Resumen de La muerte de Chandra
In the story that is examined here, the legal order that sustains the state has transformed the death of a woman into a murderous deed. The historian whose stances are critical begins to scrutinize the vent only after the intervenient discourse of law has labelled the case as murder. By analyzing a document in which the defendants' testimony has been transcribed and which, for all its authenticity, is concealing the interpretative logic used by the official representatives, the author aims to show to what extent this fragmentary piece has been deprived of the context that would enable us to understand the episode better. Thus, he intends to bring back the set of surrounding circumstances so that we listen as much as we can to the voices that were silenced during the judiciary process. In this way, a wholly different version of the vents is formulated that strikes us a more convincing from the perspective of historic experience. His account highlights the simultaneous activation of two morality codes vis-avis the same happening, namely, the code of the colonial rule and the code of the kinship community. That confrontation makes it possible, then, to situate the tragic episode in the field where a web of solidarities and fears interplay within the frame of mind-nineteenth-century rural Bengal, in which patriarchalism dominates.
