Abstract

The paper explores the question of insurgent women in Boro armed movement in Assam, India. It seeks to locate them in the larger discourse of insurgency movement and in the political trajectory of Boro movement. Their moments of agency in violent ethno-nationalist movement has gone unnoticed largely and invisibilised in the process of transitional peace processes. Based on an ethnographical accounts of women insurgents, it argues that the understanding or viewing conflict through gendered discourses obscures their role and have systematic and etymological effects on the understanding of being an ‘insurgent’. This has significant power dynamics and tend to exclude women from demobilization programs in the ‘post-conflict’ stages. It also explores the complexities of these ‘violent women’ and pursue these arguments through their narrative accounts to explore the questions of ‘why women fight’? and is there any significant ideological differences to these questions when compared to male insurgents.