Subversive Motherhood and Maternal Discourses in Manipuri Cinema: An Analysis of Aribam Syam’s Ishanou

The idea of a mother in Manipur’s cultural context has varied meanings. In the indigenous religion of the Meitei, the female maibis, the central religious functionary, is referred to as the mother. She plays a more important role in the religious rituals than her male counterpart. In the ritual, she gets possessed only by lai (goddess) and delivers an oracle, which comes only from female goddess to female maibi, never from male God to male maiba. This female dominance in the religious functionary is a unique characteristic of Meitei culture. The Manipuri film Ishanou (1991) depicts a life of an ordinary mother who got possessed and eventually rejected the traditional marriage and family institutions. As culture defines motherhood in shaping identity and attitudes towards mothering, this paper investigates the understanding of motherhood in the Manipuri society through semiotics and psychoanalysis of the film. The cinematic portrayal of the mother in the film negotiates power in a traditionally patriarchal society through the dynamics between the private and public spheres of the mother. She moves away from traditional motherhood to being the mother possessed by the goddess. The film’s rejection of domesticity and other traditional intensive mothering ideologies can be seen as subversive motherhood.