Othering Through Discourse: A Reading of Indira Goswami’s Chinnamastār Mānuhto

Abstract

Indira Goswami is a bold voice in Indian fiction and a pioneer in giving a new direction to Assamese novel. Selection of new themes unaddressed hitherto in Assamese literature like- sexuality of women, decaying morale of the higher class and hypocrisy of religious institutions, increasing class difference expressed in her inimitable bold language and evocative style immediately catch the attention of the readers. Through her creative writings, Goswami offers readers new insights, provoke debates over issues related to lives of ordinary man. Systematic victimization of women by patriarchal institutions, deprivation of the weaker section through various manipulations, epistemic violence created by religious and social discourses, effort to merge heterogeneous identity of the weaker section into homogenous one by the powerful section of the society are some of the issues highlighted by her. This paper is an attempt to understand how discourse is used as a device for othering women in her famous novel Chinnamastār Mānuhto.

Keywords: Indira Goswami, Chinnamastār Mānuhto, othering, discourse

Cite this Article

Hrishikesh Choudhury. Othering Through Discourse: A Reading of Indira Goswami’s Chinnamastār Mānuhto. OmniScience: A Multi-disciplinary Journal. 2018; 8(1):    25–29p.