Voices Behind Bars: A Mizo Woman’s Prison Writings

Twenty years of Rambuai (troubled times) resulted in political turmoil and chaos in the hills of Mizoram. While the entire population experienced this period of troubles and suffered its effects, texts on Rambuai have been dominated by male narratives. New scholarly approaches continue to underplay the role women played during this period. This paper is an attempt to investigate unexplored personal accounts to create a new paradigm in Rambuai history. It locates an individual female agency from the autobiographical memories extracted from the unpublished prison writings and diaries of B. Vanlalzari, a female political prisoner during the Rambuai period.