Performing the
Margin: Feminist Interventions and Gendered Realities among the Women of
Arunachal Pradesh
Dr. Subhashis Banerjee,
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
Nagaland University (A Central University),
Kohima Campus, Meriema, India.
Abstract:
The relationship
between gender and feminism is fundamental and intricate. Feminism as a
movement arises from the need to dismantle discriminatory structures born out
of socially constructed gender roles. In the specific context of Arunachal
Pradesh—a region marked by ethnic diversity and socio-political marginality—the
interplay of gender and feminism presents unique manifestations. This paper
explores how women from select tribes such as the Nyishi, Adi, and Puroik
negotiate their identities amidst dominant gender binaries. Drawing upon
theoretical frameworks by Judith Butler, Juliet Mitchell, and R. W. Connell,
the study analyses oral narratives, contemporary feminist poetry, and
ethnographic accounts to examine how gender is performed, resisted, and
reclaimed. The notion of gender performativity is explored not only in
ritualistic practices but also in indigenous resistance literature where
women’s voices challenge both patriarchy and ethnonational hierarchies. The
paper argues that feminist discourse in Arunachal Pradesh must move beyond
urban, mainland paradigms to incorporate local knowledge systems, embodied
traditions, and community-based agency.
Keywords: Gender performativity, Feminism, Arunachal
Pradesh, Indigenous women.
Introduction
The relationship between gender and
feminism constitutes one of the most profound and enduring debates within the
field of critical theory and cultural politics. Feminism, at its conceptual and
activist core, arises not merely as a movement for women’s rights but as an
epistemological challenge to the very foundations of gender as a system of
knowledge and power. Feminist theory has historically interrogated the
stratification of human identity along the axis of gender—an axis that
functions not only as a marker of difference but also as a mechanism of social
regulation and exclusion. Central to this interrogation is the recognition that
gender is not an innate, biological reality but a cultural and discursive
construction. Michael S. Kimmel aptly notes, “we are not born different; we
become different” (Kimmel 34), thereby highlighting the pivotal role of
socialisation in shaping gendered subjectivities.
The notion that gender is learned
rather than inherited has gained widespread acceptance among contemporary
scholars, yet its implications continue to unfold with greater nuance in
diverse cultural and geopolitical contexts. Judith Butler, perhaps the most
influential voice in gender theory in recent decades, radically redefines
gender as performative, arguing that “gender is not something that one is, it
is something one does, an act…a doing rather than a being” (Gender Trouble 33). By framing gender as a stylised
repetition of acts within a highly rigid regulatory framework, Butler
dismantles essentialist views and shifts the focus to how identities are
produced through discourse and ritual. Gender, in this framework, is not merely
a category of identity but a process of enactment, sedimented over time,
naturalised through cultural practices, and policed by hegemonic norms.
This critical understanding assumes
greater significance when applied to societies that exist outside the purview
of dominant Western or even mainstream Indian gender discourses—particularly in
indigenous communities where cultural values, oral traditions, and kinship
structures form the basis of everyday life. In the tribal societies of
Arunachal Pradesh—home to over 26 major tribes and more than 100
sub-tribes—gender roles are deeply embedded within the oral-literary matrix,
performative rituals, cosmological beliefs, and customary laws. These roles,
however, remain largely under-theorised within academic feminist circles, which
have traditionally focused on urban, caste-based, or religious axes of gendered
oppression. As such, the gendered experiences of indigenous women in Arunachal
Pradesh remain on the periphery of feminist scholarship.
This marginalisation is not merely
academic but symptomatic of what Spivak terms “epistemic violence” (Spivak
284), wherein dominant forms of knowledge production silence subaltern voices
by rendering them either invisible or unintelligible. Women from tribal
societies in Arunachal Pradesh are doubly marginalised—first as women within
patriarchal community structures and second as indigenous subjects within a
nation-state that often exoticises or ignores their cultural specificities.
Their gendered realities are refracted through an intersectional lens of
ethnicity, geography, class, and colonial legacy. Therefore, any feminist
inquiry into their lives must necessarily engage with what Chandra Talpade
Mohanty calls the “geographies of struggle” (Mohanty 243)—the situated,
context-bound arenas in which gender identity is negotiated and contested.
The prevailing gender structures in
Arunachal Pradesh are informed by deeply symbolic and customary practices.
