A satire on Stalinist saga
Review by M.L. Raina
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A new translation from Russian by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor. Picador, London. Pages x+367. £ 20.

Ayodhya of Babri and an angry poet
Review by P.D. Shastri
The Ayodhya Cantos — Poems by Rukmini Bhaya Nair. Viking India, New Delhi. Pages 138. Rs 195.

A satire on Stalinist saga
by M.L. Raina

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A new translation from Russian by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor. Picador, London. Pages x+367. £ 20.

Not all of me is dust.Within my song/safe from the worm/my spirit will survive — Pushkin.

THIS is the fourth translation into English of one of the greatest works of modern fiction and the third that I have read in 20 years. Ever since its first publication in Russian in 1967, 27 years after Bulgakov’s death, the novel has gripped readers through the power of its author’s intellect and the overflowing richness of its cultural reference.

Though banned in his life- time by the Stalinist censor, this novel is among the three most trenchent exposes of the bureaucratisation of Marxism in the Soviet Union,the others being “Dr Zhivago” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. My own fascination with Bulgakov dates back to my readings of Gogol and Pushkin and to an occasion when I gave a course on dissident writing at an American university a few years back. My texts included Gogol’s “Nose” as well as pieces by Zamayatin, Valentin Katayaev and the whole of Bulgakov’s novel. The response was extremely satisfying in general and to Bulgakov’s novel in particular.

While the class rightly felt that contemporary satire in Russia lacks the exhilarating sense of the absurd that distinguishes Gogol, it was Bulgakov who came through as the true heir of what has come to be known as “magic realism”, decades before the phrase began to be used in relation to Latin American writing.

Judging by the extent of commentary and exegesis that has been written on Bulgakov’s masterpiece (I discovered this summer 71 entries in English alone in the New York Public Library which, however, did not include the comprehensive critique of Kalpana Sahni) and the fact that the present translation has already hogged rave notices, it is natural that we seek the reasons for the novel’s continued hold on the readers.

One of the reasons for the novel’s appeal is its multi-dimensional structure. Most Soviet satire is one-dimensional as it had to operate within the stifling regime of socialist realism which forbade suggestiveness and symbolism as also fantasy and fabrication. Zamayatin’s “We” is just dystopian satire in Huxley’s and Orwell’s sense. Bulgakov’s own early satires like “The Heart of a Dog” and “The Fatal Eggs” do not rise above the topical and the contingent. “Master and Margarita” is many sided and accommodates a variety of levels of meaning—from the objective observation of life in post-revolution Moscow to the fantasies created out of the stories of the Master and his mistress and the symbolism of Christ’s crucifixion in Jerusalem. It is the superb control that Bulgakov exercises on this intransigent material (the novel was revised right upto the time of his death in 1940) that accounts for the classical status the book undoubtedly enjoys.

A perplexing mixture of tragedy and melodramatic farce, the novel juxtaposes the official Soviet ideology with the natural qualities of man in order to demonstrate that you cannot contain humanity within dogmatic and doctrinal limitations. Though set in the Moscow of its own time, it focuses on the past, on the relevance of Crucifixion for our time and on the relationship of writing to tyranny and injustice.

The four strands in the novel’s tangled web — contemporary Moscow with its surreal bureaucracy, Woland and his infernal companions, including the diabolical talking cat, the story of the Master and Margarita and the events surrounding Jesus’s death in Yerashalayim — are each distinct in style and remind one of Joyce. The seething cauldron of burlesque description, the deaths and decapitations of Berlioz and Bengalsky, the sudden disappearances of people at the Variety Theatre, the fairy tale “unreality” of Woland’s intrusions and the solemn ornateness of the Jesus chapters — create infinite vortices within chapters and episodes. These vortices are marked by the alterations of tone ranging from a degree of folksiness of the Moscow chapters (pure burlesque) to an amalgam of learned speech and literary quotation in the chapters devoted to the Master and Margarita and the Master’s novel about Crucifixion.

These thematic strands create infinite stratifications of the various realities of satanic fantasy, political satire and slapstick comedy, leading to congestion and hypertension of objects, thoughts and sensations as they mingle with the author’s sarcasm and a fine network of cultural reference. Cultural reference determines both the structure of the novel and its underlying political and religious statements. The most descriptive level is the one which pours scorn on the pomposities of the Soviet bureaucracy as it presses its hand on the country’s institutions.

