ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the marginalized women of the militarized, hyper-masculinized periphery take center stage. The chapter questions their elision from public politics and platforms of post-insurgency political reconciliation and reconstruction. Such elision and silencing have happened despite the women’s active participation in ethnic movements and their strong and visible history of political activism. This chapter enters some of the marginal spaces where the invisible women now live, away from the masculinized public and political platforms. It finds that these women are creating a new reality during conflict and making positive peace through powerful yet non-confrontational ways that also redefine gendered relationships. In creating this new reality, the chapter argues, the women of Assam hold up lessons for centers and peripheries of power that are engaged in conflictual relationships globally.
