Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Radhika Iyengar, an Indian journalist, writer, and recipient of the 2018 Red Ink Awards in the category of Human Rights. She held the Prabha Dutt Fellowship in 2016, and was a writer-in-residence at Sangam House, Bengaluru through the assistance of the Bianca Pancoat Patton Fellowship in 2019, and was a recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship in 2020. Radhika has written for several news magazines including Al Jazeera, Atlas Obscura, Hyperallergic, Vogue India, Christian Science Monitor, Conde Nast Traveller India, among others. After eight years of research on the Dom community in Varanasi, she wrote Fire on the Ganges: Life among the dead in Banaras (2023), a book that has been critically acclaimed and nominated for several prestigious literary awards.

 

Thank you Radhika for taking time out to talk with The Wise Owl.

 

RS: Your book Fire on the Ganges on the Dom community has been critically acclaimed. Spending nearly a decade researching the Dom community reflects a deep commitment. What initially drew you to this subject, and how did your understanding evolve over the course of your research?

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RI: While pursuing my Master's in Journalism at Columbia University in New York, I began researching the Doms for my thesis. My interest was piqued when I came across an article about the community, and realized that I knew little about them. Despite the Doms' crucial role in Hindu funerary rites as corpse-burners, there was a noticeable lack of literature on their lives. They remained largely invisible in mainstream discourse, with the available information primarily focused on their involvement in cremation practices.

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I was curious to learn about their lives beyond the cremation ground. I wanted to understand how witnessing death every day influenced their views on life. How did this profession impact them psychologically? Were Dom women also involved in the cremation work, or were their lives moored to domestic responsibilities? Did the children aspire to a different future than their parents? If so, what opportunities for quality education were available to them? These were some of the questions I sought answers to, which ultimately led me to report on the community.

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After my initial visit to Banaras, I quickly realised that the Doms' lives held far more complexity than I had anticipated—especially when it came to a few individuals who were courageously challenging the odds stacked against them. Take Dolly, for example, a widow and mother of five, who becomes the first woman in her community to run a small business, defying the patriarchal norms that have long governed her community. Then there's Bhola, who, when leaving Banaras to pursue higher education at a private university, hides his caste identity from his dominant-caste classmates, navigating the challenges of both academia and social stigma.

 

RS:  The Doms are a close-knit and historically marginalized community. How did you gain their trust to document their lives, and what challenges did you face in doing so?

 

RI: Persistence was key. I made repeated visits to the area where the Doms reside, as well as to the cremation ground, Manikarnika Ghat. Over time, the community members came to recognize that I was committed to documenting their lives, and not just a fleeting journalist who would disappear after a couple of visits. The corpse-burners encounter many people in their work, as they interact with mourners from all walks of life. They are skilled at reading body language and can quickly gauge people's intentions. In my case, I believe they sensed that I was genuinely interested in understanding their lives without judgment or reservations.

 

RS: Varanasi is a city where life and death coexist in profound ways. How did you, as a writer, grapple with the emotional and spiritual weight of this dichotomy?

 

RI: What is both surprising and profoundly moving is that Manikarnika Ghat, despite being a cremation ground, is brimming with life. Men from various backgrounds move through the area. Chai stalls serve tea, wood labourers transport logs, and clusters of pyres burn at the edge of the Ganga, while temple bells ring in the background. Someone is listening to Bollywood songs playing on a nearby radio, dogs and cows sunbathe, while thick smoke from the pyres envelops the ghat like a shroud. In the distance, boats carrying pilgrims in vibrant garments drift by. The ghat is a place of constant activity. As a writer, it was this striking dichotomy that I found myself drawn to.

 

RS: Through the struggles and aspirations of the Doms, universal themes of survival, betrayal, and love emerge. How did you weave these themes into the narrative without diluting the unique experiences of the community?

 

RI: I think for me, it was deeply important to describe their experiences in as much detail as possible because I knew that many readers were far removed from the reality the Doms lived each day. It did take tremendous effort to conduct interviews where I would ask each individual to recount or share their life story with me. Then I would return to my desk, transcribe the interviews and highlight the significant sections. I would always ask myself, ‘What do I want the world to know about this community and what is the best way to make this an engaging read with the facts I have at hand?’ The beauty of storytelling lies in focusing on the individuals’ mental grit, their vulnerabilities, their internal resilience and the life-altering decisions they make, to reveal how they overcome insurmountable situations.

