Mapping the spatiality of the Indian Indigenous woman: figuration of Sarah Joseph’s Budhini as a nomadic subject

• Published in: AlterNative : an international journal of indigenous peoples
• Main Authors: Raj, Mrinalini, Banerjee, Sarbani
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 26.07.2025
• ISSN: 1177-1801; 1174-1740
• DOI: 10.1177/11771801251358914

This article aims to contribute to the larger discussion of the women of the Indian Indigenous communities in the gender discourse with a focus on the Santal (one of the largest Indigenous communities in India). It studies Sarah Joseph’s novel Budhini (2019/2021) based on the real-life story of Budhini, a Santal woman treated as an outcast by her community. It analyzes the figuration of an Indigenous woman as a nomadic subject in Indian society without her community. It explores how the position of an Indigenous woman is situated at the confluence of several strands of oppression through a reading of her usage of physical space reflecting her marginality. Reading the novel based on the framework of nomadic figuration and the discourse on space, it will analyze space as a medium of exercising power through exclusion, structuring the protagonist’s gendered identity in her struggles and oppression.