Sati-custom in Mandi - Busting a Few Myths

 

Barselas of Mandi (Picture Credit: The Off.Info)

We are told innumerable stories about what the custom of Sati or widows burning themselves on the funeral pyre was. A horrible practice interestingly, and one that needed to be abolished from the face of this earth given its sheer cruelty and misogyny. However, of late, a lot of revisits have happened that certainly question the prevalence of the custom itself. Professor Meenakshi Jain has written a tome on the subject, and other books exist too. It is interesting however to revisit some of the so called narratives to understand just how frequent or how extensive it really was. Banning something that was neither widespread in geography or in demography seemed a great case being built up to promote India as a backward, barbaric civilization - that is a near certainty that needs not much evidence to prove. Let me in that case also quote an interesting anecdote recorded by a British traveller G T Vigne, while travelling across the hill regions of North and North west India.

While in his transition through the state of Mandi and his stay at the durbar of Raja Balbir Sen in 1839, the munshi of Vigne came up to him one day and informed him about an act of Sati that was going to take place in the city of Mandi, and that her cavalcade was going to pass by the gate of Vigne’s residence. A procession was following the lady, as Vigne noted, with various deities being called upon including Lord Jagannath. The woman was in a drugged condition, she was aware enough, and interestingly, in Vigne’s words:

“She was not, however, so insensible, to what was passing as to be inattentive to two persons who were stooping before her, and were evidently imploring her blessing…….She was presented at various intervals with a plate of moist red colour, in which saffron was no doubt an ingredient, and into this she dipped the ends of her fingers, and then impressed them on the shoulders of the persons who stooped before her in order to be thus marked.”

Vigne goes on to say a few things that reinforce arguments made by Professor Jain and others in recent times. Vigne had asked Raja Balbir Sen to interfere; however, he had been politely declined, and the Raja later called him into an audience to explain the activity. In the words of Vigne again:

“He assured me that it would be impossible to stop them, and that every entreaty was always used to persuade the woman not to burn herself; that presents to a large amount were always offered with the same intention, but were never of any use. It is, I believe, usual to do so, but it has no effect,—at Mundi at least, but that of enhancing the merit of the Sati, who generally turns a deaf ear to all promises and expostulations. The woman became a Sati when she crossed the threshold of her door, and would, most probably (so I was told), have been put to death by her relations had she afterwards retreated.”

Moreover, Vigne also points out that the woman and her deceased husband were essentially Mandiyal Rajputs, thereby acknowledging the fact that the practice was essentially prominent among certain castes. As evidence, he referred to the barselas, or memorial stones marking the funeral of the kings of Mandi, where there are marks of women being sacrificed, which can still be seen in Mandi. He also noted that at the time of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s death, only seven of his wives committed Sati at his pyre, whereas he had certainly many more alive at the time. This again points to the fact that it was not necessarily an enforced custom, and was a practice that was rare in nature.

Let me finish this short piece by pointing out another interesting snippet from Vigne’s book about divided opinions within the Hindus of the time, that should make things complicated:


“The arguments used by different authorities in favour of, or against, the necessity of the sacrifice, are numerous and conflicting. Vyasu.......the chronicler of the Yadus, is the great advocate for female sacrifices; for he, in the Mahabharat...pronounces the expiation perfect. But Menu, in his Institutes, inculcates no such doctrine; and, although the state of widowhood he recommends might be deemed onerous by the fair sex of the West, it would be considered little hardship in the East.”



You can see the barselas in the royal cemetery in Ram Nagar, Mandi, as has been beautifully captured by the blog called The Off: About Best Himalayan Adventures (TO ABHA) at this link. This is one of the few links describing the barselas well that I have come across while writing this piece.


Reference:

Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo: The Countries Adjoining the Mountain Course of the Indus And the Himalaya, North of the Panjab by G T Vigne, Esq. F.G.S., LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1842.