It's October the 4th, 1667.

The traveler, Francois Bernier, sits

down to pen a letter to his friend and

mentor, Jean Chappelan, back home in

France. Bernier is eager to tell

Chapelan of his experience in the

Gujarati city of Surat, an experience

that will stay with him for the rest of

his life. With a trembling hand, Bernier

relates the funeral of a local man. He

tells of a little cabin composed of dry

and thick millet straw with an intermix

mixture of small wood. It is this cabin

that will be burned, sending its

deceased occupant into the other world.

But as Bernier tells Chapelan, the

deceased man will not go alone. As the

funeral p is prepared, another figure

enters the scene.

The figure is of a woman. She's the

man's widow. In Berni's own words, she

is of the middle age and by no means

uncumbly. The widow moves with ferocious

gaity and an undaunted step. She wears

quote a look of confidence, or rather of

insensibility, and has an easy air free

from dejection void of embarrassment.

She is washed and prepared by her

attendees. And then she climbs aboard

the funeral p. To quote Bernier again,

she entered into that cabin, sat down

upon the funeral pile, placed her

deceased husband's head in her lap, took

up a torch, and with her own hand,

lighted the fire within. Meanwhile,

outside the brahinss are busy helping

the flames to catch. Bernier says, "I

know not how many brahmins were busily

engaged in kindling the fire from the

outside." Over the minutes that follow,

the woman is burned to death. She

follows her husband right to the end and

beyond, accompanying him on his journey

to the other side. While Bernier is a

gasast by this practice, he admits that

the woman seems to have gone willingly.

She seems to have been an active agent

in her own demise, choosing to join her

husband on his journey into death and

happy to do so. But as Bernier

continues, this was not always the case.

In the same letter, Bernier tells of a

funeral he witnessed in Lahore. While

the events of Sarat were no doubt

disturbing, the account of the Lahore

funeral is even more so. The participant

is far younger and does not seem willing

at all. As Berniier writes, "At Lor, I

saw a most beautiful young widow

sacrificed who could not, I think, have

been more than 12 years of age." The

widow of Lahore displays none of the

confidence and guiety and easy air of

the widow of Surat, and instead, quote,

"The poor little creature appeared more

dead than alive when she approached the

dreadful pit. The agony of her mind

cannot be described. She trembled and

wept bitterly.

There is real fear among those in

attendance that the girl may try to flee

or that she may cause a scene unbecoming

of such a ritual. So three or four of

the brahinss assisted by an old woman

who held her under the arm forced the

unwilling victim toward the fatal spot.

They seated her on the wood and tied her

hands and feet lest she should run away.

As Bernier watches on, the ritual

reaches its disturbing conclusion. He

finishes his account with this. And in

that situation, the innocent creature

was burnt alive.

What Bernier witnessed was Satty, the

process of a widow burning herself to

death on her husband's funeral p. This

is understandably a controversial topic.

We've witnessed two examples of the

process, one seemingly voluntary and one

far from it. But the reality is not as

clear-cut as this. Often the line

between voluntary and involuntary is

worryingly blurred. For centuries,

various South Asian rulers tried to ban,

reform or discouraged the process.

Writers like Banner spoke out against it

whilst the Mughal emperors like Humayan

and Akbar tried to bring the practice to

a full end. The feminist historian Julia

Leslie said that many people avoid

discussing Satti altogether for two

reasons. One reason is that the practice

was quote never common and in many areas

of India it barely happened at all. So

therefore some believe that dwelling on

Satti quote merely gives India a bad

name. The second reason is that trying

to understand Satti is tantamount to

explaining it away. Sociologist Mary

Daly speaks of the language of

understanding which is used to minimize

the suffering of women throughout the

ages. But rather than ignore sati

altogether or try to explain it away, we

can instead confront the history of the

practice. We can gain a clearer picture

of the scriptural misunderstandings and

social factors that have contributed to

its use throughout the ages and led to

the deaths of thousands of women guilty

of nothing more than being married to a

man who died.

For defenders of Satti across the

centuries, their reasoning was very

clear. The process of sati is enshrined

in Hindu scripture and in Brahic law.

