Resisting Modernity in “The Black Hill” by Mamang Dai

Abstract

The colonial expansion due to the industrial revolution has left an impact all over the world. It has created a case for modernity as essential to civilize the savage colonies. This is a veiled justification of the ‘white man’s burden’ to lead the world out of darkness. Modernity in the form of globalization has spread its roots all over the world with various tools at its disposal such as religion, history, literature and pedagogy. The covert agenda is to exert more and more power to nullify indignities by overpowering their culture and way of life with the use of violence as an when required, crushing any resistance that comes in its way. Critics like Edward Said, Louis Althusser and Micheal Foucault have given considerable impetus to the study of this interaction between modernity and indigenity.

This paper aims to apply the conceptions of these theorists in the novel” The Black Hill’ (2014) by Mamang Dai. In this novel we are transported back in time to the unexplored regions of Arunachal Pradesh during the nineteenth century. She chooses a setting where tribal people led a harmonious life amidst nature. Social taboos were not rigid in those times as they were leading their own indigenous lifestyle. All of this changed when they came under the radar of the British Empire. An overzealous Jesuit named Priest Nicholas, whose sole aim was to spread the light of the Lord in this mystic land. The paper will try to show how the locals resisted against the attempts that were made to challenge their indigenity by people they considered as outsider invading their private space.