The Variety Theatre and the Writer’s Club building are microcosms of the new establishment and operate with a horde of factotums. The way apparatchicks like Rimsky, Nikor Ivanovich, Rimsky, Berlioz, Profhor Petrovich and Bengalsky are treated clearly indicates Bulgakov’s contempt for Soviet bureaucracy. Berlioz’s severed head, Bengalsky’s decapitation and Petrovich’s talking headless suit are the most quoted grotesque scenes in modern fiction.

The strand of fantasy meshes Goethe’s “Faust”, Pushkin and Gogol both as parody and as a foil to the gothic nature of the Moscow section. Is Woland Mephistopheles after Goethe and Marlowe? Are his antics a reminder to godless communists of the depredations of Stalinist misrule? This strand displays Bulgakov’s rootedness in the European tradition of literature and myth and his remarkable capacity to harness this myth in the service of his satire. Woland is Satan, but he also protects the Master and his mistress. The enactment of the Devil’s Night, reminding you of Goethe as well as of Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain”, becomes the ultimate paroxysm of this section, holding the novel’s historical and mythical dimensions in a permanent state of see-saw tension. The adventures of Margarita as a witch on a broomstick creates havoc among the Master’s critics, particularly Lutansky, and lifts the novel into a realm of absolute fantasy miles removed from the grotesque realism of the Moscow section. The narrative voice modulates into intense lyricism and elevated rhetoric.

The section devoted to the master and Margarita is both a love story and an assertion on behalf of the immortality of art. Woland tells the Master in chapter 24 that “manuscripts don’t burn”, underscoring Bulgakov’s own belief in the immortality of art against the perishability of worldly life, a sentiment Pushkin echoed time and again. Why, if the Master is the real hero, is he introduced only in the second part of the book? Is it because the author wanted to prepare us to confront the Master and his novel about Pontius Pilate and Yeshava only after he had shown the horrors of the Bolshevik utopia and the fate of art in that utopia?

That the Master ends up in the asylum as does the poet Ivan Bezdommy (appropriately called “homeless”) is enough proof of the artist’s fate in a regimented society. That the Master writes about Crucifixion and the hesitations of Pilate links him with the archetypal sufferer Jesus.

The Pontius section seems closely linked with the other section and, at the same time, detached by virtue of its scholarly elevated tone. As the son of a theologian and as a writer who suffers interdiction under the Bolsheviks, it seems somewhat naive that Jesus before his execution outside Jerusalem expresses full trust in humankind’s goodness. It could also be that Bulgakov is testing his own Christian sympathies against the grimness of life in post-revolutionary Moscow where, as Koroyov tells one of the factotums, “if you don’t have papers, you don’t exist”.

Is there, then, an overarching theme that subsumes these several strands in this novel? There is and there isn’t. That the Master’s novel about Pilate is read by Margarita even after his death suggests the basic fact that you cannot stifle creativity, however distasteful it shows up to be. But then the novel also reads as a jumble of disconnected but parallel stories — a challenge to the reader to hammer the diversity of life experiences into a uniform tale. Is Bulgakov a post-modernist before his time? The question is neither naive nor irrelevant, for this novel has resisted attempts to read it as either one or the other. We may look at the opening chapter more closely to answer it.

We are introduced to Berlioz and Ivan, sitting on a chair discussing the latter’s poem about Jesus. Berlioz, the editor of an establishment magazine, advises the poet to remove all mention of Jesus’s divinity. Meanwhile a foreign “professor” joins the conversation and foretells Berlioz’s death at the hands of a woman. Strange as it may seem, he is crushed by a tram driven by a woman and the “professor” who turns out to be Woland, disappears, only to reappear again in his devilish adventures in the city. The section introduces the Pilate theme and that of Crucifixion.

The entire novel is present here in outline. The uncertainty concerning the sudden death of Berlioz is reinforced by the uncertainty concerning the authorship of the Pilate novel.Is it Ivan who is writing it? And later on when the Master is revealed to be the author, what does Ivan’s presence amount to? Both the Master and Ivan land in the asylum (not an uncommon treatment for recalcitrant members of society under Stalin’s regime) and both are conscious of their formative influence in their societies.

By introducing the Pilate story the novel may be suggesting — but one is not sure — that compassion is the antidote to the madness of the times. The epigraph from Goethe’s play seems to support this belief.

