Dead Women Tell No Tales: Issues of Female Subjectivity, Subaltern Agency and Tradition in
Colonial and Post-Colonial Writings on Widow Immolation in India
Author(s): Ania Loomba
Reviewed work(s):
Source: History Workshop, No. 36, Colonial and Post-Colonial History (Autumn, 1993), pp.
209-227
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4289259 .
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CRITIQUE
Dead Women Tell No Tales: Issues of
Female Subjectivity, SubalternAgency
and Traditionin Colonial and Postcolonial Writingson Widow Immolation
in India
by Ania Loomba
Sati has been a focal point not only for the colonial gaze on India, but also for recent
work on post-coloniality and the female subject, for nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Indian discourses about tradition, Indian culture and femininity, and, most
crucially, for the women's movement in India.1 Reading these various discourses
against each other and in the context of the specific cultural moments and
inter-cultural tensions in which they are produced is often a frustrating task because
of the astounding circularity of language, arguments and even images that marks
discussions on sati from the late eighteenth century till today. This circularity has
sometimes been used to indicate the enormous shaping power of a colonial past on
contemporary Indian society, or 'to question', as Lata Mani puts it, 'the "post" in
"post-colonial"'.2 While such an emphasis has been useful in indicating the continued
economic, cultural and epistemological hegemony of the West, and salutary in
questioning Eurocentric intellectual paradigms, it has also contributed to a lack of
focus on the crucial shifts from colonial to post-colonial governance and culture. To
isolate the study of colonialism from that of its later evolution is to deflect attention
from the narratives of nationalism, communalism and religious fundamentalism
which are the crucibles within which gender, class, caste, or even neo-colonialism
function today.3
Widow immolation is one of the most spectacular forms of patriarchal violence;
each burning was and is highly variable, and is both produced by and helps to validate
and circulate other ideologies that strengthen the oppression of women. But for the
most part, representations of sati have tended to homogenize the burnings and to
isolate them from the specific social, economic and ideological fabric in which they
are embedded. Thus the spectacularity of widow immolation lends itself to a double
violence: we are invited to view sati as a unique, transhistorical, transgeographic
category and to see the burnt widow as a woman with special powers to curse or bless,
as one who feels no pain, and one who will be rewarded with everlasting
extra-terrestrial marital bliss. She is marked off from all other women by her will;
thus her desire, her 'decisions' are to be revered by the community even as theirs are
consistently erased. Paradoxically but necessarily, this process also casts the burning
widow as a sign of normative femininity: in a diverse body of work, she becomes the
privileged signifier of either the devoted and chaste, or the oppressed and victimized
Indian (or sometimes even 'third world') woman.
In this essay, I will attempt to locate, within the apparent repetitions of
History Workshop Journal Issue 36
( History Workshop Journal 1993
210
History Workshop Journal
arguments,the differencesin whatis at stakein the three most substantialbodies of
writingson sati:the firstbeingthe colonialdebateon widowimmolation,the second
the work of feministsworkingin the Westernacademy(both diasporicIndiansand
non-Indians),and the thirdis the spate of writingsproducedin Indiafollowingthe
burningof a youngwoman, Roop Kanwar,in the villageof Deorala, Rajasthan,in
October1987.Thesehistoricalandconceptualdifferences,I shallsuggest,arecrucial
to ourreconceptualisingthe burningwidowas neitheran archetypalvictimnora free
agent, andto analysingthe inter-connectionsbetweencolonialismandits aftermath.
In order to trace the roots and trajectories of the different ideologies and
representationsof widowimmolation,I shallmovefreelybetweenthese threesets of
writings.
Despite widespreadreferences to sati, there were surprisinglyfew extended
studiesof it between EdwardThompson'swell-knowncolonialcommentaryon the
subjectpublishedin 1928and the Deorala episode in 1987.4Even now, apartfrom
Lata Mani'swork, the most thought-provokingaccountshave been shorteressays,
althoughseveral book-lengthstudies are now available.5Curiouslytoo, the most
prestigioushistoriansof colonialIndia(eitherBritishor Indian)have not writtenat
any length on the subject, and nor does the influentialrevisionistseries Subaltern
Studiesdeal with it.6There is no conclusiveevidencefor datingthe originsof sati,
althoughRomillaThaparpointsout thattherearegrowingtextualreferencesto it in
the second half of the first milleniumA.D.7 It began as a ritual confinedto the
Kshatriyacaste (composedof rulersand warriors)and was discouragedamongthe
highestcaste of Brahmins.She suggeststhatit provideda heroicfemalecounterpart
to the warrior'sdeath in battle: the argumentwas that the warrior'swidow would
then join himin heaven.The comparisonbetweenthe widowwho burnsherselfand
heroic male deaths has been a recurrentfeature of the discourseon sati from the
earliestcommentstill the presentdayandhasbeen usedto distinguishsatifrommere
suicide:the argumentis thatthe sati, like the warrior,dies positivelyfor something,
instead of negatively to escape a miserable life.8 Such a comparisonobviously
deflects attention from the miserablefate that awaited, and still threatensmost
Indianwidows;it also led to the contentionthatthe heroicsatifeels no painin death.
Thaparsuggestsa correlationbetweenthe riseof satiandthe declineof niyogaor the
practiceof a widowbeingmarriedto herdeadhusband'sbrother;widowimmolation
reducedthe possibilitiesof women marryingotherswithinthe family,or outsiders,
and thus creatingcomplicationsregardinginheritance.In a useful commentaryon
sati, DorothySteinpointsout that it was not uniqueto India:'thereare accountsof
widowsacrificeamongthe Scandinavians,Slavs,Greeks,Egyptians,Chinese,Finns,
Maoriesandsome AmericanIndians'.9Thiswas EdwardThompson'sview too: 'the
rite' he says, 'belongs to a barbaricsubstratumwhich once overlay the world,
includingIndia'.%0
Like several others of his time (notably, for example, Rider
Haggard),Thompsonsubscribesto the idea of a globallysharedand primitivepast
fromwhichEuropehad emergedand fromwhichEnglandcouldliberateIndiatoo.
Thisnotionof satibeinga sortof globalpracticeis also an ideathatrecent'writers
like
Ashis Nandyreturnto, in theirattemptto readwidowimmolationas the resultof [a
universal]male anxietyaboutfemalesexuality.'1
The earliesthistoricalrecordof widow burningis a Greek commentaryon the
deathof a Hindugeneralin a battlewiththe Greeksin 316B.C. The elderof his two
wiveswas not allowedto burnbecauseof 'hercondition'(whichcouldmeanshe was
eitherpregnantor menstruating).The deathof the youngerone is describedin some
Dead Women Tell No Tales
211
detail, especiallyher clothingand her ornaments,and the commentatorconcludes
that she 'ended her life in heroic fashion....
