Decoding the Strands of Women Oppression in Fiction of North Eastern Women Writers: A Study of Temsula Ao’s The Night (2005), Easterine Kire’s A Terrible Matriarchy (2007) and Jahnavi Barua’s Rebirth (2010)

Abstract

India had long come out of the shadows of otherisation by the West, but ironically, it had constructed its own facets of misinterpretation and otherisation of its diverse indigenous groups within the subcontinent. Northeast India is one such geographical region that have always been viewed as exotic, backward owing to the distinct cultural and traditional patterns of its numerous tribes, castes and groups, of which very little is explored by the mainstream society and hence deemed as rooted in backwardness. The region has always been entangled in the web of national, ethnic, regional identities as it seems to exist in isolation from mainland India and grapples with insurgency and the inability to accommodate long term cultural and indigenous diversity. Additionally, the cultural, ethnic ethos and norms of each indigenous group acts as an influential factor in shaping the identities of the North East Indian people. In such contexts, the women question becomes a case of double marginalisation owing to unbalanced power relations as well as patriarchal customs and rules of various indigenous groups and the perpetual militarisation and regional identity crisis in the area. The research aims to investigate the factors moulding the identity of north eastern woman from the lens of gendered subalternity, through some strong, vivid narratives with passive-strong female characters. It is an attempt to understand how the multiple social ideologies of region, ethnicity, race, gender, nation, identity overlap to delineate to hierarchal disparities in the society contributing to victimisation of women.