But this is only true to an extent. In

fact, many Hindu scholars take the

opposite argument. What is true is that

Satti takes its name from Hindu text

from the first millennium B.C. in these

earliest mentions. Sati is not a process

at all, but in fact a goddess. Sati was

the daughter of Daxshia who in turn was

the son of the creator god Brahma. This

made Daxshia and Satti powerful entities

and they lived lives to match. Daxa and

his family enjoyed luxury and opulence

among their fellow divine beings. But

Satti and her father did not see eye to

eye. Daxa doted on his daughter and

wanted her to live a grand life worthy

of her social standing amongst the gods.

Sati, on the other hand, had fallen in

love with Shiva, the destroyer god.

Sati's father was displeased by her love

for Shiva. Shiva lived very differently

from Dasha and his kin. Shiva's

existence was Spartan and modest. The

destroyer god consorted with some of the

lowliest beings of the universe. Surely,

he was not a good fit for Daxer's

daughter. And so, when Sati married

Shiva, Daxia was apoplelectic with rage.

During a grand yagna or sacrificial

ceremony held by her father, Sati was

publicly humiliated by Daxshia. He

chastised his daughter and poured scorn

upon both Satti and Shiva. Satti, whose

name means truthful or virtuous in

Sanskrit, could not accept the

humiliation and shame. She decided

instead to take action. The goddess

turned from her father and leapt into

the Agnes sacrificial fire. Though the

other guests attempted to save her,

Satti died in the flames. She destroyed

her being and returned her energy to the

Savaloka or universe. While the brutal

death of Satti sounds like the end of

the story, her self- emilation was

really just the beginning. An enraged

Shiva brought violent retribution down

on the heads of Daxia and the other gods

attending the ceremony. Shiva then

wandered the universe carrying the

half-burned corpse of his former bride

until Sati returned to this world in the

new form of Pavati and the two were wed

once again. Partly due to her

self-sacrifice, Satti became an

idealized version of a woman. She was

someone who was willing to give her life

for the love of her husband and for

their mutual honor. In time, she would

give her name to the process of

self-sacrifice. The idea of a woman who

joined her deceased husband on his

funeral p became synonymous with Satti

and her story. But you might have

noticed something of a disconnect here.

While Satti did burn herself alive, this

did not take place following her

husband's death. Instead, Sati's suicide

came after her bullying and humiliation

at the hands of her father. This is just

the first of the contradictions that

scholars have identified between ancient

teachings and the reality of sati as a

practice. There will be many more across

its long history.

