Radhika Iyengar is an award-winning journalist with a master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York. In 2020, she was awarded the Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship at University of Kent, UK. She won the Red Ink award for Excellence in Indian Journalism (2018), was a writer-in-residence at Sangam House, Bengaluru (2019), and a recipient of the Sanskriti Prabha Dutt Fellowship (2016-2017). In 2024, Radhika was invited to be a writer-in-residence at Ahmedabad Writing Programme, Ahmedabad University. Her bestselling book, Fire on the Ganges, was longlisted for the Debut Book Award at the AutHer Awards and has won the Kalinga Literary Award (Youth) and the Gaurang River Literary Prize for Best Non-Fiction. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter: @radhika_iy
<p>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'. </p><p>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.</p><p>'An exemplary essay in social portraiture, taking its author far out of her cultural milieu and into another, impossibly dissimilar one.'</p><p>RANJIT HOSKOTE</p><p>'Between death and life, between myth and reality, Radhika Iyengar captures the lives</p><p>of the Doms of Banaras with empathy and respect.'</p><p>NILANJANA ROY</p><p>'A portal into an unimaginable world ... Fire on the Ganges allows us to experience the</p><p>lives of its characters as if they were our own. I read it in one go.'</p><p>SOONI TARAPOREVALA</p><div><br></div>