The spectators were moved, some to
pity and some to exuberantpraise.But some of the Greekspresentfoundfaultwith
such customsas savageand inhumane'.12That this firstrecordedcommentincludes
all the dominantingredientsof responsesto sati till today - the fascination,the
horrormingledwith admiration,the voyeurism,the oscillationbetween regarding
the widowas victimor as sovereignagent- is a measureof the representationalstasis
or circularityto whichI earlieralluded.
The growthof colonialenterprisesin Indiashapedthe tone as well as frequencyof
commentsby Europeanson the idea as well as the spectacleof sati. 3 Withincreasing
English involvement, the accountsproliferate;simultaneously,the commentator
becomes enmeshedin the scenariohe describes,and the burningwidow herselfis
progressivelypicturedas reachingout to the white manwatchingher: 'I stood close
to her, she observedme attentively,'writesWilliamHodges;`4Mandelsoclaimsthat
she giveshima bracelet;ThomasBoweryreceivessome flowersfromanother'shair.
By the late eighteenth/earlynineteenthcentury,the recurrenttheme of whatSpivak
calls 'whitemen savingbrownwomen from brownmen' has crystallized.'5Legend
hasit thatJobCharnock,the founderof Calcutta,rescuedfromthe flamesa Brahmin
widow and lived with her for 14 years till her death; Europeanfictionfrom Jules
Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days to M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions is
obsessedwithsuchrescues.Satibecame,as is well known,simultaneouslythe moral
justificationfor empireand an ideal of female devotion. KatherineMayo'sMother
Indiahad blamedall of India'sills on the Indianmale's 'mannerof gettinginto the
worldandhis sex-lifethenceforward'.London'sNew StatesmanandNationsaidthat
the book demonstrated'the filthypersonalhabitsof even the most highlyeducated
classesin India- which,like the denigrationof Hinduwomen, are unequalledeven
amongthe most primitiveAfricanor Australiansavages'.'6Sati was emblematicof
this denigration;at the same time, even the harshestcolonial criticismincludeda
sneaking admirationfor the sati as the ideal wife who represented'the wholly
admirablesentimentandtheory,thatthe unionof manandwomanis lifelongandthe
one permanentthing in the world'.'7The idealisationof the burningwidow, of
course, goes back muchearlier:Montaigne,for example,in his essay, 'Of Virtue',
writesat lengthaboutthe resolutewidow,'witha gaycountenance,as if going, as she
says, to sleep with her husband'.'8JohnMaster'snovel aboutthe thuggeecult, The
Deceivers, is particularlyinterestingin this regard- its British hero, who is an
administrator
in a smalldistrictof centralIndia,disguiseshimselfas an Indianmanto
prevent his wife from committing sati. During the course of the story, this
impersonationis transformedinto a psychicdramawherebyhis BritishandChristian
identitiesconflictwith his passionatefascinationwith and seductionby the cult of
thuggeeandits patrongoddess,Kali, so thatasthe end of the novelhe helpsthe same
widowto immolateherself.
These contradictoryresponsesto sati - as a powerfulmale fantasy of female
devotion, and an instance of Hindu barbarism- both fuelled the voyeuristic
fascinationof the colonialgaze andimpelledthe narrativedivision,in the firsthalfof
the colonialdebate on widow immolationin nineteenth-centuryIndia, of satis into
good and bad ones. In the initial years of imperialrule, followingtheir declared
policy of non-interferencewith native religionsand customs, the Britishmade no
efforts to stop the practice, (althoughAlbuquerquehad prohibitedit within the
Portugueseterritoryof Goa in 1510), ostensiblybecauseof theirdeclaredpolicyof
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non-interferencein native customs and religion. The Mughal emperor Akbar
disliked it, and is supposed to have ridden nearly 100 miles to save the Raja of
Jodhpur's daughter-in-lawfrom burning against her will. Edward Thompson
sympathisedwithAkbar'sposition- as a 'foreign'ruler,he could'onlyinsistthatit be
always voluntary'.This was preciselythe nature of the first British intervention:
hence the sanctionedvoluntarysati was separatedfromthe illegalcoercedone, and
boththe idea of [Indian]womanas victim[of Hindubarbarism]andthatof womanas
supremedevotee of man, couldbe maintained.
In 1813 a legislationwas enacted which defined sati as legal if it met certain
criteria, chief among which was that it be a voluntaryact. From then on, the
government'sstrategywassimplyto makeit increasinglydifficultto achievethe state
of legality, hence the age, caste, and the physical state of the 'ideal' sati were
increasinglyregulated.One obviousimplicationhere is thatonce these criteriawere
met, sati could be sanctioned:an implicationthat re-surfacedin the post-Deorala
debatewhen pro-saticommentatorsinsistedon the voluntarystatusof the true sati.
It is relevantto note here that, between 1813and 1816,it is estimatedthat only ten
illegal satis were preventedout of a total of 400 that occurredin the Presidencyof
Bengal.'9
LataMani'sis the most extensivecommentaryon the entirecolonialdebate;she
shows how, prior to the 1813legislation,the colonial administration'generated'a
particularkindof informationaboutthe practiceby extensivelyquestioningpundits
resident at the courts. The pundits were instructedto respond with 'a reply in
In the process,a scripturalsanctionand a religion
conformitywiththe scriptures'.20
traditionwere constructedfor a practice which had been diverse, variable and
uneven. Veena Das reaches a similar conclusion:by annexing the category of
'vyavahara'.or usage to the category of law, she says, 'what may have been
contextual and open to interpretation,or limited to certain castes only, became
frozen as "law"'.21 Hence the British virtuallyorchestratedthe articulationof a
textual traditionand scripturalsanctionfor widow immolation,made punditsthe
spokesmenfor a vast and heterogeneousHindupopulation,andtherebycalcifiedin
new anddangerouswaysthe existinghierarchiesof Hindusociety.Becausethey had
strategicallydivided sati into illegal and legal, involuntaryand voluntaryones,
Britishofficialsweredirectedto be presentat eachburningandtabulateits details,to
see thatno coercionwasused. But converselyofficialswere sometimesreprimanded
for disallowinga legal immolation!22
Following the 1813 legislation, most commentatorsagree, there was a sharp
increasein the numberof satis. From 378 in 1815, it went up to 839 in 1818. This
increasespurredthe movementfor straightforward
abolition;RajaRamMohanRoy
publishedhis first pamphleton the subject, and in Englandthere was a spate of
protests.The finalabolitionin 1829is regardedas a sortof landmarkin the historyof
Indianwomen;commentatorsallot the creditfor it to differentpeople accordingto
theirown ideologicalpositions:hence Thompsonattributesit entirelyto the efforts
of WilliamBentinck,the then GovernorGeneral,as does V. N. Datta;Ashis Nandy
predictablygives Roy pride of place,23and only Lata Mani traces the complex
interpenetrationof interestsin a way that takes into accountthe entirespectrumof
positions on this subject. Comments on the increase of satis in 1818 are also
significant;manyBritishofficialssimplyattributedit to a choleraepidemic.Edward
Thompson,like some others,readit as a signof excessivenativeobedienceto British
law: 'I think there can be no doubt that the sanction of the Governmentwas
213
Dead WomenTell No Tales
sometimes misrepresentedas an order that widows should burn'.24Ashis Nandy
interpretsthe increase as precisely the opposite of this, as a form of subaltern
disobedience:'the rite', he suggests, 'becamepopularin groupsmade psychologically marginal by their exposure to Western impact .
