Amitayu Chakraborty
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Durgapur Women’s College, West Bengal, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-3999-448X. amitayuc@yahoo.com;
Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.19
Abstract
The article problematises dominant discourses on ‘indigeneity’ (within the context of India) through an analysis of the novel The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2014) written by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (1983—). Those discourses are predicated on colonial and neocolonial ethnic stereotypes: at times ‘the indigenous’ denotes a reluctant subject of the nation-state, a primitive mindlessly opposing the ‘modernising’ corporate projects; at times, it constitutes a pristine innocence, an antithesis of the ‘corrupting’ urban life. Santhals, among various other indigenous communities in India, have been a victim of such reductivism. The article argues that Hansda’s novel offers a nuanced depiction of a Santhal community in India which is fraught with internal conflicts as well as external threats undercutting the grand narrative in which the adivasi is a cultural imaginary, either an embodiment of atavism and wildness to be curbed or vulnerable artefacts to be preserved. The tale of Rupi appears to be a critical departure from the monolithic images of adivasis as it blends the magical with the real.
Keywords: indigeneity, Santhal, adivasi, tribe, magical realism, subaltern, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar.
