Outsider-Insider Dichotomies in Anjum Hasan?s Lunatic in My Head and Neti Neti Not This Not This

The paper aims to investigate the insider-outsider paradox in Anjum Hasan?s Lunatic in My Head and Neti Neti Not This Not This, set in the background of Shillong, Meghalaya, India. The research paper explores how characters of the stories like Firdaus, Sophie, and Aman traverse the complex layers of belonging, ethnicity, identity, marginalization, and alienation. Even though the characters lived in Shillong for year after year, they are still labelled as ?dkhars?, and they tend to experience discrimination and exclusion that reveals the in-built nature of regional identity that exists in the post-colonial state. Employing postcolonial theories by Franz Fanon and Homi K. Bhabha, the paper attempts to analyse how identity is shaped and disintegrated by collective memory and ethnic politics, often amounting to confusion and dissociation with self. The study draws on analytical and descriptive methods, placing the novels in the context of Northeast Indian state formation, cultural memory, and ethnic politics. Hasan?s technique of narration provides character representations poised between their geography and cultural inheritance. The analysis is further supported by insights from other scholars like Baruah, Anderson, and Kikon, who elaborate on marginalization, imagined communities, and the politics of belonging in Northeast India. Nongbri and Misra?s sociological perspectives on Khasi-majority tensions also inform the paper?s arguments. The findings reveal that identity in such contested terrains is inherently unstable, constructed not just through spatial belonging but through emotional and psychological rootedness, shaped by inherited trauma and public memory. The paper unveils that although territorial belonging can be challenged, a profound mental and emotional ground can give various kinds of reconciliation that can enable individuals to assert space, albeit denial of legitimacy by hegemonic discourse. The study contributes to broader debates on regional nationalism, cultural displacement, and the complexities of postcolonial identity in multi-ethnic societies like India.