.
. the opposition to sati
constituted... a threatto them. In theirdesperatedefenceof the ritetheywere also
tryingto defend their traditionalself-esteem'.25Certainstatisticsseem to support
such a conclusion:for example, a modificationof the legislationin 1817 forbade
widowsof the Brahmincasteto commitsatias it wascontraryto the shastras.In 1823,
out of a total of 576 satis, 235 were Brahminwidows.Nandy'sanalysishas also been
contestedon the groundsthat there is no easy correlationbetween this increasein
butit remainsimportant
widowburningandthe 'marginalisedgroups'he identifies,26
for at least two reasons.
First, by arguing that the colonial conflict calcified indigenous patriarchal
practices, Nandy's was one of the pioneering attempts to trace the multiple
connectionsbetween colonial power and genderrelations.Laterfeministwork on
BritishIndiahas consideredin greaterdepth and with more sophisticationhow the
colonial disenfranchisementof Indian men led to a situation whereby women
became the grounds and signs for the colonial struggle. Indian nationalismsof
differentshadesproducedtheirown versionsof the good Hinduwife, each of which
becameemblematicof Indian-nessandtradition,a signof rebellionagainstcolonial
authorityand a symbolof the vision of the future.27In the process, women'sown
questioning of patriarchalauthority - both indigenous and colonial - were
specificallymarginalised.While writingson sati have been a fruitfulground for
drawingattention to the ways in which women become signifiersof the colonial
conflict(and here Lata Mani providedthe most detailed account), they have not
sufficientlyprobedwhythe signsacquiredthe meaningstheydidforbothIndiansand
the British,or consideredthe processwherebythe divisionsbetweenmasculineand
feminine,publicandprivate,activeandpassive,colonialandnativecameto acquire
overlappingmeanings.Suchquestionsarenecessaryif one is not to assumethatthese
termscarryuniversaland alwaysalreadyconstitutedmeanings.Here otherworkon
women in colonial India has been more nuanced. Rosalind O'Hanlon'sessay on
widowsin WesternIndia, for example, suggeststhat the colonialstate severed'the
sphere of Hindu social relations and ritual practice from their pre-colonial
incorporationwithinthe realmof politicsand state structure,and . .. designate[d]
them as mattersof purely"social"concern';this 'processwas couchedin termsof a
version of contemporaryWestern distinctionsbetween domains of public and
private'andcarried
a colonial invitationto the exercise of new kinds of power. It offered public
participationin the moral and judicial discourses,many of the most intensely
contested of which concerned women, through which a generalized Hindu
traditionwas defined, represented and made the basis not only of colonial
legislation,but, in differentforms, of contemporarynationalists'own effortsto
constructa culturalequivalentfor Indiaas a politicalentity . . . The employment
of woman as a sign thus instituted a strong naturalizingparallelismin this
particularformof detachedauthority:authorityover a traditionwhose essential
qualitieswere characterizedin termsof a feminine, and authorityto pronounce
upon and sometimesto determinein very real ways what should be the proper
statusandformsof freedomallowedto Hinduwomen.28
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Suchstudiescan be readas fleshingout andcritiquingthe skeletalconnectionsmade
by Nandy. The second outcome of his work has not been as felicitous;it is worth
tracingits somewhatinvolvedtrajectoryherebecauseit warnsagainstthe dangersof
easy explanationsof indigenouspatriarchiesas merelyresponsesto colonialpower
and also becauseit encodes the problems- of separatingcolonialand post-colonial
histories,and of recoveringand theorizingfemale agency- with whichI beganthis
essay.
In 1987, followingthe burningof 25 year old Roop Kanwarin Deorala, Nandy
beganto writein termsof a divisionbetween'the idea of sati in mythicaltimes and
sati in historicaltime, betweensati as event or ghatanaandsati as systemor pratha,
betweenan authenticsati andan inauthenticone, betweenthose who only respectit
and those who organise it in our time', valorizing the first in each of these
oppositions.29As he acknowledged,these distinctionsarenot his contributionto the
debate;they are, we can see, a curiousmixtureof those madeby the Britishandthe
ones offered by Indianmen of differentpoliticalpersuasions,reformersas well as
advocatesof sati. Nandyevoked them, in the chargedpost-Deoralaatmosphere,to
defendwhat he calledthe abilityof 'the traditionalIndian'to discriminatebetween
the ideal of the authenticsati andits corruptcontemporarymanifestations.30
Nandyhad, as I havepointedout, been one of the pioneersof historicisingsati, of
analysingsati as a formof specifiablepoliticaleconomicsocial andpsychiccultures.
This, ironically,was the thrustof feministwritingsfollowingthe Deoralaepisodeof
1987. Feministsinsistedthat the death of Roop Kanwarshouldbe viewed not as a
remnantof a feudalpastbut as an expressionof distinctlymoderneconomiesandthe
contemporarydenigrationof women.Theypointedout thathuge amountsof money
had been made followingthe murderof Roop Kanwarby those who turnedthe sati
into a commercialspectacleinvolvinghundredsof thousandsof people; that Roop
Kanwarwas an educatedgirl, not a simple embodimentof ruralfemininity(a fact
that pro-satilobbyistsused to arguethat it was a case of 'free choice');and that the
leadersof the pro-satimovement'constitutea powerfulregionalelite' who hadmuch
to gainfromconstructingsati anewas emblematicof their'tradition'."
Thus,whatwas essentiallya women'srightsissue hadbeen distortedinto an issue
of 'tradition'versus 'modernity',a struggleof the religiousmajorityagainstan
irreligiousminority.32
Now, these are almostexactlythe termsin whichLataMani,in essayswrittenbefore
the Deoralaincident,haddescribedthe colonialdiscourseon the subject.Brilliantly
unravellingthe rhetoricaland ideological overlaps between seemingly opposed
viewsin the debatesbetweenthe colonialgovernment,the nationalistreformersand
the indigenouspro-satilobby, Mani points out that 'the entire issue was debated
within the frameworkof the scriptures'.33
Even Indian reformers,epitomisedby
Raja Ram MohanRoy, arguedagainstsati by contendingthat it had no scriptural
sanction and that it was custom and not the Hindu religionthat had fostered the
practice.
