THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY

SHILLONG REGIONAL CAMPUS

AN ASSIGNMENT ON ‘INDIAN LITERATURES- II’

SUBMITTED BY

ARNAB SENGUPTA
M.A. ENGLISH LITERATURE, SEMESTER IV
REGN. NO. S0MAELIT20200292
ACADEMIC SESSION: 2021-22
05/03/22

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Patriarchy and the Metaphor of Silence in Indira Goswami’s The Bronze Sword of
Thengphakhri Tehsildar

Anindita Ghosh in her introduction to Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the Everyday
in Colonial South Asia states that Indian women are doubly silenced as they lack agency in
“nationalist discourses and second in the more recent postcolonial scheme of things.” (Ghosh 1)
Women were never expected to be a part of the public sphere and they became victims of both the
colonial enterprise and their gender role.

The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar written by Indira Goswami brings into account
the narrative of an Indian Bodo woman who was the rst Indian woman tax collector in British
India and seemingly one of the rst women having a professional career in the nation. As the novel
progresses, she wilfully joins the Indian Freedom struggle. The narrator consciously tries to base
this story on the Bijni Kingdom of Assam, which has been usually underrepresented in Indian
history. Goswami effectively balances history, ction and components of woman's rights in The
Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar.

The protagonists of Indira Goswami are mostly widows who try to survive and cope up with
patriarchy and the orthodox rules governing society. Indian society always considered women to be
in the periphery. Goswami, through her widow characters try to dismantle such stereotypes and
binaries that exist in the Indian society. Through her novels, she has tried to portray a new kind of a
liberated woman who struggles up the patriarchal hierarchy and tries to build a sense of identity
outside the male hierarchy. Although, they are secured by age-old conventions and informal
traditions, these seem to further motivate women to strive for a space which is free of rules and
dogmas, further developing their story of hardships.

Ghosh asserts, “we see woman as a silent shadow, veiled and mute before her oppressors, and
unquestioningly accepting a discourse that endorses her subordination.” (Ghosh 1) In The Bronze
Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar, Thengphakhri is a widow but despite such odds she is able to
climb the social ladder and defy customs by conforming and accepting the role given by the male.
Her mastery and bravery with rearms attracted the attention of a British of cial, Captain Hardy
who offered her the employment opportunity as a tax collector in the Company. She accepts the
offer and starts to work with the Britishers to gather taxes from the people living in the Bijni
locality of Assam. By accepting this role of power, she automatically transforms into a symbol of
strength and versatility. When social reformers were attempting to battle various social injustices
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like child marriage, Sati and the purdah-system, there was Thengphakhri working with the British
of cials side by side, breaking the idea of the role of a woman by enacting the patriarchal markers
like riding a horse and wearing a hat which became a part of her identity as a woman. In the novel,
it is seen that she went out with her grandfather in the woods to learn to handle a gun, she was able
to save the life of two drunkards who were about to be assaulted by a tiger. She shot the tiger from a
distance and she managed to get a perfect shot. This news spread far and wide and people from
Bijni came to see the dead tiger and to enquire who had taken the perfect shot. Chief Hardy of the
British armed forces accompanied by soldiers came to meet her and gave her the appointment letter.

The men in the society dreaded women’s yearning for independence as it would disrupt the
power hierarchy. They held the view that women’s freedom would always lead to lawlessness. They
wanted women to be restricted to the domestic sphere and not be exposed to the public sphere
which they wanted to be exclusive for men. So, in the novel when Thengphakhri is awarded the
position of a Tehsildar, we see the bewilderment and surprise of the farmers, “What? A woman
Izardar? Will she be able to do the job?” (Goswami 28) Most of the people couldn’t believe that
“she had been given the post of an Izardar. A woman collecting taxes! They couldn’t believe this.”
(Goswami 29)

This brings forth the patriarchal mentality which was ingrained within society. Thengphakhri
was able to dismantle such grand narratives and were able to carry out her duties sincerely. She
becomes an object of gaze and fascination as we see in the novel that people who went to Bijni
made it a point to come “To see the only woman in India who went to collect taxes mounted on a
horse. They were retired, old soldiers who also wanted to visit the famous Kamakhya Temple.”
(Goswami 33)

One of the villagers exclaimed, “She has the Mother’s blessings! Here women are respected
and look at us: our women are hidden behind the purdah. They can’t even leave their hair open like
this, they can’t wear hats like this and when their husbands die— they are also burnt alive in the
cremation ground. Did you know that? Do you have such practices here too?” (Goswami 36) The
villagers are startled to see Thengphakhri perform a male role, that is of a tax collector which makes
them realise the way they have been treating women.

