'Vividly told and richly detailed, Radhika Iyengar's Fire on the Ganges is an untold story that will shape our collective understanding of India.'

- Sonia Faleiro, author of The Good Girls

'You might think of Manikarnika as a place for the dead. This fine book is a reminder that the burning ghats are a place for the living.'

- Amitava Kumar, author of The Blue Book

'In this vivid work of slow journalism, Radhika Iyengar guides us into the brutal world of the Doms, a sub-caste of Dalits, or ''untouchables'', who have tended the corpses and lit the funeral pyres in Banaras for as long as anyone can remember.'

- Don Belt, former senior editor, National Geographic Magazine


Banaras Ka Masaan 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, Banaras Ka Masaan 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 ... Banaras Ka Masaan allows us to experience the lives of its characters as if they were our own. I read it in one go.'

SOONI TARAPOREVALA