At firstglance,then, it seemsthatlittlehaschangedbetweenthe colonialsituation
and 1987.But Nandy'sown analyticalmoves- towardssubscribingto a divisionthat
he had earlier analysed,and invokingan ideal of mythicalsati that representsan
Indiantradition,a traditionthathe hadearlierseen as constructedout of the tensions
of colonialism- help us identifythe definitivecontextualshifts. His conflationof
Dead WomenTellNo Tales
215
'respect' for an ideal sati with rural India, native authenticityand the canny
cultural instincts of the average Indian clearly positions him as a sophisticated
exampleof the nativismwhich GayatriSpivakhas repeatedlytargetedas a major
pitfallfor the post-colonialintellectual.It is significant that such nativism,like its
earlier counterparts,bases itself on a posited notion of an ideal woman or
femininity.
Significantlytoo, the targetof Nandy'sangertoday is not the colonialstate but
Indian feminists who are seen as deculturalised,inauthentic, westernised and
alienated from an appreciationof their own culture, which their village sisters
embodyin the act of immolatingthemselves.Here Nandyhas a wide rangeof allies:
MarkTully, BBC's veterancorrespondentin New Delhi, endorsedsuch a view. In
his essay on the Deorala sati, he pitted the 'Committee for the Protection of
Religion', under whose banner '100,000 Rajputs assembled in Jaipur to hear
speeches calling on them to defend Hinduism against the Westernized elite,
'independentwomen', urban'journalists- as fundamentalistin their blind faith in
modernityas the youngRajputswere in theirbeliefs', against'academics'and most
significantly,against'those feministswho jumpedat the opportunitythe tragedyof
Deorala gave to promote their views on women's rights'.34Americansociologist
PatrickHarrigantoo launchedhis defence.of sati on the shouldersof an attackon
westernisedfeministswhowereout of touch,he claimed,withthe sentimentsof their
ruralsisters,who in turnwere emblematicof 'BharatMata'or MotherIndia.3sThe
conservativeHindipressspokein similarterms,as did variouspunditsandsadhus.36
All of them zeroed in on 'azadkism ki auratein'[types of free woman]and pitted
them against archetypes of the good Hindu woman and of the present-day
average/authenticruralwoman. The Rajputlobby was vociferousin condemning
womenin trousersandwithshorthairwhowere nowgoingto tell 'their'womenwhat
not to do. As we can see, the divisionbetweenthe west and India,crassmaterialism
and spirituality,is angrily and sanctimoniouslyre-workedto guard against the
spectreof organizedwomen'smovements.
Thus, while the post-Deoraladebate seems cast entirely in the mould of the
tradition/modernity
dichotomyMani speaks of, the distinctivelynew factor is the
women's movement, a movement which has 'been the single most important
factor in changingthe terms of the public debate on issues like rape, domestic
violence, women's employment [etc] .
.
. if it were not for this, the incident at
Deorala would not have been a nationalissue'.37We can unravel,via these overlaps between intellectual, religious, journalistic and other patriarchs,what it
means for a writer like Nandy to celebrate the idea of sati at a time when, not
only had a widow been immolated,but the ideologies behind female immolation
were being re-invoked and aggressivelyre-circulated.The ire against feminists
makesstrangebedfellows.
While discussionsof the textualtraditionfiguredafter Deorala, the questionof
the widow'schoicewas at the core of all debates.The idea of the voluntarysatias an
expressionof a peculiarlyIndianmodeof femininitywasrepeatedad nauseamby the
pro-satilobby- contradictorilyinvokedboth via Roop Kanwar'smoderneducation
aswell as viahersupposeddistancefromothereducatedIndianwomen.The struggle
now was clearlyover femalevolition- withfeministsclaimingthatthe entirenotion
of a voluntarysati is retrogressiveandthe pro-satilobbyinsistingon the freedomof
choice. This bringsus to the frustratingcore of past and presentrepresentationsof,
and debatesover, sati.
History Workshop Journal
216
Female Subjectivityand the Subjectof Sati
For the Indianwomanto be cast as MotherIndia and to serve a wide spectrumof
politicalinterestsin colonialtimes, she had to be rewrittenas more-than-victim.As
an agentof Hindutradition,or nationalistinterests,a certainamountof volition,and
even desirehad to be attributedto her. This rewritingis evidentin the dramaof sati
abolition.
Two petitions were put forwardby the Indian pro-sati lobby protestingthe
abolitionin 1828, one to the King and the second to WilliamBentinck, the then
Governor-General.In both a death-wishon the part of the loving, faithfulwidow
becomesthe emblemof Hinduresistanceto coloniallaw:
And on whatgroundscan strangersto ourFaith,even thoughRulers,assumethe
rightto determinethat the option which an Holy Religion thus expresslygives,
shall exist no longer, and what right can they have to choose for us? .
.
. [The
widow is] the Devotee who, superior to this world, and fitted for heaven,
voluntarilydies, aftereverymeanswhichfilialaffectionandhumanconsideration
have vainly employed in persuasion....
the Devotee never can be persuaded
fromher purpose,and if preventedby force or authorityshe only survivesa few
days. [Thus abolition is] an unjust and intolerant dictation in matters of
conscience.38
Here, the desireof the Hinduwife for her husbandis accordeda recognitionthat is
otherwiseentirelyabsentin patriarchaldiscourses.Ironicallybuthardlysurprisingly,
thisrecognitionof desireandof subjectivity,andof agency,leadsto the annihilation
of the woman;hence female desire is allowedbut a spectacularmoment, a swan's
song that announcesher ceasingto be.39
After the Deorala incident,it was not only the pro-satilobby that invoked the
widow'sdesire. The new legislationson sati introducedby the IndianGovernment
and the RajasthanStateGovernment,both of whichwere avowedlyconcernedwith
effectivelyeradicatingwidowimmolationas well as its 'glorification',implicitlycast
the womanherselfas agentof the crime.The Commissionof Sati (Prevention)Act,
1987,states:
whoeverattemptsto commitsati and does any act towardsthe commissionshall
be punishablewith imprisonmentfor a termwhichshallbe not less thanone year
butwhichmayextendto fiveyearsandshallalsobe liableto a finewhichshallnot
be less than five thousandrupeesbut whichmay also extendto twentythousand
rupees.
The widowwho survivesis to be punishedby a prisonsentenceof one to five years.
As VasudhaDhagamwar,a feministlegal expertpointed out, the relevantclauses
'do not distinguishbetweenvoluntaryandinvoluntarysati. But in effecttheytreatall
sati as voluntary.That is why the womanis punishedand that is why those who kill
her are punishedfor abetmentand not for murder'.' The invocationof femalewill
here can be seen to workagainstthe womanherself.
LataMani'scentralargumenthas been thatthe entirecolonialdebateon satiwas
concernedwith re-definingtraditionandmodernity,that 'whatwas at stakewas not
women but tradition' (p. 118) and that women 'become sites on which various
Dead WomenTell No Tales
217
versionsof scripture/tradition/law
are elaboratedand contested'(115).Hence, she
argues, nowhere is the sati herself a subject of the debate, and nowhere is her
subjectivity represented. Thus, we learn little or nothing about the widows
themselves,or theirinteriority,or in fact of theirpain, even fromreformerssuchas
Ram MohatiRoy.