The sacrifice of wives and concubines

after the death of a husband happened

right across the world in the first and

second millennia BC. Evidence of similar

processes have been found in Greece,

Germany, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia,

and Egypt amongst other places. During

the funeral of Chinese Emperor Chin Xi

Huang in 221 BC, officials were ordered

to quote, "Execute and bury all

concubines who had never given birth

because it was inappropriate to let them

leave the palace." The discovery of

dozens of small tombs at Chinshi's

mausoleum, each packed with the bones of

young women, suggests that this order

was indeed carried out. Satty like

processes also occurred in what is now

Kazakhstan and Tkmanistan between 1,500

and 500 BC. Archaeologist Elena Kousmina

has even suggested that theerary

practices of the Bronze Age and

Reanovven cultures were similar to those

of the Vadic Indian cultures from

roughly the same period. But across all

these locations, spousal sacrifice was

rare. And what's more, it was usually

reserved for the wives of kings,

emperors, and chieftains. It wasn't

common for ordinary women to follow

their husband into the grave, and it

certainly was not expected. Narrowing

our scope to Vadic India, most scholars

now believe the early Sati practices

were largely metaphorical. The historian

Ramila Tappa believes that widows went

through a process of symbolic self-

emulation, but would not usually be

consumed by the flames. The widow would

then remain in the family by marrying

her husband's brother. According to

another historian, Anand Yang, the widow

would quote lay on her husband's funeral

p before it was lit, but was raised from

it by a male relative of her dead

husband. Analysis of grave sites tells

us that some widows did burn themselves

to death on their husband's funeral p,

but most probably did not. It wasn't

until several centuries later that a

more literal interpretation of the

process became popular. Between the

fifth and seventh centuries, Sati became

increasingly common, particularly

amongst the nobility and the warrior

classes. The Eranpillar inscription from

the year 510 tells us of the Gupta

emperor general Guparaja who died in

service of his master and of the wife

who followed him. Guparaja went to

heaven becoming equal to Indra the best

of the gods and his devoted attached

beloved and bayus wife clinging to him

entered into the mass of fire. The 7th

century writer Banner gives us accounts

of royal women like Rajashri who

attempted sati after her husband died.

He also speaks of queen Yasumati who

burned herself to death while her dying

husband was still alive. But Bana also

gives accounts of other women like Rati

and Duchala who did not carry out ritual

self- emulation. In fact, Bana is

severely critical of the process. The

custom is a foolish mistake of

stupendous magnitude. It does not help

the dead for he goes to heaven or hell

according to his deserts. It does not

ensure reunion since the wife goes to

the hell reserve for suicides. By

living, she can still do much good. By

dying, she only adds to her misery.

Banner is one of several writers to

criticize the process of sati. Several

centuries later, Midati wrote that sati

is a form of suicide and so is

prohibited by the vades. He also said

that sati is a type of violence and

therefore goes against vadic dharmic

traditions. But despite this criticism,

the practice continued to grow in

popularity in some locations. This was

helped by its increasing acceptance

amongst Brahic scholars. In the 7th

century, it appeared in Brahman law

books for the first time and from the

8th century onwards. The Vishnui

scripture mentioned Sati specifically.

Though the practice is not mentioned in

the ancient Hindu texts, its appearance

in these early medieval texts give Sati

some more religious weight. But why did

these scholars go out of their way to

enshrine Sati in medieval texts? Why did

they feel the need to support the

process? For Anadyang, this change was

due to anxiety over the status of

widows. For a wife, outliving her

husband made her spiritually

inospicious. Early Hindu codes like

Manuspriti outline ways in which a widow

can live in spiritual harmony after her

husband's death. For example, she may

choose to live a life of pious

aestheticism. While this is not

particularly feminist, it's still better

than being burned alive. However, a

widow was also an unattached woman and

this caused a problem. As Anan Yang

says, "A woman without a husband

constituted a grave danger to her

community because of the supposedly

irrepressible sexual powers she

possessed. A capacity which always had

the potential to disrupt her richly

prescribed life of austerity. to avoid

temptation for herself and for others

around her. The widow could instead

choose to burn herself alive. But Sati

wasn't just the way to avoid sexual

dishonor. It was also a way to actively

achieve serious spiritual rewards. Yang

continues, "By becoming a sati, a widow

not only ended the threat she posed to

the spiritual welfare of others, but

also reaped honor and merit, perhaps

enough to last 35 million years for

herself, her husband, and the families

of her husband, her mother, and her

father." So, Satti was encouraged for

noble women and those of the upper

casts. This was supposedly for the

widow's benefit and for that of everyone

around her. As the Middle Ages

progressed though, sassy began to cross

class boundaries. It was no longer

reserved for people of the upper class,

but became increasingly common right

across society. There are probably

several key reasons for this. One is the

declining position of women in medieval

Indian society. Historian Raml Tappa

links Sati to two things. one, the

subordination of women in patriarchal

society, and two, a desire to exert

control over female sexuality. As we've

seen, a widow was not only considered

socially worthless, but also spiritually

dangerous. And so, Satti was encouraged

as a way to solve the problem of

unattached women. Another reason is

Sanskritization. And if you don't know

what that means, Anand gives us a

definition. It is the process whereby

lower casts aspire for higher positions

by emulating the customs, rituals,

ideology and way of life of higher

casts. Yang believes that the lower cast

groups in parts of northern, western and

southern India adopted sati as a way to

improve their own social position. Later

a third reason emerged further fueling

the spread of Satti and this was the

culture clash between the Hindu Rajput

warrior clans and the Muslim Mughal

Empire. For the Rajput clans, self-

emulation was an established way to

preserve honor. At the siege of Chau in

1303, Queen Padmini is said to have

burned herself to death alongside other

Rajput women rather than be captured by

the Muslim forces of the Delhi

Sultanate. The process of burning

yourself alive rather than submit to

capture is known as Ja and is repeated

many times in both history and legend.