Among many tribes, such as the Adi, Nyishi, and Puroik, the division of labour,
inheritance rights, and decision-making power are allocated along rigidly
gendered lines. Yet, as Juliet Mitchell observed in Woman’s Estate, gender is a “socially conditioned
fantasy” (Mitchell 73), sustained by cultural narratives and psycho-social
mechanisms that assign fixed roles based on perceived biological difference. In
these communities, the role of the woman is typically tethered to domesticity,
fertility, and ritual purity, even as she plays a pivotal role in agriculture,
craft production, and oral knowledge transmission. This paradox—between power
in practice and marginalisation in ideology—requires a critical feminist
engagement that moves beyond simplistic binaries of victimhood and agency.
Butler’s notion of performativity
becomes particularly relevant in examining the ritualistic and oral practices
of these tribal societies, where gender roles are enacted through songs,
dances, dress, festivals, and even silence. The embodied repetition of these
acts creates the illusion of stable identities. As Butler elaborates in Bodies That Matter, gender identity “is not a simple
matter of the body’s surface features, but a complex, ongoing negotiation of
norms that precede and exceed the subject” (Butler 12). In the context of
Arunachal Pradesh, the performative enactment of femininity can be seen in
festivals like Solung (Adi) or Nyokum (Nyishi), where women’s roles are both celebrated and
contained within traditional expectations. These performances, while appearing
apolitical, are sites where gender is continuously reiterated and naturalised.
At the same time, fissures within
these performances open up space for resistance and reconfiguration. As Sara
Ahmed reminds us, feminism often begins with “the experience of being blocked,”
of refusing to continue along a path shaped by others (Ahmed 139). For tribal
women, resistance may not take the form of protest slogans or policy activism
but can emerge through micro-practices—refusal to marry young, participation in
informal literacy groups, or the creation of cooperative weaving collectives
that assert economic autonomy. These everyday acts are not insignificant; they
constitute what Michel de Certeau would term “tactics of the weak”—subtle
appropriations of dominant space that allow for temporary reversals of power.
The neglect of these experiences in
mainstream feminist discourse also stems from a limited understanding of
knowledge itself. Arturo Escobar, in Designs for the Pluriverse, argues for the need to “decolonise knowledge by
acknowledging the legitimacy of non-Western, community-based epistemologies”
(Escobar 34). The cosmologies of many Arunachali tribes do not subscribe to
binary gender models. For example, the Adi spiritual system of Donyi-Polo (Sun-Moon) posits a dual yet non-hierarchical
cosmic balance, symbolising complementarity rather than conflict. This
cosmology could serve as the basis for an indigenous ecofeminism that resists
both gendered hierarchies and environmental degradation. As Mohanty warns,
feminism must guard against becoming “imperialistic in its reach” by failing to
recognise the political and cultural agency of women in non-Western contexts
(Mohanty 249).
This paper, therefore, seeks to
address a critical gap in gender and feminist studies by exploring the complex,
multilayered, and culturally specific performances of gender among the tribal
women of Arunachal Pradesh. It attempts to answer how these women articulate
their gendered identities within frameworks that are both oppressive and
enabling. Drawing on theories of performativity, postcolonial feminism, and
indigenous epistemologies, the paper proposes that the relationship between
gender and feminism in Arunachal Pradesh is not a unilinear narrative of
oppression, but a dynamic field of negotiation, appropriation, and resistance.
In doing so, it challenges the
homogenising tendencies of both state policies and mainstream feminist theory,
urging instead for a situated feminism that recognises and validates the
pluralities of gender experiences across India’s diverse socio-cultural
landscape. As feminist thought moves towards greater inclusivity, the voices
from Arunachal Pradesh—rooted in oral knowledge, performative traditions, and
community agency—must find their rightful place within its theoretical and
political horizon.
Gender as a
Socially Constructed Identity
The understanding
of gender as a socially constructed identity marks a foundational shift in both
feminist theory and socio-cultural analysis. Juliet Mitchell, in her seminal
work Woman’s Estate, refers to gender as a “socially conditioned
fantasy,” indicating that what is perceived as natural or biologically ordained
is, in fact, a result of sustained cultural conditioning (Mitchell 73). Gender,
according to Mitchell, operates within a psychic and symbolic structure that
socialises individuals into specific roles and expectations based on culturally
defined masculinity and femininity. This framework has profound implications in
tribal societies like those of Arunachal Pradesh, where gendered divisions are
often perpetuated through oral pedagogy, ritual practice, and customary legal
frameworks.
