ABSTRACT
Mamoni Raisom Goswami's The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar (2009) is a novel originally written in Assamese and later translated into English. Set in late nineteenth-century Assam, the novel depicts the story of a Bodo woman named Thengphakhri who is, very unusually for the times, stationed as a tehsildar (tax collector) in the British administration in lower Assam. Goswami's novel traces the trajectory of her political career: placed as the first female administrator in colonial Assam, she grew to become an active agent in the national movement against the British. Goswami's novel lends voice to a lesser-known, doubly marginalized historical female figure from a community that has found meagre historical documentation. This chapter will attempt to examine the figure of a strong female character in a patriarchal society, analysing, in the process, the narrative of a female administrator protesting against a powerful regime, which nonetheless placed her in a significant administrative position. Problematizing the characterization of Thengphakhri as a woman warrior or a Virangana, the chapter will focus on the struggle to seek and establish her personal as well as political identity in a patriarchal and colonial social structure.
