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“ETERNAL FLAMES”: SUICIDE, SINFULNESS AND INSANITY IN “WESTERN” CONSTRUCTIONS OF SATI, 1500–1830

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2004

Andrea Major
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh Email andrea.major@btinternet.com

Abstract

In the wake of the immolation of Roop Kanwar in Deorala, Rajasthan, in 1987, sati has re-emerged as a controversial political and social issue in modern India. Many of the terms of the contemporary debate on sati have their roots in the colonial period and are based on assumptions and ideas formulated during the British debate on sati in the early nineteenth century. These ideas were often as much the product of changing British society and its preoccupations as they were the encounter with India, however. This article explores the connotations of changing attitudes to suicide in influencing the nature of British responses to sati. By examining the relationship between attitudes to suicide and changing depictions of sati between 1500–1830, it seeks to undermine the suggestion of a constant western “morality” with regard to sati, depicting instead an encounter with the rite that was bi-directional and fluid with the dichotomy between “East” and “West” cross-cut by a myriad of other issues and concerns.

Type
Gender in Asian History
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2004

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Footnotes

My concern in this paper is primarily British reactions to sati in the early nineteenth century. In order to contextualise these, this paper will also discuss accounts from a variety of European authors of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries whose works found their way into English translations. These formed the basis of pre-existing British ideas on the subject and were in some cases (the work of Francois Bernier, for example) extremely influential. They also provide an important counterpoint to early nineteenth-century ideas, showing as they do that “western” attitudes to sati were by no means the product of a single discourse, but rather were impacted on by specific historical (and regional) forces.