In many tribes,
particularly the Adi, Nyishi, and Apatani, the inheritance of property,
political authority, and even religious leadership is predominantly
male-centric. Among the Adi, for example, village councils (Kebang) are
traditionally male-dominated, and women’s participation is either restricted or
completely excluded (Barua 105). The gendering of roles—where men act as
decision-makers and women as caregivers—mirrors broader patriarchal structures,
yet it is not rooted in any biological imperative. Instead, these roles are
upheld through an intricate web of expectations, rituals, and communal norms
that prescribe and reinforce specific behaviours.
Judith Butler’s
concept of performativity is especially useful in this context. In Bodies
That Matter, Butler asserts that gender identity is “tenuously constituted
in time” and is materialised through “a stylised repetition of acts” (Butler
15). Gender, she insists, does not pre-exist these performances but is instead
produced through them. In tribal Arunachal Pradesh, these performances are
visible in daily routines—how women draw water, how they greet elders, how they
weave, or participate in agricultural work and dances. These seemingly mundane
actions are performative acts that reiterate and reinforce gendered
distinctions. For instance, the ceremonial dances of the Adi tribe, often
restricted by gender, are performances of cultural memory that also re-inscribe
gendered divisions of sacred space and agency.
Such practices
ensure that gender roles appear 'natural' and timeless, although they are in
fact meticulously sustained by sociocultural repetition. Butler argues that the
illusion of an essential gendered self is “a strategy that conceals the gender
discontinuities” (Butler Gender Trouble 140). In this light, the gender
roles in tribal Arunachal are not spontaneous but regulated by tradition,
shaped by intergenerational narratives, and reinforced through rituals of
belonging and exclusion.
Moreover, these
constructions are deeply tied to epistemological frameworks rooted in oral and
mythic traditions. The concept of 'womanhood' is taught not through formal
institutions but through lullabies, folktales, ceremonial practices, and rites
of passage. The gendered subject in this context is both a cultural signifier
and a product of cumulative performativity, situated within a communal
framework that privileges patriarchal continuity.
Gender and Oral
Traditions: Resistance in Storytelling
The oral
traditions of Arunachal Pradesh are repositories of collective knowledge and
identity, forming an essential aspect of cultural pedagogy and worldview
transmission. Within these traditions, however, the female voice is often
either muted or symbolically codified. Female characters in myths and folktales
are frequently depicted as mothers, wives, sorceresses, or sacrificial figures,
roles that reflect and reproduce patriarchal values. As L.K. Barua notes,
“tribal folktales tend to reflect a patriarchal consciousness where the woman
is passive, dependent, or spiritually marginalised” (Barua 112).
This symbolic
representation of women aligns with Spivak’s assertion that the subaltern woman
is doubly silenced—by patriarchy and by colonial or national narratives that do
not account for her voice (Spivak 275). However, oral traditions are not
monolithic. There are subversive pockets within these narratives where women
defy their stereotypical roles. In a lesser-known Nyishi tale collected by
Talom Rukbo, the protagonist, a young girl, defeats a demon not through brute
force but through wit, resourcefulness, and spiritual acumen. This counters the
dominant male-hero archetype prevalent in tribal and non-tribal folktales alike
and creates a space for alternative articulations of power and agency.
The subversion
here is subtle yet significant. It shows that oral traditions, while largely
conservative, are not entirely closed to the idea of female agency. Feminist
critic Sara Mills argues that “subversive discourses often operate from within
the structures they seek to challenge” (Mills 61). The presence of such tales
indicates that resistance is not necessarily external or revolutionary; it can
emerge from within the cultural system, through reinterpretation, parody, or
allegory.
In this sense,
oral storytelling becomes a site of feminist intervention. Women narrators,
often grandmothers or ritual singers, play an unacknowledged role in
transmitting and occasionally transforming gendered ideologies. This aligns
with Mohanty’s proposition that the feminist subject must be understood within
her context—“as produced through historical and cultural specificities”
(Mohanty 248). For women in Arunachal Pradesh, these folktales are both a
mirror and a canvas—a reflection of gendered expectations and a space to subtly
revise them.
Gender
Discrimination and the Case of the Puroik Women
The case of the
Puroik women exemplifies how gender discrimination is compounded by ethnic and
economic marginality. Formerly stigmatised under the derogatory exonym
‘Sulung’, the Puroik community has historically been subjected to bonded
labour, social exclusion, and dispossession. This systemic marginalisation
extends to Puroik women, who face multiple axes of oppression—gendered,
cultural, and economic.
