''The Man from Chinnamasta'' is a novel published in 2005 and written by

Indira Goswami Indira Goswami (14 November 1942 – 29 November 2011), known by her pen name Mamoni Raisom Goswami and popularly as Mamoni Baideo, was an Indian writer, poet, professor, scholar and editor. She was the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award (1983 ...

, who was awarded the

Sahitya Akademi Award The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...

in 1983, the

Jnanpith Award The Jnanpith Award is the oldest and the highest Indian literary award presented annually by the Bharatiya Jnanpith to an author for their "outstanding contribution towards literature". Instituted in 1961, the award is bestowed only on Indian w ...

in 2001 and the

Prince Claus Awards The Prince Claus Fund was established in 1996, named in honor of Prince Claus of the Netherlands. It receives an annual subsidy from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Fund has presented the international Prince Claus Awards annually si ...

in 2008. Set in pre-independence British Assam, it was written with a specific political vision : to exhort her readers to protest against the practice of animal sacrifice in the ancient

Kamakhya Temple The Kamakhya Temple at Nilachal hills in Guwahati, Assam is one of the oldest and most revered centres of Tantric practices. The temple is the center of the ''Kulachara Tantra Marga'' and the site of the Ambubachi Mela, an annual festival t ...

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

. Once published, it took Assam by stormKatha in the News
/ref> because of its

subversive Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms. Sub ...

nature. The

Brahmin Brahmin (; sa, ब्राह्मण, brāhmaṇa) is a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society. The Brahmins are designated as the priestly class as they serve as priests (purohit, pandit, or pujari) and religious teachers (gur ...

s especially took offence for her frank demand to remove an ancient practice in the most important

Shakti In Hinduism, especially Shaktism (a theological tradition of Hinduism), Shakti (Devanagari: शक्ति, IAST: Śakti; lit. "Energy, ability, strength, effort, power, capability") is the primordial cosmic energy, female in aspect, and r ...

temple of the world.

Plot

The novel follows the relationship of Dorothy Brown, a British woman in Assam, and her relationship with a tantric of the

in Assam. Ratnadhar and Bidhibala's -the child widow's- story runs parallel to this narrative. Ratnadhar organizes a signature campaign against the practice and faces many troubles in the process.

Significance

The novel is also a scholarly account of Indira Goswami's quest and hard work. The Man from Chinnamasta, the tantric who is the protagonist, constantly discusses the ancient Sanskrit scriptures and substantiates his demand to stop animal sacrifice. He demonstrates the various alternatives that '' Debi Bhagavat'', ''

Yogini Tantra The ''Yogini Tantra'' is a 16th- or 17th-century tantric text by an unknown author either from Assam or Cooch Behar: "One of the most explicit descriptions of Tantric sexual rites occurs in Yogini tantra, a sixteenth-century text from Cooch Beha ...

'' and ''

Kalika Purana The Kalika Purana ( sa, Kālikā Purāṇa), also called the Kali Purana, Sati Purana or Kalika Tantra, is one of the eighteen minor Puranas ('' Upapurana'') in the Shaktism tradition of Hinduism. The text was likely composed in Assam or Cooch B ...

'' furnish to animal sacrifice.

References

External links

Struggle for change (review)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Man from Chinnamasta Assamese literature 2005 Indian novels Novels set in Assam

Plot

Significance

See also

References

External links