2 – Women Were Expected to Sacrifice Their Lives for the Sake of Men
In India, the practice of ‘Sati’ involved a widow either throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre or committing suicide soon after his death. ‘Widow burning’ was first practiced in 510 BC and probably began in India’s warrior aristocracy. It began to gain popularity in the 10th century AD and spread through other provinces within the country from the 12th century until the 18th century. Sati was especially prevalent in certain Hindu communities but was also popular amongst aristocratic Sikh families.
Sati even spread outside India to Vietnam, Indonesia and several other Southeast Asian countries. While the custom began to die out in the south of India, its popularity grew in the north where it often occurred in states such as Bengal and Rajasthan. There are few reliable sources with regards to determining the number of women who died from Sati up until the beginning of the 19th century. The British East India Company reported that there were over 8,000 cases of widow suicide between 1813 and 1828.
It is likely that these numbers drastically underestimate the number of deaths however. One estimate stated that 575 widows performed Sati in the state of Bengal alone in 1823. It is worth noting that widows were effectively shunned and the practice of Sati was believed to be the highest possible expression of devotion to a deceased husband. Also, Sati was supposed to purge the woman of all sins, release her from the birth/rebirth cycle, and guarantee salvation, not only for her husband, but also the next seven generations of the family.
For widows who did not engage in Sati, the outlook was exceedingly bleak. Hindu widows for example, had to renounce all social activities, shave their head, sleep on thin, rough matting and eat nothing but boiled rice. In such circumstances, many women preferred Sati to a life of loneliness where they were effective recluses. Younger women who were little more than girls were more likely to choose Sati. Advocates of the practice said that the widows were performing ‘voluntary’ acts of courage and devotion.
The thing is, Sati wasn’t always voluntary and from the very formation of the practice, the Sikh religion has prohibited it. The Islamic rulers of the Mogul period described it as ‘barbaric’ and the British barely tolerated it in the early 19th century. After Christian missionaries began campaigning against Sati in the 1820s, opposition to the practice rose and it was banned by the Bengali provincial government in 1829. In 1861, Queen Victoria issued a general ban on Sati and it was abolished in Nepal in 1920. In 1988, the Indian Sati Prevention Act was passed in an attempt to end widow burning once and for all.