Her-story in history: Women’s roles and participation in the Anglo-Kuki War

Abstract

Though many studies have been conducted on the Anglo-Kuki War 1917-1919, women’s roles, contributions or participation have been excluded from the historical narrative. The tendency of earlier historical writings was to focus on men as actors and active agents in history. The war, which lasted for almost two years, could not have been sustained without the support of the women in various ways. Moreover, when their husbands were sentenced to jails in distant lands by the colonial British, the wives of the chiefs took care of the village administration alongside being solely responsible for the upbringing of the children. The chapter aims to recover women’s agency as a means of restoring the voices of marginal groups who were excluded from the dominant historical narratives. It draws attention to the accounts of the Kuki women during and after the war by using oral tradition and oral history in order to reveal information that has been suppressed in mainstream accounts.