The Moscow story and the later love story of the Master and his mistress are too insistently present to hold us much longer in this illusion. The violence and disfigurement forming part and parcel of the different storylines keeps the concrete core of stated realism always within our view. In other words the novel, in spite of its title, is not entirely about the love affairs of a jaded author and his clever mistress. The ubiquitous talking cat may step out of myth and fairy tale, but his is a ferocious presence in the book’s unruly scenes.

Here is a work that teems with contradictions. In spite of the author’s presence as a ventriloquist, the different strands of the story create their own tonality and appeal. The existential and intellectual force of this distortionist imagination are implicit in the grotesque metamorphases of the story into comedy, farce and even melodrama.

These are natural modes of expression for an artist who led a tortured life, riven by neuroses and difficulties of relationship with others and whose anguish of death came before the great work could appear in print. Pity he didn’t live to see it become a benchmark of greatness in contemporary world literature!

Ayodhya of Babri and an angry poet
by P.D. Shastri

The Ayodhya Cantos — Poems by Rukmini Bhaya Nair. Viking India, New Delhi. Pages 138. Rs 195.

THIS is a book in the Penguin poetry series. Rukmini Bhaya Nair holds a Ph.D degree from Cambridge and has been a visiting professor at the University of Washington, University of Toronto and University of Singapore. She has won many international prizes in poetry, also some awards, fellowships and honours.

Ours is the age of science and technology. The age of poetry and world-class literature is long past. Of course the number of books being produced in Indian languages is as high as the Himalayas. Sometimes one comes across a gem or two in this sea of mediocrity. To have one’s poetry book published by Penguin is in itself a mark of quality; for it separates a few grains from bushels of chaff.

Her previous book of poetry received high encomium from critics in national newspapers and journals. The Illustrated Weekly of India called it “miles above the usual run of books of poetry being published today. What finally emerges is the sense of trapped meaning that is harrowed and hounded like an animal until finally it breaks for open country.”

“Nair clearly represents a new, highly impressive and original voice in Anglo-Indian poetry,” said The Indian Express.

Says The Hindu: “Different from anything I have read before by an Indian woman. Here I thought was something magnificently unlike my own experience. I was wrong. In her declaration of independence of speech I find myself freed.”

And so on with this work also. All of which shows that despite living in a poetryless age, we can still taste great, first class poetry, though as a rarity. This reviewer compliments the publishers for publishing a book of poetry.

Like the “Kands” of the Ramayana, this work has the Vishnu Kanda, Sita Kanda, the Hanuman Kanda (parts of Ayodhya Kand), and so on. She says the book has three “kands” and seven sonnets each: the poems contain 10 lines and are in vers libre. According to our definition, a sonnet is a poem of 14 lines and has a definite rhyme scheme. She introduces in her work gods, goddesses and other mythological characters such as Rama, Vishnu, Sita, Parshuram, Vidura, Hanuman, Bhavani, Gargi and Bhima.

The title “The Ayodhya Cantos” is somewhat misleading; the reader tends think that it is some sort of a translation or adaptation of the Ayodhya Kand of the Ramayana (“Kand” is canto, she says). This is not the Ayodhya, capital of Rama and Dashratha, but the Ayodhya of the Babri Masjid of ill-fame. Printed on the blurb on the back title page is the following — a sort of central point of the work:

“Ayodhya is our city of memories and the Sarayu in its green depths still remembers an eddy of bodies. You could not guess that the boys now leaping carefree in the river understand that hatred has voice; ‘Ek dhakka aur do: Babri ko tor do’: (give one more push and demolish the Babri masjid).”

Or again; “Sale yahan se bhag ja, yahan mandir hi banega” (Fellow, run away from here. Here only a temple will be built in place of mosque).

Hers is poetry with a difference. She weaves together complex strands of mythology and history of contemporary society to produce poetry.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid shook her very sensitive soul to extremes of rhaposdic poetry: “Who dies when a mosque comes down? Who lifts a finger?”

Or again: “Citizens of Ayodhya, pray, you have power greater than Bhawani, insights deeper than Vishnu. Listen to the Garuda, wheeling blue-taloned over the Sarayu — agonised. India is yours ....

“Hanuman’s head is sunk into his chest (shame over Babri).”

She laments thus: “Nehru and Jinnah, Mathura, Mecca, namaz, arti, the Koran — the Gita.”

