The handlers of death

In Fire on the Ganges, Radhika Iyengar unveils the lives and struggles of Varanasi’s Dom community.

A man tends to a burning funeral pyre at Harishchandra Ghat, on the banks of the river Ganga, in Varanasi. | Photo Credit: NIHARIKA KULKARNI

About 16 years ago, I met the Dom Raja—the anointed “king of the Doms”, the keeper of the sacred cremation fire—in my home town, Varanasi. I worked as a newspaper correspondent at the time and was invited to the king’s abode, his Mahal, for an interview.

But this was no ordinary palace, for he was no ordinary king. The Doms occupy a contradictory space in Hindu society: they are revered for being the chosen intermediaries between this world and the next, the only caste on which has been bestowed the “ability” of handling the cremation fire, of coming in close physical contact with the body as it becomes ash. But this same “ability” also signifies them as the “other” in the social system, considered untouchable by the privileged castes. In the cold pigeonholing of caste, the Doms are segregated and socially pressured to stay within the confines of the dharmic duty prescribed upon them.

Fire on the Ganges: Life among the dead in Banaras

Radhika Iyengar

Fourth Estate India

Pages: 352

Price: Rs.599

The cover of Fire on the Ganges: Life among the dead in Banaras | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

In a small, stuffy room, the Dom Raja spoke about purity, and lack thereof. The Doms, he stressed, needed no elaborate ceremonies to be cleansed after being in contact with the dead: they were born to handle corpses.

Varanasi’s Manikarnika Ghat is the “headquarters” of Hindu cremation, a holy site by the Ganga river where hundreds of bodies are burned every day. It is here that the keepers of the fire conduct most of their business: the transaction of funereal duties.

Much has been written by historians about death and its rituals in Varanasi. Rarely, however, have the voices of those that live among the dead been amplified in the way that Radhika Iyengar does in her landmark book, Fire on the Ganges (Fourth Estate, 2023). After what amounted to nearly eight years of research, interviews, and time invested with the Dom community around the ghats of Varanasi, Iyengar paints a complex picture of ambition, sorrow, romance, tragedy, and joy, in a narrative that demands that its readers share its urgent empathy.

Iyengar’s approach is reminiscent of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family, the classic narrative that featured a clear-eyed account of marginalised women (and their families) in the Bronx. Like LeBlanc, Iyengar presents the stories of real people with the added flourish of a novelist’s eye, featuring a vast cast of characters who are often defined by motivations beyond the sacred fire. There is Dolly, a young widow who becomes the first Dom woman to own and operate her own small business; there are corpse burners like Aakash and Mohan whose lives often illustrate the shackles of an occupation defined by caste; there is Bhola, who attempts to disguise his Dom identity as he seeks private education at a college in Ludhiana; and Dolly’s younger brother Lakshya, who attempts to break caste barriers when he falls in love with Komal, a higher-caste girl.

In Varanasi—or Banaras—one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, the ancient exists in the present. To talk of Varanasi, one must talk of history and faith, education and trade, of the ambitions of India’s rising middle class, and of a city that became the constituency of the Prime Minister, a beacon for the Hindutva project. Iyengar’s aim is never to address all of these themes, but these themes are never too far behind, allowing their faint stench to waft over the lives of the Doms near the cremation pyres.

Central to the world, however, is the question of caste: of touch, of permittance. Where Iyengar goes a step forward is in her hyperfocus on Dom women, whose narratives have often been buried under the double-layered blanket of caste and patriarchy. Every step outside the home requires permission; every independent decision is an extra hurdle. Iyengar’s writing is at its best when she describes the most intimate, personally observed moments around these women:

“From the terrace window, we hear the sharp screech of a metal latch being dragged into place. My eyes trace the source of the sound and land on a woman with a deep blue wrapping—a ‘chaddar’—gracefully draped over her head. The netted fabric, an addition to her sari’s pallu, obscures her face completely. The woman stands obediently outside the doorway, waiting for her husband to lock their house. When he is done, she walks off with him, her anklets tinkling, the heels of her pumps smacking against the ground: tuck-tuck-tuck. Under the chaddar, the woman no longer appears human, but a shapeless, decorative figure—with no identity of her own—gliding through the alley” (pages 224-225).

For both women and men in the community, death is the truest constant in life. The business of death is a livelihood for Doms, who sell pyre wood, manage the cremation fires, or operate the electric/gas crematorium at Harishchandra Ghat. Most precariously placed are the young children who take the shrouds, jewels, or other items off the cremation pyres to resell for a valuable bonus. Dangers lurk in every corner for the young, from the allure of alcohol or drugs, to the prying eyes of voyeurs in the crammed lanes.

At the turn of the decade, came the most unexpected threat of all: the pandemic. COVID-19 may have pushed much of the country into lockdown, but by the burning ghats life got busier than ever. For the keepers of the fire, there was no choice but to put their own lives at risk to handle the daily barrage of the recently dead. The flow of daily corpses increased manifold, leaving a shortage of wood and space. Soon, news reports featured visuals of unburnt corpses washing up on the riverbank.

The national spotlight has also fallen upon the riversides of Varanasi after the city was chosen as Narendra Modi’s constituency in 2014. In 2019, Modi launched the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor project, thrusting the ancient gullies into a rapid facelift. Many homes and smaller temples in the city’s old alleyways were torn down for the “Corridor”, displacing residents and leaving many discontented with the loss of the city’s heritage. With the extra attention paid to Varanasi in the past decade, my home town has indeed been beautified in parts. But narratives like Iyengar’s show that there is still much ugly prejudice behind the facade of development, chipping through the freshly painted walls by the ghat-side. In many cases, with a strong philosophical shift to majoritarian politics, the prejudices have only become uglier for minorities and marginalised communities.

Meanwhile, the Ganga that flows past this city is festering with pollution, its supposedly sacred waters dirtied with the filth of pesticides, industrial waste, and sewage. I have often taken boat rides on the river after nightfall. The dark hides the river’s decay; all one sees is the lights from the ghats reflected upon the holy river. The river takes in all that we offer down into its blackness. The dark makes it easier to ignore the pollution lying beneath the surface. In Fire on the Ganges, however, Iyengar takes a sharp dive underwater, confronting the pollution of caste and gender, and reflecting back all of our own selves, urging us to empathise with our fellow humans—instead of leaving them in the darkness.

Karan Madhok is an Indian writer, editor, and journalist. His debut novel, A Beautiful Decay, was published by Aleph Book Company in October 2022.