Narrating the Silences of History: Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill

Abstract

Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill (2014) is based on recorded historical events of the journey of two French missionaries Nicholas-Michel Krick and Augustin-Etienne Bourry, who were engaged in a mission to set up a church in Tibet, but in the 1800s the only way to reach there was through northeast India—present day Arunachal Pradesh. While they were on the final leg of their journey, they were killed by Kaisha, a village chief of the Mishmi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh on August 2, 1854 at Somme village, near the Tibetan border. The Mishmee chief was later captured and sentenced to death by hanging in Dibrugar (Assam) jail. It is this historical event that goes into the making of Dai’s novel. Mamang Dai dexterously interweaves Gimur- Kajinsha love story into this historical narrative. The arrival of Father Krick at the Village of Mebo as part of Southern Tibet Mission and later his journey to Mishmee hills coincides with Gimur’s elopement with Kajinsha from her native village Mebo to Kajinsha’s Mishmee hills. Dai imagines it was inevitable that their pathways must have crossed. While the priest and Kajinsha are characters from history, Gimur is a fictional character created by Dai to explore the gaps and silences of history. Where the story encoded in history ends, or gets enshrouded in enigmatic silence, Dai makes Gimur articulate those silences and proclaim the innocence of Kajinsha, thus subverting a historical narrative.