She punctuates her “poems” with chorus of priests and chorus of the people. Here is another jewel of her poetic thought. “Vishnu sees a saffron dust storm rise. And on that fluttering calendar in Hanuman’s serai, a single date — December 6, 1992 — records his many births — and all Ayodhya fate.”

Saffron seems to be her pet aversion. The most important date in Vishnu’s calendar December 6, 1992, one out of many births as if it is the most important date and event in history (good God!): “See those Kar Sevaks, making weapons out of stones and woods, yelling about the nation’s shame.”

“Our old friends, provincial armed constabulary/Flee powerless before him. Sadhvis, lift their frenzied eyes heavenwards. This I ago says — Hindustan for Hindus.”

She gives a graphic detailed picture — 1-55 p.m. first dome collapses; 3-30 p.m. the second dome collapses and 4-49 p.m. the middle dome (there are Babar’s bones).

I counted over a dozen descriptions of the Babri demolition and then I stopped to count. Should a poet turn a fanatical crusader for a narrow cause; for the Babri Masjid-Mandir dispute is not the combined voice of all India. I can understand a politician libelling his own community and taking up cudgels on behalf of the opposite one to emphasise his non-communal credentials. But a poet is under no such compulsion.

The poet is apologetic about her having translated into English the Saraswati Vandana (invocation to the goddess of learning), saying that she did not know that it was a controversial subject. Evidently the Babri Masjid is not a controversial one.

She does not spare even Gandhi from her poetic barbs. She says: “Mounted on a pedestal, so that he can see farther and better than anyone/ Gandhi is the greatest of sphinxes/ He understands the value of salt/ Greater than hunger/ For taste for grace/ If the truth be told, he is only half a man.”

The poet quotes his bullet-stopping words — Hey Ram. About Mira (she calls her a sufi and also nothing like a sufi). She says. “She is tiger. She is snow. She is lascivious flesh, a creature of veils and anklets.”

The cow is go-mata: “You do not need a poem. You are the soul of any lyric. you are a poem.”

In 17th century England, there flourished a school of poetry: Robert Herrich Lovalace and John Donne. They were very learned persons: their aim was to say something original, something that had never been said before. They produced some grotesque ideas, unexpected comparisons and metaphors quite out of the ordinary. The poet seems to possess a similar ambition: “Each line a novelty. Each poem a challenge. Each page shakes you out of your, old-held orthodox views. Each chapter a grotesque mixture of mythology, contemporary history.”

Hanuman is depicted as all too human, a keeper of a small tea shop at the crossroads outside Ayodhya. Customers won’t care for his milkless tea.

Or, Hanuman at his “akhara” (wrestling place): “After all he is a wrestler, epitome of all strength or power/ He can cross from Kashmir to Kabul in a millisecond.

Or, again: “Vishnu stirred up trouble just for fun/ And when things got hot, he cut and run:/ Leaving the mess to poor Hanuman.” AND “Come on Hanuman, are you female yourself/ Grown dugs & lost your goolies handing round with these weakling girlies.”

“Hanuman does not hear/ They fly towards the tonga stand/ Hanuman bundles Sita and all the other little tykes into the back.”

The idea seems to be to shock the reader with novelty. The poetess says, “Poetry has the licence to answer questions very differently from history.”

The last chapter is titled “Gargi’s silence.” Gargi, a student of Rishi Yagyavalkya, was the most learned woman of her age. She asked too many inconvenient questions from her guru, which he could not answer. There was a limit even to his knowledge. At last this great rishi lost his patience and said, “Gargi will you be silent or I will cut off your head.

All said and done, this work is good poetry.

A primer on communalism
by Bhupinder Singh

The Concerned Indian’s Guide to Communalism edited by K.N. Panikkar. Viking Penguin India, New Delhi. Pages 252 + xxxvii. Rs 395.

THE volume under review is a collection of six essays by well-known academics and writers. It seeks to understand and rebut the communal offensive which has taken a new dimension after the installation of the BJP government last year. The BJP has faced a slight handicap of having to work at the head of a coalition of 18 parties. However, the communalist drive has been marked by the nuclear tests, the offensive against the minority Christian community, attempts to replace school syllabi in BJP-ruled states and the jingoistic hype accompanying the Kargil intrusion.

Sumit Sarkar provides a historical backdrop to the attacks on the Christian community and points out that conversions are generally not a one step affair. Historically, these have often taken long periods of interaction between communities before conversions actually take place. There are different reasons for conversions, including the championing of the social and economic demands of the people by missionaries.