Some examples are quite astonishing in

their scale. In 1528, Queen Kavati

committed ja rather than submit to

Bahadasha. She shot herself in a

building and lit a store of gunpowder.

The resulting explosion killed Kavati

and 13,000 other women who decided to

commit ja along with her. Ja and Sati

are very different, but the mechanics

and nature of death are similar. Elite

Radput clans may have increased their

usage of sati as a way to maintain their

Hindu traditions and to differentiate

themselves from the Muslim Mughal

Empire. As the historians Cynthia

Talbert and Katherine Asher said in

their 2022 book India before Europe, in

some respects, Rajput and Mughal culture

remain separate. Attitudes towards

widowhood are one case in point. Islam

allows for remarage of widows. High cast

Hindus on the other hand opposed widow

remarage with some believing a widow

should emulate herself on her husband's

funeral p. It was particularly

associated with elite Rajput families.

But this idea of maintaining Hindu

traditions presented another problem.

The early Hindu scriptures do not

explicitly support sati other than as a

symbolic practice. And this led to the

alteration and reinterpretation of these

early scriptures. In some cases, this

may have occurred accidentally. For

example, Sati is mentioned in the

Rigveda dating back to the second

millennium BC, but is largely symbolic.

Anand Yang believes that one key word in

the Rigveda was misinterpreted. The word

agre meaning to go forth became agy or

into the fire. This in turn was used as

a justification for Sati. This mistake

may have been accidental, but other

tampering with historical texts was

probably deliberate. The Muhabarata is

one of the most important epics in the

Hindu tradition and parts of it were

written as early as the 3rd century BC.

Inside there are mentions of the suicide

of Princess Madraati through Sati which

was used to give further scriptural

weight to the practice. But scholars of

the Mahabarata have pointed out how

Madraati suicide contradicts with other

parts of the text and was most likely

added later. This addition may have been

another way to justify the process of

Satti during the medieval period. By the

late Middle Ages though, rulers were

growing increasingly uncomfortable with

the idea of Satti. In the Delhi

Sultanate, attempts were made to ensure

that sati was only conducted voluntarily

and that women were not being forced to

throw themselves onto the funeral p. By

the Mughal period from 1526 onwards,

there were real attempts to end the

practice. Emperor Huayan tried to ban it

but withdrew the ban when it proved

unpopular. Emperor Akbar introduced more

regulation to the process and under

Akba, Mughal governors were told to

quote delay the woman's decision for as

long as possible and offer pensions,

gifts, and other help. The aim was to

counter the idea that the widow's

position was hopeless without her

husband. By supporting widows and

offering spiritual assistance, Akbar

hoped to encourage the widow to remain

alive rather than joining her husband on

the p. Then Emperor Arangzeb finally

banned the practice altogether in 1663.

His declaration stated, "In all lands

under Mughal control, never again should

the officials allow a woman to be

burnt." Basatti still of course took

place. The two accounts offered to us by

Franco Banier come from the reign of

Arang Zeb and occurred after the emperor

had banned Satti. The account from Surat

suggests the Sati took place

voluntarily. But the account from Lahore

suggests that the unfortunate widow was

coerced and controlled by those around

her. In both cases, it's likely Satti

was allowed to happen because the

families had bribed local officials.