Priyanka Taba, in
her ethnographic study of the community, highlights that Puroik women have
limited access to education, legal protection, and land rights. “They are
excluded from local councils, have minimal say in marriage arrangements, and
are often subjected to exploitative labour practices” (Taba 78). These women
are rendered nearly invisible within state policies and feminist discourses
alike.
However,
resistance is taking shape through grassroots initiatives such as weaving
cooperatives and informal savings groups. These efforts, often led by women,
allow for community bonding and economic autonomy. Mohanty would describe this
as “feminism without borders”—a feminism rooted in local contexts but resistant
to hegemonic definitions (Mohanty 249). The activism of Puroik women is not
loud but persistent, not urban but grounded in the vernacular life worlds that
frame their existence.
Their stories also
challenge the notion of the passive tribal woman. They demonstrate that
gendered agency can manifest in non-Western, non-institutionalised
forms—through everyday negotiations, survival strategies, and collective
labour. As Escobar suggests, decolonising feminist praxis means recognising the
legitimacy of such plural forms of agency and resistance (Escobar 86).
Literature as
Feminist Assertion: Voices from the Margins
Despite the
scarcity of published literary work by tribal women of Arunachal Pradesh,
emerging voices like Yater Nyokir are asserting their place within feminist
discourse. Nyokir’s poetry—circulated orally and in unpublished
collections—reflects themes of alienation, maternal labour, and spiritual
longing. Her poem “Woodsmoke Dreams” encapsulates the invisibility of women’s
labour: “She carries the village / on her back like firewood / only to be
forgotten when the meal is done.”
This kind of
poetry constitutes what Sara Ahmed calls a “feminist snap”—a moment of rupture
when the assigned role no longer suffices, and the subject turns away from
compliance towards resistance (Ahmed 112). Through such poetic expressions,
tribal women critique the emotional and physical toll of gendered labour while
also asserting their interiority, wisdom, and autonomy.
These narratives
are also epistemic interventions. They challenge the Cartesian bifurcation of
emotion and reason, domesticity and politics. The private becomes political in
such writing, and the personal becomes revolutionary. Feminist theorist bell
hooks argues that “marginality is not a site of deprivation but of resistance”
(hooks 152), and these poems exemplify that idea. They do not seek assimilation
into dominant paradigms but celebrate the local, the tactile, and the affective.
Rethinking
Feminism through Indigenous Epistemes
Any feminist
project rooted in the tribal communities of Arunachal Pradesh must acknowledge
the indigenous cosmologies and value systems that underpin these societies.
Arturo Escobar warns against exporting Eurocentric feminist models into
radically different ontological landscapes. Instead, he advocates for
“pluriversal epistemologies”—worldviews that emerge from specific, relational,
and community-based knowledge systems (Escobar 34).
The Adi belief system
of Donyi-Polo, which reveres the Sun (Donyi) and Moon (Polo) as
co-existing and interdependent deities, exemplifies such a worldview. Neither
gendered nor hierarchical, this duality reflects a cosmology where balance, not
dominance, is the guiding principle. Such beliefs create conceptual room for a
non-binary understanding of gender, where femininity is not opposed to
masculinity but complements it in a sacred continuum.
Feminism in
Arunachal Pradesh, therefore, must be relational and dialogic. It must emerge
not from imposition but from immersion—listening to the songs, stories, and
silences of the women who live at the margins yet embody immense strength. This
calls for a feminist ethics that honours relationality, embodied wisdom, and
collective healing.
Conclusion
The gendered
experiences of women in Arunachal Pradesh present a compelling lens through
which to re-evaluate dominant feminist paradigms and their assumptions about
universality, agency, and resistance. At the heart of this investigation lies a
paradox—while tribal communities in the region have often been celebrated for
their perceived egalitarianism and preservation of cultural authenticity, women
within these communities are frequently subjected to rigid gender roles,
exclusions from political participation, and culturally embedded forms of
marginalisation. Yet, this marginalisation does not produce voicelessness.
Rather, it produces complex forms of resistance that defy the binaries of
victimhood and agency, silence and voice, tradition and transformation.
Feminism, if it is
to maintain its relevance as a liberatory discourse, must engage rigorously
with the specificities of indigenous epistemes, and interrogate the coloniality
of its own universalising tendencies. Postcolonial feminist theorists such as
Chandra Talpade Mohanty have consistently warned against the homogenisation of
“Third World women” as a coherent group whose identities and struggles are
assumed rather than interrogated (Mohanty 244). Her critique is especially
pertinent in the context of Arunachal Pradesh, where women’s lived realities
emerge at the intersection of indigeneity, regional marginality, gendered power
relations, and postcolonial state dynamics.
