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print versionOutlook Magazine, November 3, 2008
The latest case of sati, reported from Chhechhar in the Raipur district of Chhattisgarh on October 11, once again raises issues about the interface between the law and social reforms. It is a pity that since Deorala in 1987, each of the at least five incidents of sati has drawn diminishing attention from women’s groups, the media and civil society. Lalmati, a 75-year-old woman, immolated herself with her dead husband, who was laid on the funeral pyre in the evening. Her immediate relatives and villagers said they did not abet the act, a crime under the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987. But the glorification of sati, also a crime under the same law, started right away: hundreds of people from six or seven adjoining villages started making offerings of coconuts and other puja items at the pyre on the banks of the Mahanadi. Police from the Kasdol thana could reach there only about 2 am, and some reports say that, despite police presence, sati worship continued till 5 pm the next day—for almost for 24 hours.
Police have since arrested Lalmati’s daughter and all her three sons and daughters-in-law for instigation, under Sub-Section 2 C of Section 4 of the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, that was passed in the wake of Deorala. This sub-section includes in the definition of instigation the encouragement of a woman to remain fixed in her resolve to commit sati. Subsequently, police also cleared the area around the pyre and removed any remnants of holy ash or other puja items brought by worshippers.
Roop Kanwar’s immolation at Deorala in Sikar district of Rajasthan was the 40th sati in independent India and the 26th in Rajasthan. Various women activists and scholars have pointed out a strong correlation between the occurrence of sati and the perpetuation of its ideology through the symbolism, iconography and lore of sati temples, small sati sthans and melas in villages, and popular pulp art and literature of sati calendars and booklets. Rajasthan has witnessed the largest number of satis in independent India, probably because big sati temples like the Rani Sati temple in Jhunjhunu command great ideological clout and are backed by the wealth of the Marwari Vaishya diaspora in India and abroad. The ideology of sati also meshes in with the ideology and identity of caste, and this compounds the effect. For instance, the Deorala sati became a matter of Rajput pride, which helped to subvert the law, with the help of a state apparatus dominated by the interests of caste. All the accused were subsequently acquitted by the lower court for lack of evidence and witnesses turning hostile, even though the incident had taken place in full public view.
Urban India generally took Deorala as an aberration and thought the subsequent law would curb the practice. But five sati incidents have been reported since then: near Mahoba in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh in 1999; near Panna in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh in 2002; near Darbhanga in Bihar a couple of years later; near Jaspura in Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh again; and now in Chhattisgarh. Darbhanga went unprobed, but the other four revealed the prevalence of sati ideology, manifested in thriving sati temples in the vicinity, though not as grand as those in Rajasthan.
But the legal intervention of 1987 has subtly changed the sati narrative. The woman in all the post-Deorala incidents is supposed to have committed sati by stealthily jumping on the pyre of her husband after men had left the cremation ground for the ritual bath, whereas in Deorala, and in most cases before that, the woman was supposed to have been overpowered by the sati spirit Sat and led the funeral procession before boldly sitting on the pyre with the head of her dead husband in her lap.In that narrative, the younger brother-in-law, always shown to be a minor, lit the fire. Both narratives display a device to circumvent the existing law.
All incidents of sati since Deorala have happened outside Rajasthan, probably because women’s groups in that state have engaged with the issue more seriously than elsewhere— through legal means, the media, and on the streets. These groups are involved in more than ten cases of glorification of sati in the lower courts. Also in the appeal of the Roop Kanwar case in the high court, and 22 appeals in glorification cases, which were dismissed in the lower courts, after which the government chose not to go in appeal. But the very fact that Rajasthan women’s groups constantly have to keep on their toes and that sati recurs every few years in some region or the other shows that this inhuman practice and the ideology backing it are alive and kicking in the country.