Mani'sconclusionshaveset the termsfor subsequentworkon sati, especiallythat
which is concerned with the relationshipbetween gender and colonialism. The
criticalrecoveryof the sati'sconsciousnessand subjectivityhas become a recurrent
but fraughtproject,consonantwiththe recentpreoccupationin writingson colonial
discoursein generaland SouthAsian historiographyin particularwiththe agencyof
the oppressed subject.4"Anand Yang laments the lack of focus on the satis
themselvesin existingwritings,butlargelyrepeatsstatisticaldataaboutthe womens'
age, caste andregion.42GayatriSpivak,in at least threeinfluentialessays,readsthe
absenceof women'svoicesin the colonialdebateas representativeof the difficultyof
recovering subject positions in general and as indicative of the violence of
colonialismandof indigenouspatriarchyin particular:the discourseson satiareread
as proofthat'thereis no spacefromwherethe subaltern[sexed]subjectcanspeak'.43
The silence of Spivak'ssubalternis both a critiqueand, more disturbingly,an
echo of a notoriouslyrecurrenttheme in the writingsof Britishcolonialists,Indian
nationalists, Hindu orthodoxy, and indeed British feminists of the nineteenth
century.The silence of Indianwomen enabledBritishfeministsto claima speaking
part for themselves." In an editorial comment in The Storm-bellof June 1898,
JosephineButlercommentedthatIndianwomenwere
indeed between the upper and nether millstone, helpless, voiceless, hopeless.
Theirhelplessnessappealsto the heart, in somewhatthe same way in whichthe
helplessnessand sufferingof a dumbanimaldoes, underthe knifeof a vivisector.
Somewhere,halfwaybetweenthe MartyrSaintsandthe tortured'friendof man',
the noble dog, stand, it seems to me, these pitifulIndianwomen, girls,children,
as manyof them are. They have not even the smallpowerof resistancewhichthe
westernwomanmayhave ... 45
Butler and others could thus claimthe necessityof representingtheir mute sisters,
and hence legitimize themselves as 'the imperialauthoritieson "Indianwomanhood"'.' Although she contests precisely the legacy of such politics, it is not
surprisingthatthe silenceof Spivak'ssubalternis a pre-conditionfor herownproject
of representation.She writes:
As SarahKofmanhas shown, the deep ambiguityof Freud'suse of women as a
scapegoatis a reaction-formationto an initial and continuingdesire to give the
hysterica voice, to transformher into the subject of hysteria.The masculistimperialistideological formationthat shaped that desire into 'the daughter's
seduction' is part of the same formationthat constructsthe monolithic'third
world woman'. . . . Thus, when confronted with the questions, Can the subaltern
speak?andCanthe subaltern(as woman)speak?,oureffortsto give the subaltern
a voice in historywill be doublyopen to the dangersrunby Freud'sdiscourse.47
Spivak contends that both Foucault and the Subalternschool of South Asian
historianssuccumbto these dangersin tryingto recoverthe voice of the marginalised
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subject. In both cases the idea of a sovereign subject creeps back and undercuts their
own concerns - in the case of Foucault, s/he is imperialist, in the case of the subaltern
historians, a nativist. Spivak thus signals the necessity of adapting the Gramscian
maxim - 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will' - by combining a
philosophical scepticism about recovering any subaltern agency with a political
commitment to making visible the positioning of the marginalised. Thus she makes
her case for the validity of the representation of the subaltern by the post-colonial
feminist intellectual:
The subaltern cannot speak. There is no virtue in global laundry lists with
'woman' as a pious item. Representation has not withered away. The female
intellectual as intellectual has a circumscribed task which she must not disown
with a flourish.48
The intellectual whom Spivak here calls to arms is almost by definition the Indian
woman academic working in the metropolitan academy, a woman who must struggle
against the neo-colonial impulses of that space without succumbing to the nostalgic
gestures of her counterpart in the third world.
It is no accident that such a project focuses on the immolated widow, who, in
Spivak's work, becomes the ground for formulating a critique of colonialism, of
indigenous patriarchy, of contemporary critical and cultural theories and of
revisionist historiographies. She provides the most suitable language for talking
about silence: she is, after all, a conceptual and social category that comes into being
only when the subject dies. The to-be-sati is merely a widow, the sati is by definition a
silenced subject. Caught between a notion of representation that comes too easily, as
in the case of nineteenth-century British feminists, and another that recognises its
contingencies and difficulties, like Spivak's, the Indian woman remains silent: she
still 'cannot speak'. An insistence on subaltern silence is disquieting for those who
are engaged in precisely the task of recovering such voices; it can be linked to
Spivak's curious detachment, in these essays, from the specificities of post-colonial
politics. But her argument for the validity, indeed necessity, of representation
ironically takes on, as I hope to show below, a specially urgent resonance in the very
arena she does not address: the struggles of third world feminists in their own
countries, and in this case, India.
From the earliest commentaries onwards, only two options are offered for the
dead widow: she either wanted to die or was forced to. Each option marks a dead end
for feminist investigations. In the first case, we are dangerously close to the 'radiant
heroism' of the willing widow which is suggested by both British and Indian male
commentators. In the second case, fears have been voiced that if we refuse to 'grant
sati the dubious status of existential suicide' we will find ourselves 'in another bind,
that of viewing the sati as inexorably a victim and thereby emptying her subjectivity
of any function or agency'.49Edward Thompson, in a section called 'The Psychology
of the "Satis"' easily combined both ideas:
I had intended to try and examine this; but the truth is, it has ceased to be a puzzle
to me. Obviously the mental state of the women who were sacrificed varied
infinitely, as that of martyrs for religion or patriotism. The Rajput lady who died
when a foe girdled her city and her whole sex was swept away, or who ascended
Dead Women Tell No Tales
219
the pyre with her lord newly slain in battle, was in a mood that had no contact or
resemblance with the mood of the cowed and unwilling slave-girl.50
In those essays where Lata Mani uncovers the common ground on which dichotomies
between willing and unwilling satis were constructed, she declares that she herself is
'not concerned here with what the practice of sati meant to those who undertook it',
suggesting in a footnote that we turn to Ashis Nandy's essay, which, however, does
not concern itself at all with the points of view of satis or would-be satis.5' It seems to
me that, until very recently, Mani was unable to proceed significantly beyond
Edward Thompson's dichotomies.52 Thompson, to give credit where it is,due, speaks
at length about how societies construct desire - whether this be manifested as the
devotion of the sati or in the patriotism of soldiers. In fact, in the aftermath of
Deorala, Thompson's rhetoric sounded less offensive than that of the pro-sati lobby
which, as I earlier mentioned, harped in different ways about the free-will of the
authentic sati. In the context where feminist-bashing poised itself precisely on the
question of free-will, formulations such as Lata Mani's that 'the volition of some
widows can justifiably be seen as equal to the resistance of others' had a rather
disturbing resonance.53 Feminists in India, I should note here, have repeatedly
stressed that 'there is no such thing as a voluntary sati'.54
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan attempts to break this impasse by drawing on Elaine
Scarry's work on the 'radical subjectivity' of pain.55 Arguing that neither colonial
commentators, nor Indian reformers, nor even the feminist work on sati have
sufficiently focused on the pain of the dying woman, and showing also how the
pro-sati lobby has always insisted that the sati feels none, Sunder Rajan claims that
'an inherent resistance to pain is what impels the individual or collective suffering
subject towards freedom. It is therefore as one who acts/reacts, rather than as one
who invites assistance, that one must regard the subject in pain' (p. 9). A recent essay
by Lata Mani can be read as in dialogue with Sunder Rajan and other feminists
working in India.56Mani now mines colonial eyewitness accounts of widow burning
for signs of the struggles and vacillations of potential satis and shows how pain may
impel a woman to try to escape the pyre, contrary to her own earlier resolution to die.
