foregrounding tribal
epistemologies, oral knowledge systems, and subaltern subjectivity, thereby challenging the
normative authority of classical texts. Through the dehumanization of figures such as Ekalavya
and the portrayal of the forest as a sovereign cultural world, the novel constructs an Adivasi
counter-history that critiques caste power, reclaims indigenous worldviews, and reframes the
Mahabharata as a site of resistance.