Deromanticizing Hindu Heathens: SUTTEE
THE PRACTICE OF SATI (WIDOW BURNING)
In this age of ascending feminism and focus on equality and human rights, it is difficult to assimilate the Hindu practice of sati, the burning to death of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, into our modern world. Indeed, the practice is outlawed and illegal in today’s India, yet it occurs up to the present day and is still regarded by some Hindus as the ultimate form of womanly devotion and sacrifice.
Sati (also called suttee) is the practice among some Hindu communities by which a recently widowed woman either voluntarily or by use of force or coercion commits suicide as a result of her husband’s death. The best known form of sati is when a woman burns to death on her husband’s funeral pyre. However other forms of sati exist, including being buried alive with the husband’s corpse and drowning.
The term sati is derived from the original name of the goddess Sati, also known as Dakshayani, who self-immolated because she was unable to bear her father Daksha’s humiliation of her (living) husband Shiva. Sati as practice is first mentioned in 510 CCE, when a stele commemorating such an incident was erected at Eran, an ancient city in the modern state of Madhya Pradesh. The custom began to grow in popularity as evidenced by the number of stones placed to commemorate satis, particularly in southern India and amongst the higher castes of Indian society, despite the fact that the Brahmins originally condemned the practice (Auboyer 2002). Over the centuries the custom died out in the south only to become prevalent in the north, particularly in the states of Rajasthan and Bengal. While comprehensive data are lacking across India and through the ages, the British East India Company recorded that the total figure of known occurrences for the period 1813 – 1828 was 8,135; another source gives the number of 7,941 from 1815 – 1828, an average of 618 documented incidents per year. However, these numbers are likely to grossly underestimate the real number of satis as in 1823, 575 women performed sati in the state of Bengal alone (Hardgrave 1998).
Historically, the practice of sati was to be found among many castes and at every social level, chosen by or for both uneducated and the highest ranking women of the times. The common deciding factor was often ownership of wealth or property since all possessions of the widow devolved to the husband’s family upon her death. In a country that shunned widows, sati was considered the highest expression of wifely devotion to a dead husband (Allen & Dwivedi 1998, Moore 2004). It was deemed an act of peerless piety and was said to purge her of all her sins, release her from the cycle of birth and rebirth and ensure salvation for her dead husband and the seven generations that followed her (Moore 2004). Because its proponents lauded it as the required conduct of righteous women, it was not considered to be suicide, otherwise banned or discouraged by Hindu scripture. Sati also carried romantic associations which some were at apparent pains to amplify. Stein (1978) states “The widow on her way to the pyre was the object (for once) of all public attention…Endowed with the gift of prophecy and the power to cure and bless, she was immolated amid great fanfare, with great veneration”. Only if she was virtuous and pious would she be worthy of being sacrificed; consequently being burned or being seen as a failed wife were often her only choices (Stein 1978). Indeed, the very reference to the widow from the point at which she decided to become a “Sati” (Chaste One) removed any further personal reference to her as an individual and elevated her to a remote and untouchable context. It is little wonder that women growing up in a culture in which they were so little valued as individuals considered it the only way for a good wife to behave. The alternative, anyway, was not appealing. After the death of a husband a Hindi widow was expected to live the life of an ascetic, renouncing all social activities, shaving her head, eating only boiled rice and sleeping on thin coarse matting (Moore 2004). To many, death may have been preferable, especially for those who were still girls themselves when their husband’s died.
Over the centuries, many of India’s inhabitants have disagreed with the practice of sati. Since its very foundation the Sikh religion has explicitly prohibited it. Sati was regarded as a barbaric practice by the Islamic rulers of the Mogul period, and many tried to halt the custom with laws and edicts banning the practice. Many Hindu scholars have argued against sati, calling it “as suicide, and…a pointless and futile act”; both abolitionists and promoters of sati use Hindu scripture as justification of their position. At the end of the 18th Century, the influx of Europeans into India meant that the practice of sati was being scrutinised as never before; missionaries, travellers and civil servants alike condemned official Raj tolerance of the “dreadful practice” and called for its end (Hardgrave 1998). In 1827 the Governor-General of India, Lord Bentinck, finally outlawed the custom in its entirety, claiming it had no sound theological basis (James 1998). James also notes that the outlawing of sati practice was considered the first direct affront to Indian religious beliefs and therefore contributed to the end of the British Raj. However the common people felt about it, many Indian rulers of the 19th century welcomed its abolition (Allen & Dwivedi 1998).
Most recorded instances of sati during the 1800’s were described as “voluntary” acts of courage and devotion (Hardgrave 1998), a conviction that sati advocates continue to promote to this day. At the very least, women committing sati were encouraged by priests (who received the best item from the women’s possessions as payment), the relatives of both families (who received all the women’s remaining possessions and untold blessings) and by general peer pressure. However, it appears that at least in some recorded cases the women were drugged. In “An Account of a Woman Burning Herself, By an Officer,” which appeared in the Calcutta Gazette in 1785, the observer describes the woman as likely under the influence of bhang (marijuana) or opium but otherwise “unruffled.” After she was lifted upon the pyre, she “laid herself down by her deceased husband, with her arms about his neck. Two people immediately passed a rope twice across the bodies, and fastened it so tight to the stakes that it would have effectually prevented her from rising had she attempted”.
Once the reality of burning to death became obvious, many women tried to escape their fate. Measures and implements were put into place to ensure that they could not. Edward Thompson wrote that a woman “was often bound to the corpse with cords, or both bodies were fastened down with long bamboo poles curving over them like a wooden coverlet, or weighted down by logs.” These poles were continuously wetted down to prevent them from burning and the widow from escaping (Parkes, 1850). If she did manage to escape, she and her relatives were ostracised by society, as is related by the redoubtable Fanny Parkes, wife of a minor British civil servant during the early 1800’s, who gives a frank eyewitness account in 1823 of a sati burning and the consequences: