188 Part III: South Asia
sanction, although practiced only in a few castes and very rarely since it was
outlawed by the British in 1829. Sati sprang into a great national controversy in
1987 when an 18-year-old Rajput girl named Roop Kanwar committed sati by
joining her husband of one year on his funeral pyre. Technically a woman does
not commit sati but becomes a sati through this act. The word sati means “inner
truth”; it is the strength of her vow to become sati that is believed to cause her
body itself to ignite on the funeral pyre as she holds her husband’s head in her
lap. The sati of Roop Kanwar immediately became a cause célèbre. Educated
young Rajput men viewed it as a return to their old standards of valor by a
heroic young Rajput woman, and they immediately formed a “Committee for
the Defense of the Religion of Sati” (Sati Dharma Raksha Samiti). Much of the
debate revolved around the question whether Roop Kanwar’s act was volun-
tary (as most witnesses claimed) or was forced (according to some reports, she
was found hiding in a shed as she got an inkling of what was in store for her,
was dragged out and drugged, and “helped” onto the funeral pyre) (Hawley
1994; Oldenburg 1994). Indian feminists protested that however it happened,
sati should not be glorified and no one should profit from it through the tem-
ples that are built afterward on the site of a sati.
A sati becomes a satimata, a “mother sati” or goddess, and a shrine is built
on the site of past satis, to which people come from afar to worship a woman
who has so perfectly fulfilled her dharma as a woman and her vow (pativrata) to
her husband. Remember Sita, who went through the fire to prove her purity as
a wife, who is sometimes held to be the first sati, though the flames proved her
purity by not burning her. The other myth-model of a sati is Parvati (also known
as Sati), whose father insulted her husband Shiva by not inviting him to a feast.
In protest against this insult, she flung herself into a fire, and grief-stricken
Shiva stumbled throughout India carrying her corpse, leaving portions of her
body here and there across North India where temples sprang up in her honor.
But as one feminist Indian scholar, Veena Talwar Oldenburg, says in a contest-
ing interpretation of the myth: “Her act did not signify piety toward a husband
but willful protest against a father. So the Sati myth cannot really qualify as the
inspirational myth for sati” (Oldenburg 1994:163).ENDNOTES
(^1) Brahmi was finally deciphered by James Prinsep in the nineteenth century and discovered to be
based on prakrit, the speech of North India at that time in which most of the Buddhist texts
were written.
(^2) One lakh = 100,000 rupees. As of this writing, the value of one dollar is about 65 rupees; so one
lakh is over $6,500. A typical middle-class monthly income is $1,627, i.e., Rs. 1,500 to 3,000; so
a dowry of two lakhs might be six years’ income.
REFERENCES CITED
Ahmad, F. 2010, February 21. Where Is Bataidari Bill? Asks Nitish. The Times of India.
Ambedkar, Babasaheb. 1987. Writings and Speeches. Vol. 1. Education Department,
Government of Maharashtra.