During the indigo revolt in last century in Bengal, Christian missionaries took up the demands of Hindu planters and even went to jail. This particular event, interestingly, has been well recorded in a Bengali folk song which recounts the efforts of one Rev Long during the revolt.

He also points out the Roman catholic Church “liberation theology” during the past few decades, especially in Latin American countries where the Church has identified itself with the aspirations of the downtrodden. That the Hindutva attacks on Christians have been concentrated in Orissa and Gujarat, where the Christian population consists mainly of tribals and the poor, is indicative of the Sangh Parivar’s real intentions.

Similar movements from the Right are active all over the world. Jayati Ghosh looks at the global economic situation and links the current social unrest to the changes in the distribution of economic benefits, which is increasingly loaded against those who are already poor and deprived. Between 1960 and 1991, the income share of 85 per cent of the world’s population actually fell, as the share of the richest 20 per cent increased from 70 per cent to 85 per cent, while that of the poorest 20 per cent fell from 2.3 percent to 1.4 per cent.

In India, between 1993-94 and 1997, the proportion of the population below the poverty line increased from 37.3 per cent to 38.5 per cent in the rural areas and 32.4 to 34 per cent in the urban areas. Employment in the organised sector grew by less than 1 per cent between 1990 and 1997.

The increasing disparities provide the objective condition for the growth of ethnic and religion-based unrest. Why and how such movements originate, however, is specific to the history of and political conditions in each country.

In a scintillating essay on the attempts by communalists to use history, Romilla Thapar criticises the viewing of Indian history in terms of two monolithic communities identified by religion. Historical works before the 19th century, including those in Sanskrit and local languages, used a variety of terms like Turushka, Tajika, Yavana, Shaka and mleccha to refer to those who today would be referred to by the umbrella term of Muslims.

It was in the 19th century that the two communities were described as not only monolithic but were also projected as stagnant over many centuries. That people in India have multiple identities (like those of caste, language, religion, etc.) was completely ignored. This well served the British colonial interests.

The anti-Babri masjid movement in the eighties threw up a host of women leaders like Uma Bharati and Ritambra. This was really surprising since the RSS, the fountainhead of the Parivar, has been a typically patriarchal organisation known for its ultra conservatism. Tanika Sarkar has written earlier on the gender dimension of the movement. The essay included in this volume updates her studies on the same theme in the late nineties.

She finds that there has been a shift in role of women’s organisations linked to the Parivar. These have now been relegated to the background after the capture of state power. Women’s issues per se had never been important for these organisations, but now not only the membership has plummeted but, these organisations have withdrawn from active politics and even cut short their meetings and reduced the social space they occupied at the height of the movement.

Sarkar points out that the while the mainstream Left movement has been either stagnant or declining, leftist women organisations have continued to grow and have strong bases among working class and poor sections. These have a combined strength of over 50 lakh, while the Sangh related organisations have barely crossed thousands, besides having been confined to the upper class, upper caste sections.

Siddharth Varadarajan, senior editor with a Delhi newspaper, writes on the use of media in general and that of the newspapers in particular in propagating communalism. Modern media has contributed in fostering communal hysteria and the construction of the “Other” in the enemy image (the Sikhs in the eighties, then the Muslims and finally the Christians last year). He points out that most of the media is controlled by large business houses. Most of the editorial staff comes from the same social base which has been in the forefront of Hindu communalism. The Sangh Parivar has proved to be expert in handling “pseudo-events” in the media and raking up emotive non-issues.

In one of the finest essays in the collection, Rajeev Dhawan focuses not so much on communalism as on secularism with respect to the Indian Constitution. He points out that it will be nearly impossible to come up with a document like this in our times. The Constitution adopted in 1950, in the immediate aftermath of one of the bloodiest events in the sub-continent (partition), is full of compromises and adjustments by all the parties.

He points out, however, that a number of desirable progressive measures were relegated to the Directive Principles instead of the fundamental rights chapter. Overall, he feels that the Indian Constitution provides the bedrock for Indian secularism, ambiguous though it is in many senses. He also points out that communalism can no longer be attributed to the colonial condition; it is also a condition of post-colonialism.

The title of the book is well thought out, and so are Ram Rehman’s photographs on the cover. The work comes as a welcome addition to existing literature on the one of the most acute problems of our times, and one which is going to be around for a long time to come. Incisive academic analysis buttressed with deep social concern marks each essay. That is an assurance against the prophets of doom as well as ammunition to the intellectual armoury against communalism.

