Origin of Sati Practice?

“Sati” originally meant a woman who performed the act of immolating herself after her
husband’s death. The word is derived from the Sanskrit word “asti’, which means “She is pure or
true”.

In mythological terms, Sati was the name of the wife of Lord Shiva. Her father never respected
Shiva and often despised him. To protest against the hatred that her father held for her husband,
she burned herself. While she was burning, she prayed to be reborn as Shiva’s wife again. This
did happen, and her new incarnation was called Parvati. People used to justify the practice based
on this tale, but when Sati burned herself, she wasn’t a window, and thus the practice is quite
unrelated to this tale.

Sati had become a hot topic in colonial Bengal in the early 19th century. To prove that Sati was a
barbaric practice, the British appointed Pandits in the civil courts and Nizamat Adalats (criminal
courts) to help them build a case against it by decoding religious scriptures. The British posed
specific questions regarding the practice and urged the Pandits to answer them by interpreting
texts from scriptures like the Manusmriti and other Shrutis and Smritis.

The British argued that Sati was not practised in order to send the husband and wife into heaven,
but because widows, entitled to some of the family property after their husband’s death (through
the Dayabhaga Law in Bengal), became a liability due to the fear that they might claim it. Thus,
coercing them into the funeral pyre was a safe bet.

The vyavasthas also elaborated on how practices differed in towns, districts, and among castes,
but those were largely ignored – they were regarded as peripheral aspects of the ‘main’ act of
Sati. The problem lies in the fact that the British wanted to prove that indigenous people
followed religious practices with no conscience and they modified the interpretations to suit their
goal, despite having proof that it may be otherwise. This assumption became the official
discourse on Sati.

Modification In The Practice Of Sati, 1813

While the aim of the British was to prove that religion was the basis of the existence of the
people of the Indian subcontinent, they wanted to do so without directly infringing upon their
sentiments. In 1813, the law that allowed Sati was modified, according to which there was now a
legal Sati and an illegal Sati – the former meaning that the widow consented to it and the latter
meaning that she was coerced into it. Two things come out of this arrangement – one, that the
British did not target Sati because it was a practice cruel to women, but to argue that it was the
men who were barbaric, and two, that volition or consent are invalid here because there was no
way to tell if the widow had consented or was forced to consent.

n 1815, when systematic data collection on Sati began, officials were instructed to witness each
and every detail of the act from start to finish – the widow’s body language, what she was told,
and the behaviour of those around her. Not only is it difficult to record consent when it is heavily
contextual in the case of women who have no power or status in a patriarchal society, but it is
also ridiculous to think that consenting women would validate the practice of Sati.

Raja Rammohan Roy And The Hindu Conservatives

Raja Rammohan Roy is known as the pioneer of women’s rights in India, specifically because he
came out in support of the abolition of Sati. Since 1818, Roy wrote in great detail about Sati and
how he was pro-abolition.

Roy was aware of the patriarchal context behind consent in the case of women committing Sati,
but that remained in the margins of the colonial debate. In his works, he defended the religious
scriptures and asserted that widowhood was glorious – a life of asceticism was the way for
widows to live. Just like the court-appointed Pandits, Roy made his case with the help of the
shastras such as Manusmriti, Shrutis and Smritis, also declaring which scripture is more sacred
than the other.

Manusmriti, according to him, was above all because it did not mention Sati anywhere. In 1830,
he presented a petition along with 300 signatories to the then Governor-General of Bengal, Sir
William Bentinck with more evidence against the wrongful interpretation of the scriptures – a
year after the enactment of the Sati Regulation Act.

In the petition they created to present to the Governor-General (with 800 signatories), they stated
that there was a printing mistake in the Manusmriti that was distributed across Bengal. The
Hindu conservatives were of the opinion that the ‘liberals’ opposing Sati were non-believers of
religion and that because they had the monopoly on the knowledge regarding Hindu culture, their
views had more weight. For the conservatives, the narrative boiled down to believers versus non-
believers.

Prevention of Sati Act (1987)

In 1987, in the village of Deorala in Rajasthan, an 18-year-old married woman named Roop
Kanwar was forced to become sati when her husband died after eight months of marriage. She
refused. Consequently, a group of men from the village forcefully drugged and immolated her.
Police investigated the case and those men were arrested. In light of this incident, the
government created the Prevention of Sati Act, making it illegal to force or encourage a woman
to commit sati, and anyone doing so would be punished by death. And yet, some widows still
choose to become sati – at least four such cases were recorded between 2000 and 2015.

Conclusion

The colonisation of the Indian subcontinent for 200 years was a series of cunning moves made
by the British to not only loot the subcontinent of its material wealth, but also the transform their
society to make it more Victorian. The argument of Indian culture as barbaric became the basis
of changes in the following centuries, transforming the political, social and economic structures
of the subcontinent. The women’s question remained central to the war between the Indian
nationalists and the British and they continued to be markers of ‘Indian’ culture – something that
can never be homogeneous.

The fact remains that women were on the receiving end of these practices, but they were never
central to these arguments. Women’s bodies were the ground on which the war of authenticity
was fought among the British and the elites. The Sati Regulation Act did get passed in 1829, but
in the grander scheme of things, none of it was for the benefit of women.