Reimagining the Royal Woman in M. K. Binodini Devi’s The Princess and the Political Agent

Abstract

This paper explores M.K. Binodini Devi’s The Princess and the Political Agent (1997; trans. 2020) as a nuanced reimagining of female subjectivity and agency within the intersecting contexts of Manipuri royal life and colonial history. As one of Manipur’s pioneering feminist voices, Binodini revisits the silenced narratives of royal women, uncovering how they negotiated identity, emotion, and authority amid the pressures of patriarchy and imperial rule. Through the character of Princess Sanatombi based on a real historical figure, Binodini dismantles the binaries of duty and desire, tradition and transgression, and emotion and power. Anchored in feminist and postcolonial literary frameworks, this study interprets Binodini’s text as both a critique of gendered silencing and reclamation of the female interior voice. By situating the novel within the socio-historical transformations of late nineteenth-century Manipur, the paper highlights how women’s affective lives become political sites of resistance.