Monday, Dec 13, 1999
 Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
- Elaine Rati Kochar Elaine Rati Kochar successfully blends her traditional values and social responsiblities as a housewife with a streak for knowledge, creativity, social service and exploration. Her husband is a former Air Force Officer who is now a commerical pilot. |
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Last month in Satpura, Bihar a woman called Charan Shah committed Sati. The newspapers were full of this incident for three days. As usual the Government objected to her doing it, the people supported the act. Today she is a minor goddess. The villagers were happy about the media hype since Charan Shah finally did some good for their small village. With her death the Government. officials and journalists who visited the village, and people who read the newspapers found out that the villagers of Satpura didn't have basic living amenities or electricity. Charan Shah did them all a favour by bringing their village into the limelight. Maybe things would change for them? Charan Shah, on the other hand, may have died with the consoling thought that she would rise from anonymity and subdued inferiority to fame.
In Deorala in 1987, Roop Kanwar, an educated 18 year old from Jaipur married to a Rajput, committed Sati. This means she burnt herself on her husband's funeral pyre of her own free will. 750,000 people turned up to worship at her shrine. William Dalrymple's At the Court of the Fish-Eyed Goddess is very informative about the subject. In Rajasthan, every Sati has her own domed cenotaph and is revered and worshipped. What a wonderful status is given to these women. Women who, probably, for most of their lives had been treated as inferior, stupid, and slavish creatures by the same people who revere them after their deaths. Dalrymple's book has another enlightening chapter about the widows of Vrindavan. I know and have seen the widows of Benares, another Holy City of India. Many of these are from West Bengal. Some, more unfortunate than others, became widows while still teenagers. Some are from well-to-do, educated families. As soon as one of them became a widow she was forbidden to possess any worldly goods, she was forbidden to wear any jewelry and she had to shave her head. Then, she was either allowed to live with the family as an encumbrance, reviled and harassed by relatives or children, or simply thrown out by them. Most widows go to the holy cities of India to end their days in prayer for their husband's, and their own, souls. They seek the protection of Krishna expecting him to shoulder their grief and misery. They work at chanting mantras every day for four hours, for which they are given a cup of rice and two rupees. They have no privacy, no luxuries and no holiday from sorrow. They live in hovels for which they have to pay rent. In their old age they have no money for medical care and wait for the day they can pass away from illness or starvation. They can no longer commit Sati.
Even that door is closed to them. Some wish they had done so, that they had ended their days with honour and with the hope that they would be remembered with respect, even if it meant self-immolation. This is the choice India gives them. This is the choice the widows and brides of a large section of Indians have in the new millennium.
Happy New Year.
Till we Connect again next week...
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