Exploring the darker side of Indian society!

Some books appeal to your mind, some to your heart. Rare is one that touches your mind, heart and soul all at the same time. ‘Kali’s Daughter’ by Raghav Chandra is a riveting story that endears itself to you from the beginning till the very end — through its cast of extremely real-life characters who give you the sense that you are among them and living their story. It is also a story with a powerful political message about caste and the havoc that it continues to wreak.

Deepika Thakur, a young Indian Foreign Service Officer posted in Geneva has to refute before the United Nations Human Rights Council the existence of caste-based discrimination in India. She then reflects on her relationship with her service colleagues Vijay and Aman, the first a lowcaste like her, the other, a high-caste Brahmin, a third generation civil servant. Both men had loved her. And then she had lost them, one after the other: ‘For the same reason – whose existence she is now going to categorically deny’.

This is a chronicle of love, longing and relationships set in the elite civil services in India. It is also about the dilemmas faced by civil servants who are caught in the cross-hairs of a fractured social milieu — expected to behave reformist in their work, and yet unable to undo the stranglehold of caste and other forms of social discrimination.

This book has innumerable pieces that would be of immediate interest to those following public affairs and the civil services. The descriptions are vivid and evocative. There is a reference to Chanakyapuri children which aptly sums up the manner in which civil service life has evolved over the decades.

The essence of the story and its true strength is how

Title: Kali’s Daughter Author: Raghav Chandra Publisher: Pan Macmillan India

Price: ₹650 (hard cover)

Deepika confronts the system – built on the scaffold of caste, class and colour.

Kali’s Daughter makes you flinch at the dark side of Indian society (as Mrs Bose, Deepika’s mentor says: You are an Indian only when you leave Indian shores) but also fills your mind with hope. Through its beautiful narrative and elegant prose, it both delights and teases. At a time when there are signs of growing assertiveness and intolerance in society, such books such are badly needed to sensitize us, particularly civil servants, to be more humane, thoughtful, inclusive and tolerant.

In conclusion, Kali’s Daughter is one of those historic rare books that seamlessly combine a fictional story with a clinical diagnosis about our times.

Politically charged, captivating in its invocations of atmosphere, time and place and ruthless in its dissection of human character, Raghav Chandra’s Kali’s Daughter is as significant for us as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird was for America.

Raghav Chandra, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, was Secretary to the Government of India.