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Call a spade a sati
Sandhya Jain
The Pioneer
December 7, 1999
Title: Call a spade a
sati
Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 7, 1999
The decision of the Mahoba
district administration and the National Commission for Women (NCW) to
call Charan Shah's death a suicide rather than a sati is reminiscent of
the Joint Parliamentary Committee's assertion that commissions paid in
the Bofors gun deal were 'winding up charges,' not kickbacks. The indisputable
fact is that a living woman mounted her husband' s pyre and burnt herself
to cinders. As far as can be ascertained, she seems to have done so without
inducement or abetment from any quarter, as neither the family nor community
were aware of her intentions until it was too late.
By any reckoning,
it was a momentous occurrence and deserved the attention of a stupefied
nation. Unfortunately, despite considerable coverage, comment and analyses,
there has been little attempt to understand the larger meaning of Charan
Shah's action. There has been deafening silence from some quarters, strained
verbosity from others. Worse are the inane attempts to 'explain' the act
on grounds of poverty, ignorance, brainwashing by tradition, the plight
of widows, and similar stereotypes.
An NCW member, lamenting
society's colossal ignorance of the true meaning of sati as a defiant and
pro-active woman, recounts tales of the legendary Sati (Parvati) and Savitri
for the benefit of the reading public. She really should know better. If
we accept the great epics as mythology, not history, then the Mahoba incident
is at par with what Madri did in Mahabharat, Sulochana in Ramayana. To
be blunt, sati is native to Indian, specifically Hindu, society. And even
in modern times, it recurs often enough for us to be unable to put it behind
us.
There is more to the
phenomenon than meets the eye; it appears to have multiple levels of meaning,
and it would be puerile to merely condemn it. If we are to understand it,
we must discard pre-conceived notions, keep ideological preconceptions
at bay, and give it a closer, more honest, scrutiny. A few points are in
order.
Charan Shah's death was
definitely not pre-meditated like that of Roop Kanwar twelve years ago.
We shall never know whether the eighteen-year-old, convent-educated Roop
ever expressed a desire to become a sati. But we do know that once she
was decked up in bridal finery and escorted to the cremation ground in
a lively procession, with the active connivance of her in-laws and the
dominant families/community of Deorala village, her fate was sealed. Early
in the case, villagers from other communities told the district administration
that the sati was forced, that Roop had cried out for her father, and tried
to escape. Evidence showed that she never lived with her husband (hence
was unlikely to be overly devoted to him), and was brought to the village
on the eve of his death because of his ill health.
Roop's death was a national
and international sensation. The Rajput community closed ranks to defend
itself and defiantly glamourized the incident through hysterical congregations
at the sati sthal. Political leaders like Kalyan Singh Kalvi and Rajmati
Vijaya Raje Scindia, and religious leaders like Acharya Dharmendra, lent
tacit support by saying that they could not condemn it. On the whole, however,
there was near consensus that the incident was barbaric and unacceptable
in a civilized society. The Rajiv Gandhi government felt compelled to pass
a new anti-sati legislation, which made glorification of sati a penal offence,
though few honestly imagined that such an incident would happen again.
It would be safe to say
that the Act failed to achieve these objectives in the Roop Kanwar case
itself. A dozen years after that dastardly act, there has been no attempt
to dismantle the makeshift temple - chabutra with trishul and chunri -erected
to commemorate the event. Mercifully, intermittent vigilance by women's
groups and the local administration (and perhaps local fatigue) has prevented
a full-fledged temple from coming up. But the administration's nonchalance
is truly inexplicable, given the fact that the male members of the family
were either in police lockup for many years, or in hiding.
Charan Shah's case, however,
is not so cut and dried, which is probably why much of the rationale offered
by the media seems immature and simplistic. There has, for instance, been
much talk about 'the plight of widows,' as if this was a uniform and universal
truth. In a society in which young women from all social classes are known
to suffer from overbearing mothers-in-law, particularly widowed ones, claims
of the low social status of old widows are at variance with ground reality.
Poverty is a poor excuse; Charan Shah's husband was not the family breadwinner
as she had grown up sons. Anyway, in such poor families there is seldom
a single breadwinner.
What is most insulting,
however, is the blanket condemnation of Bundelkhand folklore, which is
said to glorify and perpetuate the 'sati-mindset.' Advocates of the theory
of the regressive values of a patriarchal society (sic), have failed to
explain how it applied to or influenced Charan Shah, who did not belong
to the social strata at which these legends are aimed. She was no proud,
even if poor, Rajput (among whom the tradition is most glorified, and also
appears truly obscurantist). Charan was only a humble Dalit, a social category
that is comfortable with divorce (leaving a man), re-marriage, et al. Hers
is not, and has never been, the class whose women commit sati.
Perhaps this is where
the rub lies. On the one hand, an irate villager, confronted with the official
'suicide' theory, expressed anger that only upper caste women were recognized
as sati while 'our women' are dismissed as suicides. He vowed his community
would construct a temple and make people recognize Charan Shah as sati.
On the other hand, those gearing up to condemn patriarchal values are loathe
to concede that Charan Shah's death at the very least proves the orthodox
Hindu claim that Dalits (not to mention tribals) are bona fide Hindus,
and not a rootless, free-floating population that can legitimately be grabbed
by religious entrepreneurs.
Charan Shah's sati appears
prima facie to be an example of what the late Prof. M.N. Srinivas called
'sanskritization,' i.e. the emulation of upper caste behaviour by lower
caste groups in a bid to enhance their social status. This is a natural
process, but for long it was reversed and checkmated by the politics of
reservation as well as the policy of dividing and compartmentalizing society
into castes and religious groupings. While it is difficult to say exactly
what cause(s) prompted Charan Shah to act as she did, social scientists
would do well to dispassionately examine what her death means to the Dalit
community at large.
The deafening silence
of Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati is a powerful indication that it
probably means a great deal. The uncharacteristic discretion of the BJP
and VHP, not to mention the shyness of Congress and the Left parties (I
think it was Suhasini Ali who first debunked the media reports about local
enthusiasm over the sati), would support this contention. Serious commentators
and scholars should recognize that the decade long attempts to overturn
the artificial apartheid in the nation can have incalculable effects on
society, both positive and negative. In this day and age, Charan Shah's
death cannot be viewed as a positive assertion of identity. Nevertheless,
it is a powerful statement.
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