The framework of
performativity, as articulated by Judith Butler, offers a nuanced understanding
of how gender identities are not static essences but are enacted through
repeated cultural performances (Butler Gender Trouble 33). In Arunachal
Pradesh, these performances are deeply embedded in ceremonial dances, agricultural
labour, kinship rituals, and oral traditions that construct and sustain
gendered expectations. Yet, as Butler also reminds us, the very repetitiveness
of these performances makes them susceptible to rupture. That which is repeated
can also be subverted, reconfigured, and refused. The subaltern woman, in this
light, is not an object of pity but a subject of politics—enacting what Sara
Ahmed calls a “feminist snap,” a turning away from the roles prescribed to her
(Ahmed 112).
The women of the
Nyishi, Adi, and Puroik tribes are not merely bearers of culture but also
critics and rewriters of it. Their participation in storytelling, weaving,
seasonal rituals, and poetic expressions constitutes what Michel de Certeau
refers to as “tactics”—subtle appropriations of imposed systems that enable
agency without direct confrontation (de Certeau 96). For instance, when a
Puroik woman forms a self-help cooperative or narrates a folktale that centers
a clever and defiant female protagonist, she is not merely engaging in cultural
practice—she is performing a counter-discourse.
It is essential to
highlight that these counter-discourses do not always manifest in overt acts of
rebellion. Resistance, in indigenous settings, often takes the form of quiet
endurance, coded expressions, and community-based negotiations. This is not a
failure of feminist praxis but rather an expansion of its lexicon. As Gayatri
Spivak famously posed the question, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” she also
challenged scholars to rethink the modes through which subaltern voices
articulate themselves—through opacity, silence, gesture, and cultural
repetition (Spivak 285). The tribal woman in Arunachal Pradesh may not speak in
the idiom of protest marches or social media campaigns, but she does
speak—through lullabies that reframe domestic labour, through textile patterns
that narrate ancestral memories, and through ceremonies that subtly invert
gendered hierarchies.
These modes of
expression are often misread or undervalued by frameworks that privilege
textuality and visibility. Yet, to ignore them is to perpetuate what Escobar
describes as “epistemic blindness” towards pluriversal ways of being and
knowing (Escobar 40). True feminist solidarity must therefore involve an
epistemological humility—an openness to learning from the rhythms of life and
resistance that exist outside the metropolis, the academy, and the
nation-state. The cosmological balance of Donyi-Polo, the emphasis on
communal well-being, and the embodied practices of healing and storytelling
among Arunachal’s tribes all offer alternative imaginaries of gender and
power—imaginaries that do not separate the personal from the political, the
spiritual from the social.
The contributions
of theorists like Juliet Mitchell also remind us that gender is not just
culturally constructed but psychologically internalised, becoming a “fantasy”
sustained by collective belief and symbolic structures (Mitchell 73). Among the
tribes of Arunachal, these fantasies are not disseminated through mass media or
formal schooling but through the intimate domains of family, myth, and ritual.
It is here that feminist critique must intervene—not to dismantle tradition but
to unveil its gendered dimensions and expand its interpretive horizons.
This paper has attempted to foreground the gendered
experiences of tribal women in Arunachal Pradesh not as an anthropological
curiosity but as a site of serious theoretical engagement. Their stories,
practices, and voices urge us to reconsider feminism not as a finished project
but as an evolving conversation—one that must be deeply attentive to locality,
relationality, and difference. The emergent literary voices such as that of
Yater Nyokir, who write from within the life worlds of their communities, offer
powerful reminders that feminism need not always arrive in the language of
theory. It can arrive as a poem, a shared meal, a woven shawl, or a ritual
chant.
As bell hooks
asserts, “marginality is a site of resistance. It is not the site of
domination. It is the site of possibility” (hooks 149). The tribal women of
Arunachal Pradesh inhabit such marginality—not passively, but with a quiet
radicalism that is profoundly transformative. Their resistance lies not only in
what they oppose but in what they affirm: kinship, land, ancestral memory, and
the slow, deliberate creation of alternative futures.
The gender
identities of women in Arunachal Pradesh are not determined solely by custom or
constrained by patriarchy. They are performative, contested, and fluid—always
in the process of becoming. Feminist theory, if it aspires to inclusivity and
transformation, must listen to these voices with care and humility. It must
move beyond abstract universals and engage with the lived, the situated, and
the embodied. Only then can it become truly liberatory—not just for some women,
but for all women, in all their complex, plural, and powerful manifestations.
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