She thereby moves beyond her earlier notion of 'complex subjectivity' for satis,
which had seemed to merely oscillate between various static states of being.
Significantly, she now clearly states that there is no such thing as a voluntary sati and
is anxious, too, that we avoid 'globalizing the local . . . granting colonialism more
power than it achieved'. She wants also to 'make sure that the things in my work that
speak to the context of the U.S. are not . . . counter-productive in the struggle of
progressives in India's7. Such a note is rare in work on colonial discourse within the
Western academy and it leads Lata Mani to a crucial reformulation:
The question 'can the subaltern speak?' then, is better posed as a series of
questions: Which groups constitute the subalterns in any text? What is their
relationship to each other? How can they be heard to be speaking or not speaking
in a given set of materials? With what effects? Rephrasing the question in this way
enables us to retain Spivak's insight regarding the positioning of women in
colonial discourse without conceding to colonial discourse what it, in fact, did not
achieve - the erasure of women.58
Let me attempt to answer these questions by returning to the question of the
subaltern's experience and her pain as they figure in Sunder Raj an's essay, which
220
History Workshop Journal
searchesthe post-colonialdiscourseon sati for representationsof the widow'spain.
Analysingthe law, the media,feministanalyses,andthe Indianwomen'smovement,
she finds that the pain of the sati is represented only in 'forms of agitprop
representationsin theater,filmandposters'whichbring'us closerto the "reality"of
sati than does eitherthe liberaldiscoursedenouncingit or the popularand religious
discourseglorifyingit'(p. 16). It is significant,I think,thatanessaywhichbeginswith
aninquiryintosubjectivityandthe individualsubjectendsupwithwhatin factis one of
themostsuccintaccountsof thepoliticalsituationaftertheDeoralasati.SunderRajan
discusseshowthe Indianmediaandotherswritingonthe Deoralaincidentpersistently
attemptedto re-constructthe subjectivityof Roop Kanwar,and shows how the
assumptionthatthe 'answerto sucha complexmysteryis to be soughtin knowingthe
satiherself,leadsalltoo oftento a closureof analysis,herdeathcreatinga conditionof
definitionalunknowability'
. Sheherselfisforcedto conclude'thatanexclusivefocus
on choice and motivation in constructingthe subjectivityof the sati in some
representationsleadseitherto mystificationorto cognitiveclosure'.I saysheis 'forced
to conclude'because SunderRajan does not drawout the implicationsof her own
work.Whyisit thataprojectwhichseeksto unravelsubjectivityendsupbydescribing,
and by valorising(albeitsomewhatuneasily)the representationof sati in agit-prop
postersand by socialmovements?
Even thoughI findher use of the subject-in-painmodelsomewhatproblematic,I
think Sunder Rajan's essay is crucial in implicitlymoving towards a collective
subjectivityof agents- in this case this wouldnot be a collectivityof satisor even of
widowsbut ratherof huge, if not all, sectionsof-Indianwomenwho sufferfromthe
consequencesof the ideologyof sati. I wouldliketo suggestthat'thesubaltern''inthe
text of sati', if we must locate one, cannotbe understoodsimplyas the immolated
widow.Thesatiisproducedbyandfunctionsto recirculateideologieswhichtargetand
seekto positiona largerbodyof women,whoseexperiences,articulationsandsilences
are crucialto understandingthe relationsof power and insubordinationwhich are
centralto any analysisof 'the subaltern'.
It is entirelytruethatto focuson the painof the burningwidowis at once to draw
attentionto the sharedindifferenceto women on the part of both defendersand
abolitionistsof sati,thenandnow, andto remindourselvesthatsatiis notjusta symbol
anda figuration,but a tortuousexperience.However,recoveringthatexperience,or
locatingagencywithinthe temporaland experientialboundariesof the act of widow
immolationis fraughtwith the dangersof succumbingto its grotesquepowerand its
ideal authenticityat the expenseof understandinghow andwhyit is producedin the
firstplace.JoanScott'scritiqueof 'experience'as a foundationalhistoricalcategoryis
usefulindrawingattentionto thedangersof Scarry'sepistemologyof painevenwhenit
is used as cautiouslyas it is by SunderRajan. Scottpointsout that
experienceworksas a foundationprovidingbotha startingpointanda conclusive
kindof explanation,beyondwhichfewquestionsneedto orcanbe asked.Andyetit
is preciselythe questionsprecluded- questionsaboutdiscourse,differenceand
subjectivity,as well as aboutwhatcountsas experienceandwho getsto makethat
determination- thatwouldenableus to historicizeexperience,to reflectcritically
on the historywe writeaboutit, ratherthanto premiseour historyuponit.'
If we arenot to take eitheridentityor experiencefor granted,we shouldlook at how
they are 'ascribed,resistedor embraced',she writes.
Dead Women Tell No Tales
221
Suchan exercisepointsto severaldirectionsin whichworkon satistillneedsto be
done. Colonial accounts voyeuristicallyfocus on the spectacle of burning and
obsessivelydescribethe beautifulyoung widow as she stripsherselfof clothes and
ornamentsto ascendthe fire.6'An alternativeviewthatexposesthe painandugliness
of the event must also guardagainstsealingit off fromwhat precedesor follows it.
The sati'sexperienceis not limitedto the painof a death:a wholelife is broughtto the
violence of that event, which, if unpacked,can be seen as constructed- not just
crudelyby her fears of a miserablelife as a widow, not just by familialeconomic
designson herproperty,not even by maleanxietiesabouthersexuality,butby social
and ideologicalinteractions,pressuresandconfigurationsthat connecther immediate situationto the politicsof her community,and indeed of the nation, and to the
crucialarticulationsof genderwithineachof them. Some feministworkproducedin
Indiahas been movingtowardsmakingthese connectionsvisible. KumkumSangari
andSudeshVaid have meticulouslydocumentedspecificcasesof sati anddelineated
their 'contexts'.62 Theirwritingscertainlyspeculateon the ideologies that connect
one burningto another, but they also focus on what was at stake in stagingeach
immolation.
