Embodied Slow Violence in The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey

Abstract

Aims: This study aims to explore Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar's The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey in relation to Jharkhand's regional political economy, a facet that has gotten relatively little attention in previous scholarship, which has mostly concentrated on gender and cultural representation. The research seeks to investigate how the narrative depicts bodily decline and social marginalisation in a society determined by long-term resource exploitation, worker out-migration, and uneven development.

Methodology and Approaches: The study uses close textual analysis, which is informed by Rob Nixon's concept of slow violence and the internal colonial framework. These methods are used to examine how gradual deterioration, social withdrawal, and the lack of obvious causation shape the novel's depiction of disease and everyday life.

Outcome: The analysis exhibits that Rupi Baskey's trajectory, from physical strength to extended illness and partial recovery, highlights the cumulative and often invisible effects of long-term work, economic precarity, limited healthcare access, and societal misrecognition. Conclusion and Suggestions: The novel's ending implies a type of restricted acknowledgement that restores social continuity without changing the underlying conditions of vulnerability. By situating literary representation within the historical context of regional marginalisation, the study adds to ongoing discussions in Adivasi literary studies and emphasises the need for more research on embodiment as a mode of experiencing and articulating internal colonial conditions across resource frontiers.