ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a literary representation of a recent period of state terror in Assam: Dhrubajyoti Bora’s novel Kalantoror Gadya. Kalantoror is a polyphonic novel that shows the impact of state terror on urban and the rural populations. The author analyzes how banal bureaucratic rituals combine with the arbitrariness of political terror to create a terrifying world for the ordinary subject. The narrative of an urban youth named Prabhat shows how state rituals like placing a suspect’s name in a file combine with torture to destroy a subject’s trust in the world. The narrative of Babula combines a depiction of a disabled person’s agency with a story of haunting. The mute Babula is tortured and killed by the army, then haunts the forest near his village, thereby illustrating the ethical dimension of ghostly narratives as encounters with obliterated histories. Sombori’s narrative shows how bureaucratic and social indifference towards rape eventually transform her into a form of disposable life. However, Sombori’s agency is not contended with. Crucial here is the category of the voice – just as Sombori is shown emerging as an agent after her first rape, the narrative throttles her voice by subjecting her to a second sexual assault at the end.
