Death is possibly the only confirmed event that comes with life, but even then in many cases, it is introduced to one’s life when they are not expecting it. When Minakshi Dewan lost her father and performed his last rites in Haridwar, all the rituals that she did intrigued her even though she didn’t know what they meant and this inspired her to embark on a journey revealing the meaning of the rituals across the major religions of India that one follows when they lose someone.  She collated all that information into The Final Farewell: Understanding the Last Rites and Rituals of India’s Major Faiths (published by Harper Collins India in 2023). She went on to research not just rituals but also the human lives that are involved in them and how the social realities play their part. The book also delves deeper into certain minor practices and marginalized communities that are often ignored when talking about something that affects everyone.

Divided into several chapters Dewan helps the reader go through the diverse practices that exist in Sikhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Hinduism but also the philosophy that drives these rituals. Handled with clarity, these sections help the reader recognize the diversity in such practices and understand the context under which they have developed. She also goes on to interview several people from different backgrounds to get an idea regarding the ground reality in which these rituals are practised. The lives that are involved as well as the implications of it on gender, caste, environment, etc. She talks about a specific group within the Brahmin caste called the ‘maha brahmins’ who can just perform the last rites of Hindus. They cannot indulge in any other kind of priestly activities nor diversify their work into their arena. This clear distinction though justified through religion, makes sense economically.

In another chapter, she goes on to talk to the cremation workers and mortuary staff where their challenging workplace is discussed and how they were put to the test during the pandemic when they had to work day and night. The caste hierarchy comes out as she digs deeper into the system of funeral workers. They say that their work is considered to be impure and no upper-caste person would ever touch a corpse. Apart from the social stigma, in some cases like the CNG crematoriums their physical well-being is also at stake. In the case of the nasu-salars in the Parsi community who are the pallbearers, a certain aspect of impurity is attached to them as well until they get a purifying bath but the author quotes from Cyrus Mistry’s novel Chronicle of the Corpse Bearer that even they face discrimination and segregation from within their community.

While initially, I was quite impressed with the fact that the author had included a chapter on the last rites in the kinnar-hijda community, because she wasn’t able to get anyone from the community to talk about it there seems to be a lack of depth in this particular section. There are many interesting rumours about black magic and mysticism that are attached to their last rites that could’ve been included in this chapter also. The book mentions Kinnar Akhada as a transgender organization which isn’t exactly the correct categorization. The Akhada system is found in Hinduism and aims at furthering religion and varied values and plays several other kinds of secondary roles. Gender is also an inherent part of last rites across all religions and based on one’s gender they’re expected to have certain roles or are discriminated against on its basis. For example, Dewan mentions a conversation she had with a woman who had lost her girl child and her in-laws couldn’t care less, she was expected to not grieve extensively over her loss, something that still makes her angry. While the calendar might say that it’s the 21st century, unfortunately, the unhealthy obsession over the birth of a boy still ails our society and that’s why India ranked 135th out of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022.

The Final Farewell even though aims at being an introduction for the reader to know about the distinct dimensions of the last rites that different communities follow, goes beyond that and connects with the human behind those practices. It humanizes the rituals and reveals the prejudices that still exist in our society and simultaneously demands for a change. Minakshi Dewan’s ethnographic approach to her research makes the book an interesting read though I would have liked it even more if it was more detailed, especially around the non-Hindu practices and the diversities that exist in other religious groups of India. 

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Chittajit Mitra (he/they) did their master’s in Anthropology from the University of Allahabad. When they are not reading, they freelance as a writer and is currently on a search to find an intriguing Hindi text to translate.