Sowvendra Shekhar Hansda’s novel The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2013) foregrounds the struggles of the Santhal community through the haunting figure of Rupi, whose inexplicable illness becomes more than a bodily affliction. The novel uses Rupi’s sickness or ailment as a powerful social metaphor to interrogate the intersections of disease, stigma, and cultural politics within a marginalized tribal society. This paper argues that Rupi Baskey’s sickness is less a bio-medical condition and more an embodiment of the cultural anxieties, social hierarchies, and gendered oppressions that mark Santhal life in Jharkhand, India. Through the narrative of Rupi Baskey’s decline, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar critiques the patriarchal structures that confine tribal women, exposes the clash between indigenous healing practices and modern medicine, and reveals how superstition and communal belief systems often reinforce stigma rather than alleviate suffering. Drawing on frameworks of medical humanities and subaltern studies, this study situates Rupi Baskey’s ‘mysterious ailment’ as symbolic of the wider socio-political malaise that afflicts tribal communities–dispossession from land, erosion of cultural traditions, and marginalization within mainstream Indian society. The novel’s fusion of magical realism, oral lore, and social realism further deepens the metaphorical resonance of disease as a marker of both vulnerability and resistance. By reading Rupi’s suffering not only as personal tragedy but also as a communal narrative-Santhal, the paper highlights how Hansda redefines illness as a cultural and political phenomenon. Ultimately, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey demonstrates that the body, particularly the body of a tribal woman, becomes a contested site where history, politics, and culture inscribe their wounds.
Department of English Nagaland University, Nagaland