To use the word'staging'is problematicin as muchas it mightbe seen to denythe
partplayedby the individualpsycheanddrivesin enablingthe violenceof a sati. Such
a denialis, unfortunately,emblematicof muchfeministworkproducedin India,and
elsewhere I touch upon how it is sometimesproducedby a suspicionof 'western
feministtheory'whichis therebyflattenedout andcastentirelyas 'liberal-humanist'
or as focussingon the psychic,the sexual and the individualat the expense of the
politicaland the social.63This is not the space to discussthe debilitatingeffects of
recastinga dividebetweenthe East andthe West on the groundsof feministstudies,
although it should be obvious that such a dichotomyworks to the detrimentof
nuanced understandingsof gender politics anywhere. There is no necessary
contradictionbetween focusingon the social and the psychic:JacquelineRose has
pointedout that 'ideologyis effective . .. becauseit worksat the most rudimentary
levels of psychicidentityand its drives'.'4In such an understanding,the individual
psycheand the socialexist in a constitutive,traumatic, reciprocity;the violence and
pathologiesof the one beingsymptomaticof the other.In the caseof sati, thisviolent
reciprocityis the reason why 'choice' has no meaning apart from its multiple
determinations.SangariandVaiddo not addressthistraumaticrelation,butthey do
pointout the waysin whichthe widow'sdesireis understoodonlywhenit is expressed
as a willingnessto die. Hence the sati's'power'lies in her will to die and comesinto
being only when she expresses that will.65Thereforeit is visible only when it is
compliantwith dominantideologies.
The 1987 episode of sati was particularlyfrighteningfor feminists in India
preciselybecauseit wasembeddedwithina contextin whichvarioustypesof murders
are constructedas questionsof femalechoice. Whenwives are burntfor dowryit is
allegedthat they committedsuicide.The systematicabortionof female foetuses in
contemporaryIndia,it has been argued,is only a questionof 'choice'on the partof
abortionsalso
the mothers-to-be.The debateover these amniocentesis-determined
highlightsthe dubiousstatusof women'sexperienceand of a feministpoliticsthat
valorises it.' Then there was the case of Shahbano,where the elderly Muslim
divorceepetitionedthe courtsfor alimony,a rightgrantedby the civil code of the
countrybut not by the Muslimpersonal Law. When she won the case, Muslim
fundamentalistsforced her to withdrawher petitionin the name of her religion.It
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History Workshop Journal
was then argued that women's groups had no right to petition furthersince the
individualwoman had made her choice. These groups, however, continued to
'represent', not Shahbano the individual, but the politics of gender and of
communityidentity which the case had thrown up.67All of these issues were
articulated,by communal,nationalistor patriarchalvoices, as issues of female and
individualchoice. In each of them, such a formulationpushedfor a cognitiveand
discursiveclosurethatwouldprotectexistinginequalitiesfor women, or createnew
ones. And in each case, feministshad to insist on their right to representother
women, althoughthey did not speakmerelyfor the subalternas muchas insistthat
much was at stake for women's groups, for largerbodies of women, and for the
Indianpolityat large.68
The debate on sati, then, signals the need to take into account two sorts of
collectivesubjectsin orderto repositionthe individualsubjectwithinthem- the first
is the collectivity of women at large, and the second a politically organised
collectivityof women. The firstwouldhighlightthat, despiteits spectacularnature,
the sati is not an isolatedevent;the secondwouldindicatethe waysin whichfemale
agency is wrought out of precariouslyachieved political intervention. Taken
together,the two collectivitiesdo not seek to bypass,devalueor erasethe suffering,
the pain or the determinationsof the individualsubject.They do, however,extend
Spivak'snotion of representation:the 'truth'aboutRoop Kanwaris not exclusively
or best representedby the post-colonialfeministintellectual,but by an intersection
of the two collectivitiesmentionedabove. In the post-Deoraladebates, statements
by ruralwomen showedthat they often believed in sati as a possibilityeven as they
questionedthatRoop Kanwarwasa 'true'sati. But at the sametime, theyquestioned
various aspects of women's oppression in India, and showed an awarenessof
women'smovementseven whenthese had not touchedtheirown lives.69
Such an exercise, of listeningto otherwomen'svoices to positionthe individual
sati, andof detailingthe individualcircumstancesandnuancesof eachimmolation,is
obviouslyeasierto attemptin the presentcontext. But I wantto suggesthere that if
we look back,fromthe vantagepointof a contemporarywidespreadbacklashagainst
the women'smovement,at the bedfellowsof the colonialcontroversy,andfindthat
women are somehow erased there, we should not simplysuppose that they were
merelythe groundson whichotherconcernswere articulated.We maymodifyLata
Mani'sconclusionsto suggestthatwomenwere, thenas now, the targetsaswell as the
groundsof the debatesover tradition.
This, however, calls for us to suppose a presence which atfirst cannot be found, an
exercisethat Spivakcriticallyendorsesin the case of the subalternschool of Indian
historians.If womenareandhavealwaysbeen at stake,we mustlook for them, both
withindiscourseswhich seek to erase their self-representationand elsewhere.The
writingsof womenwho workedalongside,withinor in oppositionto the nationalist
movementsare increasinglybecomingavailablefor feministscholarsandinvaluable
in understandingwhat was at stake in nineteenth-centurywidow immolations.70
Thesewritingshelpus understandthatthe debateovertraditionalandmodernitydid
not merelyuse womanas a 'site', but specificallytargetedthose who challengedor
critiquedthe patriarchalunderpinningsof nationalistdiscourses.The morefeminist
researchuncoversthese hithertohiddenand erasedvoices, the clearerit becomes
thatthe precursorsof today'sfeminists,as individualsandas a potentialcollectivity,
constituteda threatandwere thus at least partiallythe targetof earlierrewritingsof
'tradition'.The bitter lessons of the present resurgenceof communalismin India
Dead WomenTellNo Tales
223
shouldmakethiseasierto understand.Today,Hinducommunalismdoes not simply
resort to the image of a traditional,passivewoman but offers its own versionsof
militantwomanhoodto counterthose producedby feministstruggles.7'Indeed, the
latest ironicmanifestationof this is the fact that the most aggressiveand masculist
face of recent Hindu communalismis embodied by two women leaders, Sadhvi
Rithambaraand Uma Bharati.72Communalismarticulatesitself as both traditional
and modern, and so does nationalism;both traditionand modernityare thus fluid
terms,invokedfreelyto servespecificclassandgenderinterests.
