Letter by a minor girl, who was gang raped in Mawryngkneng, East Khasi Hills reveals the shocking patriarchal realities at the heart of so called ‘democratic’ and ‘traditional’ local village administration in Matrilineal Meghalaya.
Letter by a minor girl, who was gang raped in Mawryngkneng, East Khasi Hills reveals the shocking patriarchal realities at the heart of so called ‘democratic’ and ‘traditional’ local village administration in Matrilineal Meghalaya.
Misogynist diktats and nationalist hubris
Soibam Haripriya is being abused into accepting her status as a woman from “within the community” who the men can punish and lay claims over. Nationalism requires pious and submissive women to create a “pure” community. Women such as Soibam Haripriya through their work and politics exemplify the transgressive women which threaten to destabilise the nationalist aspirations of a community. Any such criticism puncturing the myth of Northeast exceptionalism of being an ‘egalitarian’ society immediately injures the patriarchal ego of the keepers of such myth and nationalisms.
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