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'Sati' fever picks up even as police term it suicide

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Ignoring appeals by social activists and defying police warnings, men, women and children have been flocking to Satpura village in Mahoba district of southern Uttar Pradesh, about 300km from Lucknow, where a 58-year-old woman killed herself by jumping into her husband's funeral pyre on Thursday.

Insisting that the woman had performed the once rampant act of sati, which was banned in the early part of the nineteenth century, the villagers were seeking to get the site declared a sacred place. Several women arriving from neighbouring areas came with folded hands and made offerings in reverence at the site.

According to Principal Home Secretary V K Mittal, who had on the first day itself described the incident as a case of 'suicide', the local police had to be pressed into action to prevent certain elements from exploiting the situation.

Mittal said, "Some persons were attempting to give a call to erect a temple for which they had even started collecting donations; but we have issued stern instructions to ensure that such attempts are nipped in the bud."

Sati, a practice that was in vogue in mediaeval India until the mid-nineteenth century, was rampant especially in neighbouring Rajasthan where Rajput women preferred to end their lives on the funeral pyres of their husbands.

The practice began as a means of saving the womenfolk of Rajputs vanquished in battle from falling into the hands of the conquerors and becoming their slaves. But later the practice was encouraged because widows were socially ostracised and it was believed that they had no right to live. These women were led to believe that by giving up their life in such a manner, they would be reunited with their husbands in the next world.

It was only in 1822 that Lord William Bentinck, the then viceroy of India, formally banned the practice following persistent demands by social reformers led by Bengal's Raja Rammohun Roy. By that time, the practice that had originated in Rajasthan at the turn of the first millennium had spread as far as Bengal, where too widows were treated as social outcasts.

About 12 years back, a young widow, Roop Kanwar, performed the act in Deorala village in Rajasthan. But there was a marked difference between that incident and the present one. Unlike Roop Kanwar, who carried out all religious rituals before ascending her husband's pyre in her bridal finery, Charan Shah, the woman who ended her life in Satpura, simply jumped into the flames. Also, while Roop Kanwar's sati had the approval of her relatives and members of the local community, who joined in to chant hymns and offer prayers, Charan Shah quietly sneaked out to end her life.

But there are conflicting versions. While some villagers insist they saw her in bridal attire and claimed that she had performed puja in her house before dashing to the cremation ground some distance away, family members said they had "no idea that she had any intention of ending her life in this manner, otherwise we would have physically restrained her".

An eyewitness said Charan Shah quietly slipped out of her house and while her son and other relatives of the family were taking their customary post-cremation bath in a nearby canal, plunged into the fire.

By the time someone raised an alarm and family members rushed back from the canal, the woman was aflame and could not be saved. No post-mortem could be carried out as her body was completely burnt, he pointed out.

The local police have registered it as a case of suicide even as hundreds of people, particularly women, have been thronging the site and offering prayers. "The increasing crowds are posing a serious problem for the local administration," admitted L Ravi Shankar, the district police chief.

To avoid any direct confrontation with the emotionally charged people, the police presence in the area has been increased. Ravi Shankar told rediff.com on telephone that "a cordon has been laid around the funeral site".

He pointed out that it was not easy for the police to reason with the crowds coming to the site that their belief made no sense. He lamented that some people were out to exploit the sentiments of the illiterate village folk by publicising the incident as a case of sati, thereby attaching religious significance to the affair.

Significantly, the victim's son Shishupal, who was in police detention, maintains that his mother probably ended her life simply because she was too deeply attached to his father.

It is common knowledge that Charan Shah alone nursed her husband who was suffering from tuberculosis for the last three years. Therefore it is believed that she saw no purpose in living any more after his death and so, in a fit of passion, ended her life.

Yet, the fact remains that the otherwise obscure little village, lying on a rocky tract in the betel-leaf-growing belt of Mahoba, has turned into a pilgrimage centre for thousands who have been defying the police and social organisations.

Former Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP Subhashini Ali, who also heads the Janwadi Mahila Samiti, went to the village and tried, in vain, to dissuade women from getting carried away by the false and motivated campaign.

But a large section of the village finds a strange kind of fulfilment in Charan Shah's self-immolation. The convergence of key government officials and the media has generated hope among them that the incident will help them get their long-neglected plight across to those who have otherwise never cared to even peep at this remote village.

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