Shurpanakha Speaks

Reclaiming the Silenced Women of the Ramayana

Abstract

This paper re-examines the Ramayana through the silenced voice of Shurpanakha, a character historically demonised as grotesque, lustful, and dangerous. By situating her mutilation and rejection alongside the stories of other marginalised women—Ahalya, Renuka, and Urmila—the study reveals how the epic encodes patriarchal anxieties, punishes female desire, and perpetuates cultural othering. Drawing on Valmiki’s Ramayana, Kampan’s Iramavataram, and modern feminist reinterpretations by writers such as Volga, Kavita Kane, and Anand Neelakantan, the article highlights the ways in which women who resist or transgress social norms are silenced through physical violence, moral condemnation, and erasure. Employing feminist, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial frameworks, the study positions Shurpanakha not as a monstrous outsider but as a symbolic figure of protest against systemic injustice. By reclaiming her narrative, the paper challenges the binaries of idealised and vilified womanhood, urging a re-reading of the Ramayana as a text that must be interrogated for its enduring role in shaping gendered hierarchies.