Thengphakhri’s resistance is seen through her act of silence. According to Padma Anagol, for
a woman resistance would mean, “the ability to limit, nullify, or overturn structures of power. As
such, women’s resistance is a conscious act and is characterized by intention arising within
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conditions of unequal relations of power within society, and is often generated (although not
exclusively) by the imbalance of power between the sexes.” (Anagol 27)

Her leaving home to join the rebellion speaks volumes about her agency and resistance as she
was a widow. Without challenging the British or the dominant force, Thengphakhri is able to prove
her agency with her act of silence. The image of the colonial woman is that of the silenced subject,
muted by the patriarchal dominance and traditional values. Throughout the novel, we nd her
hardly speaking, but this act of silence itself becomes a form of resistance. Tejoswita Saikia asserts,
“One of the most important yet apparently antithetical relationships to have emerged from this
system of binaries is that of voice and silence. If in the patriarchal hegemony of the colonizers voice
has always been the medium of agency, the productivity of meditative silence has carelessly and
with condescension been disregarded.” (Saikia 50)

Thengphakhri was able to rise up the social hierarchy as she was awarded power from the
phallocentric centre itself. Thengphakhri nonetheless is able to impersonate and mimic the role of
the tax collector, which was essentially male, thus making her behaviour ambivalent. She collected
taxes for the British and she generally followed the British of cials' requests yet she was never clear
about her emotions or feelings towards the British since when Macklinson asked her whether she
loved working with them, she stayed quiet and just grinned. (Goswami 65) She nearly stayed quiet
since the starting of the novel but after her uncle Musahari's passing, she felt traumatised: "She
remained completely silent. It seemed as though something was happening. Some kind of con ict.
A con ict-about which she couldn’t open her mouth at all in front of anyone and just because she
couldn’t articulate it her heart was being torn into pieces.” (Goswami 64) The bronze sword perhaps
becomes a phallocentric image of power and authority which is usually associated with the male.
Thengphakhri, being a widowed woman rising up to that level of power is able to tame the
phallocentric object and reverse gender roles which makes the villagers question the roles and
responsibilities which came with it. “The sword she thought was given to her by God as a gift, the
sword that she carried with her everywhere when she went to collect taxes.” (Goswami 74)

Thengphakhri’s silence enables her to exercise power over her people as people always fail to
interpret her silence. So, Thengphakhri’s silence should not be seen as a silence of the repressed
rather a silence that holds agency. Tribhuvan Bahadur, her grandfather and mentor thought he could
read her mind, although “she remained silent most of the time. What was she thinking? What does
she want to say?” (Goswami 16) The silence becomes the tool of the colonial woman that enables
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her to show a form of resistance. The translator of the novel, Aruni Kashyap asserts that “It is an
ambitious project not only because of the lack of proper historical evidence about Thengphakhri,
but also because Goswami creates her as an introvert. She rarely speaks and we only see her in her
actions.” (Goswami 12). Thengphakhri’s silence should not be taken as lack of agency but rather the
silence should be interpreted as a form of power, which stands independent of the male centre, it
becomes a celebration of the periphery.

Work Cited

Anagol, Padma. “From the Symbolic to the Open.” Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the
Everyday in Colonial South Asia, edited by Anindita Ghosh, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 20–57.

Goswami Indira. The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar. Translated by Aruni Kashyap,
Kindle ed., Zubaan, 2013.

Ghosh, Anindita. “Introduction.” Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the Everyday in Colonial
South Asia, edited by Anindita Ghosh, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 1–20.

Saikia, Tejoswita. The Conspiracy of Silence in Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s the Bronze Sword of
Thengphakhri Tehsildar, IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science, vol. 21, no.1, Jan 2016,
pp 50-53, iosrjournals, http://iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/Vol.%2021%20Issue1/Version-1/
H021115053.pdf.