Dahan (The Burning); by Suchitra Bhattacharya.

The original was published a few decades ago, and I remember reading it long back, it made a vivid impression. There is much horror, depicted through a young woman that went through much including being gang-raped in the middle of a street, and another one that attempted to help and th horror it brought to her own life.

The city where it all happened witnessed much in terms of a horror in public several times, majorly during what is known as the Naxal (extreme left terror groups) era of sixties and seventies, which was to overshadow even the horrendous massacres of '46 and dim the memory of the so called Bengal famine which reallly was - like the famine of Ireland before that - an appropriation of harvests of the lands by the ruling for the soldiers, resulting in several hundred thousand dead of starvation in Bengal.

This story belongs to the Naxal era if I am not mistaken, when the supposed ideals of left - equality, fraternity - often took a back seat to the goons that ruled the roost and neither women nor middle class were entirely safe as they normally are or at least perceived to be more so under better circumstances.

For that matter the "party" generally followed either of the two major communist nation's diktat, depending on the faction, and several "intellectuals" proudly declared themselves convinced of superiority of Mao over the way their own nation took, of consent and freedom rather than enforced ideology.

It was quite obvious even then that it was an attempt by a neighbour country to take over the nation if possible without sending anything more than pamphlets that would turn young heads. The about turn by the nation they then aspired to emulate has left the movement, the party, the young and the now not so young a bit confused, a bit embarrassed, and turned the naxals into mostly highway robbers with a few ideologues fighting feudal remnants in the few states where history has not washed away the feudal system so firmly established by the various colonial rulers.

The terror of the general times compounds with a goon-dominated street terror atmosphere and further adds to a general pervasive culture where normal middle class families, including men, are afraid for their lives and those of their own near and dear. And hence the whole street being unable to testify to the goons burning a young woman alive after rape, while the sole witness woman is turtured deeply within even as her own family attempts to dissuade her from making her witnessing the horror known.

While it is tempting to sum up this work as another example of a male dominated society, that would be belittling the work apart from a critique that is incorrect at the very least, showing a lack of perception and judgement; or possibly much worse, hypocrisy or dishonesty at a grave level.

Because a society that is old fashioned or conservative or male dominated - or as usually is all of the above - does not easily tolerate a violation of a woman by strangers. Such a toleration generally shows a lack of virility of males of the neighbourhood, the clan, the social setting the said woman belonged to. This is a direct result of the idea that a woman is a possession, not a person in her own right.

So a society that does tolerate this, or fails to protect or even avenge the woman, it in fact might be a modern society where people are in fact alienated and selfish in that they would rather not risk their own security; and when it is - as it is this story - worse, fails even to seek justice for fear, it amounts to a society paralysed by fear of the goons, the internal terrorist elements within the society. It could be fascist, or it could be terror by another self proclaimed label. Labels are less important when your lives are at stake, and goons are free to do as they please.

When terror reigns at street level, and acid along with other weapons are used freely, the prudent keep their own counsel until better times prevail. Then again, someone - or more than one - has to step forth and strike a determined blow at the terror or it would never go away.
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