‘Dom women are not expected to be enterprising or entrepreneurial’: Radhika Iyengar on writing ‘Fire on the Ganges’

Author Radhika Iyengar (Photo: Chandni Gajria); and her debut book 'Fire on the Ganges: Life Among the Dead in Banaras'.

Hindus regard Banaras as the salvation city. To be cremated there and their ashes immersed in the holy Ganga is their way to attain moksha: liberation from the the endless birth and death cycle. In Varanasi's Chand Ghat, the Dom people — a Dalit subcaste — burn corpses. According to a legend, Dom people were designated to perform this task by Lord Shiva. However, it’s not completely lost on them that its casteist strictures govern this activity.

In her non-fiction book Fire on the Ganges: Life Among the Dead in Banaras (Fourth Estate, a HarperCollins imprint, 2023), journalist and debutante author Radhika Iyengar demonstrates how caste-heteropatriarchy administers who gets to live the way they live, do what they do, and hold cultural capital according to their caste locations. Edited excerpts:

What drew you into the world of the land of the dead?

While pursuing my master’s in journalism at Columbia University, New York, as part of a thesis project, I was looking to report on a subject. I remember coming across an article on the Dom community. However, the more I researched about it, the more I realised that there wasn’t sufficient information on the community beyond what existed in the books about the Dom men’s work as corpse burners. Their identity was solely anchored to the ghats. It was quite a unidimensional representation. I wanted to engage with narratives surrounding other aspects of their lives. From the community's children hoping for a different future to the women largely absent from public spaces.

What revelations about the marginalisation of women at the intersection of caste, gender, and poverty did your reportage threw up?

Speaking to the women in the community was one of the most enriching experiences for me. Sometimes our conversations were serious and intense, sometimes they were light and playful, and often therapeutic. The more time I spent with them, I realised that though our worlds were different, we could, as women, relate to each other in many ways.

There's a scene in the book where one of the protagonists, Twinkle, is cooking lunch and her sister-in-law is giving her company in the kitchen. At the time, I was sitting beside them, quietly observing the pair. Soon, they were talking to me. They asked me how marital markers like the mangalsutra are important in other parts of the country, since a mangalsutra doesn’t have 'much value' or isn’t a required piece of jewellery for married women in the Dom community. For them, toe rings, bangles, bindi, sindoor and anklets are more important. Such exchanges laid the ground for talks on more serious issues like lack of economic independence, choice, early marriages.

Caste, along with gender discrimination and a paucity of money, plays an important factor in their lives. For instance, when Dolly, a young widow, tries to look for work opportunities in dominant caste homes, she is primarily offered the job of a ‘latrine’ cleaner. Often, they perform these tasks with their bare hands, without any safety equipment, and with paltry earnings. When Dolly finally decides to set up a small shop at the threshold of her one-room home to make a living, she meets with resistance from her own community. Dom women are not ‘expected’ to be enterprising or entrepreneurial.

Is there anything you found the most difficult to document in this book?

Many but I think the scenes which describe Komal’s experiences (an adolescent Brahmin girl) after her neighbourhood learns that she is in a relationship with Lakshaya (a young man from the Dom community) were tough to write. Primarily because those were tough interviews to conduct. Even though she did not belong to the same caste as the Yadavs, she had grown up in their basti, and so, they considered her to be one of their own. The way her neighbours publicly tried to humiliate, discredit, and intimidate her after finding out about her relationship, was deeply disconcerting. It makes you realise how warped our society is.

You mention you were ‘not interested in following the accident or the alleged murder’ of Sekond Lal. Why so?

From the very beginning, I was certain that this book was not going to be a crime investigative story. My primary focus was to follow the lives of a handful of people from the community who were taking some very challenging, life-altering decisions to lead lives quite different from the one accorded to them. To introduce a set of individuals who were precariously navigating a caste-ridden and gender-biased landscape. Investigating whether Sekond Lal was murdered or had died by accident would direct a large amount of focus solely on his widow, Dolly, which I did not want. I did, however, want to document Dolly’s transformation from a woman who believed in the goodness of everybody into a sharp businesswoman who only trusted herself.

How do you self-analyse what to ask or when to resist?

During the initial visits, no one was very forthcoming. Nor did I expect them to be. Not many want to open their worlds to a stranger. However, being respectful of their space, I didn’t want to be intrusive. At Manikarnika Ghat, I'd stand back and merely observe. It took time to build a level of comfort and understanding and reach a point where they felt secure enough to have honest and open conversations. If they weren’t comfortable, I didn’t probe further.