Fire On The Ganges

by Radhika Iyengar

English 352 pages 1 edition

Fire on the Ganges chronicles the everyday realities of the Doms, a Dalit sub-caste in Banaras designated by tradition to perform the Hindu rite of cremation. Despite their role in this crucial work, the community is condemned to the lowest order in caste hierarchy, and its members continue to be treated as ‘untouchables’. The book plunges into Banaras’s historical past while narrowing its lens to a few spirited characters from the Dom community. ­rough their tales of struggle and survival, loss and ambition, betrayal and love, it tells the at-times-heartbreaking, at-times-exhilarating story of a community struggling to find a place beyond that accorded to it by ancient tradition. Unsettling, complex, immersive, Fire on the Ganges is a work of immense depth and insight. ‘An exemplary essay in social portraiture, taking its author far out of her cultural milieu and into another, impossibly dissimilar one.’ RANJIT HOSKOTE ‘Between death and life, between myth and reality, Radhika Iyengar captures the lives of the Doms of Banaras with empathy and respect.’ NILANJANA ROY ‘A portal into an unimaginable world … Fire on the Ganges allows us to experience the lives of its characters as if they were our own. I read it in one go.’ SOONI TARAPOREVALA