This article examines how Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Bengali novel The River Churning (Epar Ganga Opar Ganga), first published in 1967, can be read not only in terms of the female protagonist and riot victim’s gendered trauma and emotional hurdles, but also as her ambitious journey to achieve bhadralok-centric caste- and class-based social goals. It argues that it is inadequate to look at the post-Partition crises of a female riot victim only through the lens of feminism; rather, in order to gain a holistic view of her adverse position, or the lack thereof, her class, caste, and communal identities need to be considered. A narrow feminist understanding of a riot-scathed woman’s mind can lead to a sentimentalized perspective, obscuring the possibilities of her achieving agency. In an Indian setting, in addition to gender, caste, community, and class can help to understand the overall sense of loss of a pariah and supposedly “raped” woman. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449855.2020.1765190