4 ideas
He announces that an old, unmarked grave belongs to a forgotten saint who appeared to him in a dream, drapes it in red cloth, and installs himself as its keeper. Offerings of rice, money and deference soon make him a landholder and a moral authority, allied with the rich farmer Khaleque Bepari. His power is never publicly exposed, but it is privately shaken by the defiance of his young second wife, Jamila.
A sacred object needs no real history, only a credible claim of authority attached to people's existing anxieties about famine, illness, sin and death. Once villagers believe the grave can bless or punish, their offerings become a recurring tribute.
The shrine-keeper keeps his authority by attacking every rival source of meaning or knowledge. He also polices private conduct inside households. Control lasts only as long as the community has no competing interpreter of the sacred.
Read the exploiter as a frightened, uprooted man whose fraud is also his only shelter from hunger. He lives in constant dread that the lie will collapse. That dread explains his harshness toward anyone who shows no fear, such as a defiant young wife. Domination here reveals fragility rather than strength.