Cover image of "Black River," a novel that reveals the cracks in Indian society

Ever since Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist BJP party took the reins of India’s central government in 2014, the country has grabbed headlines everywhere. For emerging as the world’s most populous nation. For claiming the fifth spot among the world’s largest economies. And for a dramatic upsurge in violence directed by Hindus toward Muslims. All three trends rumble in the background in Nilanjana Roy’s riveting murder mystery, Black River. Set in a small village in India’s rural north and in the slums crowding the center of teeming Delhi, Black River comes across at first as the straightforward story of a young village girl’s murder in rural Uttar Pradesh state. But it gradually becomes clear that the scope and depth of Roy’s story are much greater. In this fascinating book, Roy exposes the gaping cracks in Indian society today. If there is a Great Indian novel, Black River might be a contender.

A young girl, a killer, and a homeless man

Munia has just turned eight. She is playing in one of her father’s fields when a man she recognizes meets a woman nearby. They embrace, and he proceeds to have intercourse her while Munia, puzzled, observes them from hiding. Then the man approaches her and asks whether she saw the two of them together. She innocently says she did. He then volunteers to show her how to make a swing by tying a rope to a branch in a sturdy tree.

However, it’s not a swing the man makes. It’s a noose, and he leaves Munia, dangling, dead, from the tree. Not long afterward, a mentally ill homeless man named Mansoor Khan sees the girl and runs to her in hopes of saving her life. He grabs at her feet. But, seeing there is no hope, he collapses, crying. And when her father and others discover Munia, with Mansoor Khan at her feet, they jump to the conclusion that he has killed her. This is the tragic murder, and the misidentification of the killer, that sets off a chain of events in the village of Teetarpur that will forever change the trajectory of the entire region.

Black River by Nilanjana Roy (2024) 320 pages ★★★★★

Photo of a small north Indian village, like the setting of this novel that reveals the cracks in Indian society
Scene in a village in Uttar Pradesh village, in northern India, where this novel is set. Image: YouTube

A Muslim suspect, the threat of a lynching, and the desperate search for other suspects

Munia’s murder brings the local police to the village. Ombir Singh has known the girl’s father, Chand, for many years, and his subordinate, Bhim Sain, is familiar with the family. But they are unable to carry out a thorough investigation because the neighbors have gathered around the site of the killing, where Munia’s body still hangs and Mansoor Khan sprawls on the ground nearby, And prominent among them is Balle Ram, Chand’s brother. He leads the demand, shared by everyone in the crowd, for rough justice.

Because the villagers have trampled the ground, Ombir Singh expects to find no clues in the immediate vicinity, But he does notice a footprint close by, the imprint of an expensive shoe that none of the villagers could have made. And when he glances down into the river, which borders the land, he sees a woman’s body floating by. However, when the time comes for him to write a preliminary report on the case, he neglects to mention either fact. And his failure to do so troubles him throughout the days that follow. Because shortly a very senior police official from Delhi, Senior Superintendent of Police Ashwini Pilania, arrives to take charge of the case. And he is joined by Jolly Singh, the wealthiest man in the village, whose gated mansion borders Chand’s land.

If Mansoor Khan isn’t guilty, who is?

Neither Pilania nor Ombir Singh believes Mansoor Khan murdered Munia. They don’t believe he’s either physically or morally capable of doing so. But the villagers demand the Muslim man’s immediate execution. And they will barely tolerate Ombir Singh’s desperate search for other suspects. One—the manager of a local factory—stands out. But several of his friends give him an alibi. Meanwhile, the villagers threaten to break Mansoor Khan out of the local jail and execute him on their own. It looks as though the poor wretch is doomed.

A parallel track in the slums of Delhi

Meanwhile, in flashbacks on a parallel track, we learn about Chand’s many years in Delhi. Initially, he was destitute and lived in makeshift shacks along the Yamuna River (the Black River of the title). He has teamed up with a happy-go-lucky Muslim man named Khalid. It’s Khalid who finds him a job in a halal butcher shop, where over the years he learns the trade. During that time, Khalid brings a woman named Rabia into their home, and soon she is pregnant with a boy child. And on occasional visits home to Teetarpur, Chand reluctantly enters into an arranged marriage—a union that leads to the birth of their daughter, Munia, and her mother’s death.

