Roy The Ghat Mothers Draft
Content
Physical description: Handwritten manuscript, Roy’s hand. Eighteen pages, Bengali with facing English translation. Clean copy, clearly prepared for a printer. A note pinned to the first page in different ink reads: “Gangadhar refused the type. Pressure from M’s people. Find another printer? — R.M.R., April 1813.” No other printer was found.
THE GHAT MOTHERS
Being the Testimonies of Women Whose Husbands and Sons Were Lost to the Temple at Baranagar
Collected and Translated by RAM MOHAN ROY Calcutta, 1813
PREFATORY NOTE
I have collected the following testimonies over a period of fourteen months. Each woman was interviewed in her home, in the presence of a female relative, and was informed that her words would be published without alteration. I have translated from Bengali into English as faithfully as the differences between the two languages permit. Where a phrase resists translation, I have preserved the Bengali and offered my best approximation.
These women share three qualities: they are poor, they are bereaved, and they have been told to be silent. I offer their words because no one else will.
PADMA, wife of Jagdish Saha, boatman. Three children. Interviewed 3rd March 1813.
"He went to the temple because his friend went. His friend came back different and said the temple would fix everything. Fix what? We had food. We had the boat. But Jagdish went, and after a few times he stopped talking about it. I asked what they did there. He said I wouldn’t understand. He never said that before, about anything.
"The last time, he said he was going for the evening puja and he would be home before the children slept. He wasn’t. In the morning I went to the temple. They said he had gone on a journey of the spirit. I said where. They said I wouldn’t understand. The same words.
"I went to the thana. The constable said it was a temple matter. I went to the Collector’s office. The clerk said I should wait. I waited three days. No one came. I went back. A different clerk. He said there was no record of my complaint.
“His friend won’t speak to me now. He crosses the street.”
KAMALA, mother of Ravi Das, labourer, aged nineteen. Interviewed 8th March 1813.
"My son was strong. Ask anyone. He could carry a load that would break two men. After three months at the temple he couldn’t lift the water jar. I looked at his arms. The muscle was gone. Not thin, not wasted like fever. Gone. The arms were the same size but there was nothing hard in them. Like dough.
"I told him to stop going. He said the softness was a blessing. I said it wasn’t. He said mother, you don’t understand what I’ve felt. He said he’d felt something no one outside the temple would believe. He called it samapti. I don’t know this word used the way he used it. It means ending. Completion. He said it like it meant something wonderful.
“He went back. He didn’t come home. His arms were like dough and he went back.”
SUSHILA, sister of Meena Devi, widow. Interviewed 15th March 1813.
"After her husband died she had nothing. The temple gave her food and a place. I was grateful. Then I visited and she was different. Thinner, but not hungry-thin. As if the substance of her was less. I touched her hand and it felt wrong. Not cold. Not hot. Wrong. Like touching a hand that is not entirely there.
"She told me she had been chosen for something. Her eyes when she said it. I have seen that look on the faces of people who smoke opium. Not happiness. The memory of happiness. She was remembering something that had already consumed the person doing the remembering.
“The priest spoke to me. A kind man. Gentle voice. He told me Meena was advancing spiritually at a pace he had rarely seen. He said this as though it were good news. I looked at my sister’s hand, which I was still holding, and the fingers did not seem to have the right number of bones.”
LAKSHMI, wife of Gopal Mandal, potter. Two children, one an infant. Interviewed 22nd April 1813.
"He went to the temple on a Tuesday, which is Kali’s day. He came home and would not eat. Not would not. Could not. He said food tasted like nothing. Not bad. Nothing. Like eating air.
"After a week he could eat again. He went back. After the next time, three days of nothing-taste. After the next, a week. Each time longer. Each time he went back sooner.
"The last time he came home his skin on his forearms looked wet. It wasn’t wet. It looked wet. I touched it and my fingers left marks. Not bruises. The skin moved where I pressed, like clay, and stayed where I’d pushed it. He pulled his sleeves down and said don’t touch me.
"He went back. I followed him. I waited outside the temple until the chanting stopped. I heard something from inside that was not chanting and was not a voice and was not anything I have a word for. The sound a body might make if it could speak with its whole self, not just the throat. I left. I am not ashamed to say I ran.
“He didn’t come home. They said he had achieved samapti. They gave me forty rupees.”
CONCLUDING NOTE
I have transcribed these accounts without embellishment or interpretation. I will offer only two observations.
First: the financial settlements paid to the families of the disappeared follow a consistent pattern. Forty rupees in every case where payment was made. This figure exceeds the annual income of a labourer’s household. It is large enough to purchase silence but small enough to suggest the temple has paid it many times.
Second: when I attempted to commission the printing of this pamphlet, I was informed by two printers in succession that they were unable to accept the work. The first claimed a full schedule. The second, whom I have known personally for eight years, told me privately that representatives of a merchant house — which he declined to name — had visited his premises and expressed concern about publications “injurious to the religious harmony of the district.” I leave the reader to consider what manner of religious harmony requires the suppression of bereaved women’s testimony.
Context
Roy’s most personal and most devastating document. Unpublished because Mullick’s merchant consortium pressured the printers. Roy keeps the manuscript in his study. He has never shown it to a British official. He offers it only after the investigators earn his trust.
Clues Embedded
- Dissolution symptoms described by witnesses: softened muscle (“like dough”), skin that moves like clay and holds impressions, fingers with wrong number of bones, hand “not entirely there”
- The word samapti (ending/completion) used by devotees to describe what they have experienced
- Loss of taste after temple visits, progressively worse (sensory dissolution)
- The sound from inside the temple: “not chanting and not a voice” (the ritual in progress)
- Forty-rupee payments (institutional pattern, budget for silence)
- Merchant pressure on printers (Mullick’s consortium, though unnamed)
- Ghosh described as “a kind man, gentle voice” by a victim’s sister (the horror of his courtesy)
Players who read closely will recognise dissolution symptoms from their Vienna experience, described by people who have no framework for understanding what happened to their families. The women are precise. They know what they saw. They just do not know what it means.
Prop Notes
Handwritten or manuscript-style font. The testimonies should look like transcriptions, not typeset. Pin the note about the printer’s refusal to the first page with a small pin or paper clip. The pinned note (“Gangadhar refused the type. Pressure from M’s people.”) is a prop within a prop.
Relationships
- Authored by Ram Mohan Roy — Roy's most emotionally devastating document. Collected testimonies from bereaved families.
- Implicates Baijnath Mullick — Merchant consortium (unnamed but pointing to Mullick's network) suppressed the printing
- Exposes Mandir Mahakali — Dissolution symptoms described in witness testimony from victims' families
- Accuses Acharya Devendra Ghosh — Ghosh described as 'a kind man, gentle voice' by a victim's sister. The horror of his courtesy.