Two years ago, this very month, the headlines had screamed. ‘Barbaric’, ‘Outrage’, Shameful’, ‘Unforgivable’, ‘Revivalist’. The media, confronted with a fresh instance of what it considered medievalism, responded thus to the sati of a young girl at a remote hamlet in rural Rajasthan. This was followed by a lot of digging up inevitable in such circumstances. This was the thirty-eighth incident of sati after independence, said someone. Her husband was psychiatrically treated, and probably had potency difficulties, said another. She was pushed into the pyre when she tried to get out, said still another.  She decided right on seeing her husband’s corpse to go sati and kept her resolve in spite of the elder’ protestations. The family physician treating her husband was absconding, said someone else. So probe it, said still another.

Her father and other relatives were censured when they tried to speak about the incident. A Shankaracharya tried to defend the right to sati according to his reading of Hindu scriptures. A ‘Bhagwan’ retorted by telling the Shankaracharya to go sati himself. And a shocked academic wanted to burn the scriptures that extolled sati. It was shocking to see such obscurantism, such fierce obsession with totems of faith, they said.

Politicians of Rajasthan, and elsewhere, took up cudgels on one or the other side, but in general played safe. And played politics, over the whole issue. Most of them remained quiet, and in that earned censure. At least for one the fall was hastened - the Chief Minister of the state.

Women activists took to the streets, wrote, cried themselves hoarse, and in general made it clear how angry they were at one more instance of their ‘oppression’.  The pro-sati groups, Dharam-Raksha Samiti amongst them, went on to organize a ‘Gita-Path’ (dubbed sati-mela by the media), an year after the sati, despite central and state legislations e.g. The Commission of Sati Prevention Act 1987, that forbade any mela at the site and specifically prohibited any worship or glorification of sati. The Calcutta High Court, on a related issue, allowed worship at the Rani Sati temple at Jhunjhunu but forbade any mela at the site.

Commentators highlighted the financial aspect of such ‘carnivals’, of sati as spectacle and sati as commerce. Women’s groups pointed out that the chunari mahotsav following the Deorala sati yielded Rs. Seventy lakhs, of which nothing was accounted.  For a government which did not like to believe such money existed, this was very convenient. The Jhunjhunu Temple was itself pointed out to have an annual turnover of Rs. Four crores. As pilgrims and tourists faithfully trooped in to watch/commemorate such spectacles, the money that poured in and its role could not be dismissed lightly.  And yet to claim it as the sole or even most important motivating factor would be to skew perspectives.

Someone else stressed the human factor. It was possible to push a widow to suicide by creating the right atmosphere, often without being aware that one was creating such an atmosphere, he said. And we are afraid of the idea of self-immolation in a world where self-interest is the ultimate currency in public life (Nandy, 1988). He only elicited an angry rejoinder from two women.