Daily traps of sisterhood
by M.L. Sharma

Atrocities on Indian women by Dipangshu Chakraborty. APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. Pages 167. Rs 400.

“ATROCITIES on Indian Women” is a research work on the social conditions in India and the plight of the fair sex whether in her married home or otherwise. The issues relate to dowry, bride-burning, sexual and physical abuse of women, their conditions in police custody and in prison and social institutions.

Women constitute more than 50 per cent of the total population, which is nearing the one-billionmark, and unless some remedial measures are taken the future of the fair sex seems to be bleak and dismal.

In this drama of social injustice, greedy in-laws, on the one hand, and lusty cops, on the other hand, are villains of the piece and luckless ladies are victims of exploitation. It is indeed a slur on the face of a nation which boasts of spiritual and moral elevation.

The loopholes in law and political shelter the law-breakers secure are responsible for this. The macabre conditions of unlettered women of the lower social strata call for concerted efforts to root out crimes against women. Sufficient education and awareness of their legal rights are essential, and it is to this aspect the author has drawn attention.

Chakraborty has cast serious aspersions on the law-enforcing bodies and the personnel who, instead of protecting the fair sex from sexual abuse and onslaughts of criminals, are perpetrating these crimes. On the basis of the report of a committee set up by the Union Government, he alleges that the conditions in police lock-ups and social institutions and mental hospitals are worse than in prisons.

Regarding laws to curb crimes on women, he has this to say: “the sheer ineffectiveness of the newly passed laws and their amendments in curbing the spiralling crime graphs reinforces the conviction that in most cases the passing of the laws has become an end in itself. In the present set-up there is no place where woman can go for help, no support structure which can enable her to escape from the in-laws who are hungry for dowry or the violent and alcoholic husband”.

Even homes for women, run by the government, are hardly a safe place for women. The criminals in Bihar, UP and MP are protected by political leaders and they “function like an extended arm of the local politicians and landlords”. There are, of course, places where women can go to seek help but they are in darkness about them.

Cases of mental torture and physical abuse of women are reported almost daily in the media but instead of being provided remedial measures, they become topics of gossip, and instead of inspiring people to fight these social evils, these stories whet their hunger for sensationalism.

Bride-burning and rape cases are being considered as a common happenings. The most vulnerable victims of rape are unlettered women, mostly Dalits and adivasis.

The author has justifiably underlined the fact that awareness regarding laws will be a redeeming factor. In the chapter, “Offences relating to marriage”, the author has examined the legal aspects of deceitful marriages and points a finger at many loopholes in the laws.

Chakraborty has a few suggestions to make. He says, “dowry problem and its effects should be incorporated in school education so that children may build a conscious opinion about dowry evils and can wage a war against this social evil in the future”.

The dowry victims should be provided free legal education so as to motivate and mobilise people against the evil of dowry. The author is against early marriages and believes when women and their prospective husbands are earning hands, their independent status reduces the demand for dowry. Education and employment are passports to their happy married lives.

He has also drawn attention to the apathy shown to women not only by the police but also by the judiciary. He says, “The police handling of women can range from casual to callous, occasionally correct but hardly ever empathetic. Once in prison, women are neglected on account of their small numbers and low security risk. The judiciary sustains this apathy towards women by treating them as a low dispositional priority”.

The mounting rape cases show that the morally wrecked police personnel have yet to learn a lesson in decency. “Although nothing can atone for the pain and humiliation that Maya Tyagi suffered at the hands of a barbarous group of policemen, the judgement of the sessions judge condemning six of them to death and four others to life imprisonment should have, it was hoped, served as a warning to policemen. But it has not, more and more cases of sexual assaults on woman by policemen are coming to light”.

There is a good suggestion to provide proper training to women police officers to investigate bride burning cases. In the Bhagwant Singh vs Delhi Police Commissioner case, the Supreme Court has recommended that female police should be associated with the investigation from its very inception. “They must be fully allowed to share all the duties and responsibilities of their male counterparts. Women police have a great potential to cool, defuse and de-escalate many situations.” It is essential to recruit more and more women police officers and make male police officers responsible for their duties.

It is desirable that more space should have been devoted to eradication of the evils which afflict Indian life instead of portraying or re-enacting the scenes from grim human drama.