 

RS:  For someone with extensive experience writing for leading publications as a journalist, what challenges did you face transitioning from shorter journalistic formats to the extensive narrative of a book?

 

RI: Writing a 1,000-1,500-word article typically involves interviewing a few key people, conducting brief background research, and being concise with your language. Such pieces are usually filed within four to five days. Writing a book, however, is an entirely different undertaking. I enjoy delving into detail and creating vivid scenes, and the book format (of 60,000-80,000 words or more) provides the freedom to do so. The uniquely challenging aspect, for me, was establishing a solid structure—figuring out the story’s spine and bones. One has to be cognizant of the dates and timelines; notes have to be thorough; everything has to be methodical. I spent considerable time reviewing research papers and newspaper reports to corroborate certain events recounted in the book.

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Additionally, writing a book is an incredibly solitary endeavour which can be all-consuming. I remember during my evening walks, I would constantly be thinking about the characters, the narrative flow, and the arrangement of chapters.

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RS: Reporting on human rights and marginalized communities can be emotionally taxing. I found reading Fire on the Ganges a very emotional and at times heartrending experience. How do you process the emotional toll of immersing yourself in these stories?

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RI: It did impact me—I am human, after all. If I am being candid, there was a period when it took a great emotional toll on me. I almost left the project midway. However, about a month or so later, I returned to the manuscript because I realized the story was larger than me. I had to remind myself that I was a journalist, and the members of the community had entrusted me with their stories, even in their most vulnerable moments. They had shared their life experiences with me, and I had a responsibility to honour that trust. It became clear that my priority was to complete the work—everything else became secondary.

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RS: What was the most surprising or unexpected discovery during your time documenting the lives of the Doms, and how did it shape your narrative?

 

RI: The first time I visited Chand Ghat, seeing the squalor in which the Doms are forced to exist shocked me. They live in cramped, one-room accommodations, lacking basic amenities such as a reliable water supply and access to proper bathrooms. There is a single bed – the solitary piece of furniture that fits in their home. The man of the house sleeps on it, while the wife sleeps on the ground, even when she is pregnant. During winters, the cold from the ground often seeps into the women’s bodies, which gravely affects their health.

 

The Dom children begin working at the cremation ground as shroud-pickers when they are about five or six years old. Sometimes, they accidentally burn part of their limbs, since they are working close to lit pyres. They don’t have the funds to rush to a clinic for medical assistance, so they squish marigold flowers that are readily available at the cremation ground, make a paste of it and rub it on their wounds. At night, their mothers may dip a cloth in warm kerosene oil to soothe the wound with it. The children are forced to grow up very quickly while working at the cremation ground.

 

The men who labour as corpse-burners work in a very stressful and arduous environment. To cope with the grotesque sight and smell of cremating corpses, they begin drinking alcohol at ages as young as 11-years-old and get heavily involved in substance abuse. As a result, many men die in their late 50s and early 60s due to their poor health and substance addiction.

 

All these disturbing and unexpected factors shaped my narrative.

 

RS: In a society often resistant to addressing caste issues and issues relating to marginalized communities, how do you see literature contributing to breaking the silence and fostering awareness?

 

RI: There is a lot of literature available that details the atrocities of caste and how it cripples the communities that exist at the lower rung of the caste ladder. However, it’s often not given the right platform to be promoted or accessed. At the same time, I feel that as a society we are responsible for our lack of interest in reading literature that delves into subjects like caste. We need to change our mind-set and become more open to dialogue.

 

I was attending a literature festival last year and discussed my book with a woman who appeared to be in her 50s. She patiently listened to me before arguing that the Doms were probably born as corpse-burners due to their karma and were paying for their past sins. I was taken aback since this lady appeared to be well-read. As a society, we have a lot of unlearning to do and reading the right literature is the best place to begin. 

 

RS: Do you see yourself continuing to write about caste and marginalized communities, or are there other themes you’d like to explore next? We would love to know a little about your future projects.

 

RI: I will continue to write human-interest stories that explore themes of human resilience and hope.

 

Thank you so much for taking time out to talk with The Wise Owl. We wish you success in all your literary pursuits and look forward to reading more of your work.