Despite attempts to stop the practice

altogether, it was still happening when

colonial powers arrived in Indian lands

over the following centuries. Some have

suggested that the arrival of the

Christian British in India led to

something of a backlash amongst some

Hindu groups. Just like the Rajputs had

rebelled against the Mughal Empire, some

later groups were irritated by British

attempts to meddle in traditional

customs. As a result, they carried out

their traditional rituals more

frequently, including Sati. Anyang

doesn't agree with this. However, he

said that little evidence exists to

suggest a considerable surge in the

incident of Satti with the coming of the

British. The views of other historians

rest on a statistical inference for

which they can muster little evidence

other than a few contemporary

observations. While SATI may not have

increased in frequency in the late 18th

and early 19th centuries, it certainly

was still happening. 8,134

cases of satin were recorded in Bengal

between 1815 and 1828. These were mainly

concentrated around Kolkata which

accounted for 63% of the reported cases

from Bengal. Hundreds of cases were also

reported in Bombay and Madras over the

same period. Although the practice was

much less common in these locations,

disturbing depictions of Sati began to

fill the colonial press. One account

from a salt agent in Barapur near

Kolkata tells us of a woman forcibly

held down by a great bamboo by two men

so as to preclude all chances of escape.

The salt agent also relays two accounts

that he did not witness directly. In

Koutac, a woman dropped herself into a

burning pit and rose up again as if to

escape when a washerman gave her a push

with a bamboo which sent her back into

the hottest part of the fire. Yet

another such case involves a woman who

was apparently thrown twice back in the

fire by her relatives. It's a very

shocking account and it led to the

banning of the practice in British India

when Lord William Bentnik ascended to

power as the new governor general in

1828. He said he would feel the dreadful

responsibility hanging over his head in

this world and the next if he was to

consent to the continuence of this

practice one moment longer. Over the

following years, Sati was banned in the

lands under direct British control.

Between 1841 and 1852, the

semi-autonomous princely states in South

Asia gradually followed suit and sati

was effectively banned right across the

subcontinent by the middle of the

century. Since the 1850s, the use of SAT

has declined considerably. However, the

practice never went away completely.

Between 1943 and 1987, there were around

30 cases of SATi or attempted SATi in

India. This period culminated in the

most infamous STI case in modern times,

that of 18-year-old RP Canoa. When

Canoa's 24-year-old husband passed away

on September 3rd, 1987, she apparently

elected to follow him onto the funeral

p. The following day, Rup Canoa was

burnt alive beside her husband's body.

She was then venerated as a sati mata.

To quote Julia Leslie, RP had become, in

the eyes of her family, a goddess, a

deified eternal wife. More than 1,000

people attended the funeral and most of

these witnesses said that RP had made

her own choice to join her husband. But

not everyone agrees. As widespread

condemnation of the act swept across the

country, many Indian news outlets began

reporting that RP may have been forced

to commit suicide by her relatives, in

particular the relatives of her deceased

husband. The upsetting case highlights

the worrying gray area between voluntary

and involuntary. To quote Julie Leslie

one last time, one view of Satti is that

it is a strategy for dignity in a

demeaning world. The tragedy is that RP

Canoir could find no other strategy. In

such a world, for most women, choice

itself is a fiction. In total, 45 people

were charged with offenses related to

RP's death. These offenses ranged from

the coercion of RP Camwa to the lighting

of the P itself. Many people were

charged with glorifying the process of

Satti, including some state officials.

Over an unprecedented legal process that

dragged on for more than 35 years, all

45 people charged were eventually either

acquitted or had already passed away.

Following Rupt Canoir's death, new

legislation was brought in to make sati

illegal and to prevent the promotion of

the practice. Despite these laws,

sporadic cases of sati and attempted

sati continue to emerge. Many of these

appear to be voluntary, although of

course it's impossible to say this for

sure. At least one of these recent cases

certainly did involve coercion. In 2023,

a young computer engineer named Sangita

Lacra committed suicide by jumping into

the Sabamati River in Ammedabad. LacR's

husband had recently died and in her

suicide note, she said that her

husband's family were pressuring her to

burn herself alive and become a sati.

While Sangita did not experience the

horror of self- emulation, she was still

forced into a position from which she

felt that there was no escape and that

the only option was to take her own

life. This is perhaps the biggest issue

with the voluntary versus involuntary

satti debate.

How do we really define voluntary? When

someone's held down with sticks and tied

with ropes around their hands and feet,

it's easy to see that that's not

voluntary.

But when someone's coerced by centuries

of cultural pressure and social

expectation,

who knows? Either way, the results are

largely the same.