As the years go by, we witness Chand’s profound love for Munia, who grows into a happy child. Meanwhile, in Delhi, Khalid has died a violent death in a slum eradication sweep which destroyed his shack on the river, and Rabia’s life becomes precarious as waves of anti-Muslim violence grow ever more frequent.

As Rabia explains to Chand, there is “a vengeful spirit haunting the city, shorthand for all that is going wrong. People from their [Muslim] community pushed out of parks and told they can no longer pray in public areas: tension. Boys from nearby colonies rounded up and thrown into jail on suspicion of nameless crimes, never fully spelled out: tension. Small mobs of residents who let rumours ignite and flare into attacks on their own neighbours: tension. You never know when tension will show up” on your doorstep. In these brief passages, we see the human toll of the Hindu-nationalist policies of Narendra Modi’s government playing out before our eyes.

How typical is the village of Teetarpur?

There are approximately 640,000 villages in India today. The overwhelming majority vary in size from 500 to 10,000 inhabitants. Some 2,000 to 5,000 people live in a mid-sized village. Although it’s not clear from reading Black River how many inhabitants Teetarpur includes, the author gives the impression that it’s on the smaller side. But size is only one aspect of any village’s character, and every village is unique. The people of Teetarpur are Hindu and they speak Hindi. Since, according to the most recent census, Hindus constituted a majority in 28 of India’s 35 states and union territories, it’s safe to say that it’s typical in that respect at least.

Livelihood

However, each village earns its keep in a distinctive way, depending on the available local resources. The people of Teetarpur are farmers who sell their surplus crops in the market at a nearby town. And in that respect, too, the place is typical of the majority in India’s sprawling countryside. In other villages, less typically, the men earn their living taking jobs in nearby cities. Elsewhere, the inhabitants might survive from their work in local mines.

Regional character

But India is a vast country, with the world’s largest population (1.4 billion) living in 1.3 million square miles, which is about one-third the size of the United States or China. India’s north is strikingly different from its south—different geographically, linguistically, and historically. In modern times, a nation resembling India today emerged only under British rule in the 19th century—and then it was sundered in the Partition in 1947, when the British calved off today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh from the Hindu-majority bulk of the subcontinent. For hundreds of years, the country’s north, south, northeast, and southwest each evolved its own unique character.

Geographic signposts in the novel make it clear that Teetarpur is located in the west of the huge state of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous. (The state has a population of 240 million, which amounts to some three percent of the world’s people, or about one in every 33. If it were a country, Uttar Pradesh, or “UP” as it is known, would be the sixth largest in the world after India itself, China, the US, Indonesia, and Pakistan.)

UP lies in the country’s north, bordering the National Capital Territory of Delhi to the northwest and the nation of Nepal to the northeast. The river Ganges bisects the state, running northwest to southeast. About 80 percent of the people are Hindu, 20 percent Muslim. No other religious community counts as much as one percent of the total. The cuisine reflects the demographics, with the Hindu (and Hindi-speaking) majority favoring vegetarian dishes and the Muslim minority hewing to a halal diet, which includes meat.

Caste and class

In Teetarpur, one man owns much of the village and lives in a gated mansion there. Jolly Singh, or Jolly-ji—the suffix is a term of respect—lords it over the other villagers. Practically everywhere in India caste and class differences elevate some like him to wealth and power over others locally. (Jolly’s surname indicates he is Sikh, but his religion appears to be less important than his wealth.) But what is not typical of Jolly-ji is his willingness to involve himself directly in the murder investigation. Few such wealthy men would deign to dirty their hands in such a distasteful pursuit.

However, in other respects, the events Nilanjana Roy describes in Black River could take place in hundreds of thousands of other villages. It’s all too typical of the rough justice that prevails in India.

About the author

Photo of Nilanjana Roy,, author of this novel about the cracks in Indian society
Nilanjana Roy. Image: Naina Redhu – Penguin Random House

Nilanjana Roy is the author of three novels as well as a collection of essays. She is a journalist, editor, and literary critic as well as an author. Roy was born in Kolkata in 1971 and educated at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. She earned a degree in literature there. Over a career spanning more than two decades, she was a columnist and wrote for many leading US and British publications, including the New York Times and the Guardian. She currently writes about books for the Financial Times. Roy lives with her husband in Delhi.

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