I have been arguingthat we can re-positionthe sati by looking not just at the
widowwho died but at those who survivedto tell the tale. This tale, however,will
only underline that subaltern agency, either at the individuallevel or at the
collective, cannotbe idealisedas pure oppositionto the orderit opposes;it works
bothwithinthatorderanddisplaysits owncontradictions.Finally,identityis notjust
a matter of self-perception.In an article called 'The Plight of Hindu Widows as
Describedby a WidowHerself',whichfirstappearedin TheGospelof All Landsin
April 1889, the writer describesthe misery of a wife following the death of her
husband:
None of her relativeswilltouchher to take her ornamentsoff her body. Thattask
is assignedto threewomenfromthe barbercaste . .. those femalefiendsliterally
jumpall over her andviolentlytear all the ornamentsfromher nose, earsetc. In
that rush, the delicate bones of the nose and ear are sometimes broken.
Sometimes . . . tufts of hair are also plucked off. . . At such times grief crashes
down on the poor woman from all sides . . . there is nothing in our fate but
sufferingfrombirthto death. Whenour husbandsare alive, we are theirslaves;
when they die, our fate is even worse. . . Thousandsof widows die after a
husband'sdeath. But farmorehave to sufferworsefates throughouttheirlives if
they stayalive. Once, a widowwho was a relativeof minedied in frontof me. She
had fallen ill before her husbanddied. When he died, she was so weak that she
could not even be draggedto her husband'scremation.She had a burningfever.
Then her mother-in-lawdraggedher down from the cot onto the groundand
orderedthe servantto pour bucketfulsof cold waterover her. After some eight
hours,she died. But nobodycameto see how she was when she was dyingof the
cold. After she died, however,they startedpraisingher, sayingshe had died for
the love of her husband. . . If all [such]tales are put togetherthey wouldmakea
largebook. The Britishgovernmentput a banon the customof sati, butas a result
of that severalwomen who could have died a cruel but quickdeath when their
husbandsdied now have to face an agonizinglyslow death.73
The widowsin thisnarrativecome close to those constructedby colonialrecordsand
accounts.The speakerherselfoffersa functionalistexplanationof the sati'sdesireto
die. And yet, she herself,a potentialsati, didnot die. In speaking,she revealsnotjust
a tremulousor vacillatingsubjectivitybutan awarenessof the traumaticconstructedness of one's own 'experience'.Identityis both self-constructed,andconstructedfor
us.
To conclude,feministtheoryis still workingout the connectionsbetweensocial
determinationsand individualsubjectivity.The workon sati demonstrateshow the
contexts of utteranceand interventionstill determinewhich of these two will be
stressed, but it also marksa space where a fruitfuldialoguehas begun to emerge.
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Widowimmolationis thusneitherthe burningof the exceptionalwomannorthe sign
of the averageIndianor 'thirdworld'woman;in
of the specialdevotion/victimisation
becoming a vanishingpoint for a theory of female subjectivity,it signals both
worthwhiledirectionsin whichrevisionisthistoriesof Indianwomenandtheoriesof
subalternagencymightmove, andthe problemsthey will encounter.
NOTES
1 Iwouldliketo thankRajeswariSunderRajanandRukunAdvanifortheirgeneroushelp
with materials;NiveditaMenon, PriyamvadaGopal and AndrewParkerfor theirresponses,
andaboveall, SuvirKaulforhis extensivecommentsandhis illuminatingeditorialpencil.I use
the term 'sati', which has itself been the subjectof much debate, for the act as well as the
practiceof widowimmolation,as well as for the womanwho dies. Colonialwritingsspelt it as
'suttee';andrecently,SudeshVaidandKumkumSangari'usethe words"widowimmolation"
to designatethe primaryviolenceandthe word"sati"to indicatethose structuresof belief and
ideologywhichgainconsentfor widowimmolation','Institutions,Beliefs, Ideologies:Widow
Immolationin ContemporaryRajasthan',EconomicandPoliticalWeekly,Vol. XXVI, no. 17,
April27 1991,p. WS-3.'Deadwomentell no tales'in my title refersbothto PamelaPhilipose
andTeesta Setalvad'scasualuse of the phrase('DemystifyingSati', TheIllustratedWeeklyof
India,March13 1988,p. 41) andto the obsessionof the deadwidow'sdesirein discourseson
sati.
2 LataMani,'ContentiousTraditions:The Debateon Satiin ColonialIndia',in Recasting
Womeneditedby KumkumSangariandSudeshVaid, New Delhi, 1989,p. 126n. 97.
3 For an elaborationof this argument,see my 'Overworlding
the "thirdworld"',Oxford
LiteraryReview,3: 1-2, 1991,pp. 164-92.
4 EdwardThompson,Suttee:A Historicaland PhilosophicalEnquiryintotheHinduRite
of Widow-Burning,
1928.
5 See for example,ArvindSharma,Sati,HistoricalandPhenomenological
Essays,Delhi,
1988;VN Datta, Sati:a Historical,Social and PhilosophicalEnquiryinto the Hindu Rite of
WidowBurning,New Delhi, 1988.1 havebeen unableto reviewSati,theBlessingandtheCurse;
TheBurningof Wivesin India,editedby JohnStrattonHawley,New York, 1993.
6 SubalternStudies,Vols 1-8, editedby RanajitGuha,Delhi, 1982-92.
7 RomilaThapar,'TraditionsVersusMisconceptions',in Manushi,no. 42-43, 1987,p. 8.
See alsoher essay, 'In History',in Seminar,no. 342 ('Sati:a symposiumon widowimmolation
andits socialcontexts'),February1988,pp. 14-19.
8 DorothyK. Stein'Womento Burn:Sutteeas a NormativeInstitution',Signs,4: 2, 1978,
arguesthat the differencebetweensatisandwarriorsis the narrownessof the causefor which
the womendie. Feministsin Indiahave, instead,repeatedlystressedthatthe differencelies in
the fact that the groupfromwhichsatis are drawnis marginalisedand oppressed,unlikethe
groupfromwhichsoldiersareproduced.
9 Stein,p. 253.
10 EdwardThompson,p. 26.
11 AshisNandy,'Sati:A NineteenthCenturyTaleof Women,ViolenceandProtest',in At
theEdgeof Psychology:Essaysin Politicsand Culture,Delhi, 1980,pp. 1-31.
12 Quotedby ArvindSharma,pp. 2-3. Thisepisodeis referredto by manycommentators,
includingThompsonandStein.
13 A translationof'M. CaesarFredericke[Federici],Marchantof Venice'in 1558describes
withpuzzlementthe Indianwomenwho 'so wilfullyburnethemselvesagainstnatureand law'
(quoted by Thomas Hahn, 'IndiansEast and West: primitivismand savageryin English
discoverynarrativesof the sixteenth century', The Journal of Medievaland Renaissance
Studies,8: 1, 1978,p. 103.)The (16th-century)JesuitMissionary,de Nobili,wasimpressed'by
the ecstaticdevotionwithwhichmanyof these youngwidowswentto theirdeaths'.
14 Quotedin LataMani, 'CulturalTheory,Colonialtexts:ReadingEyewitnessAccounts
of WidowBurning',in CulturalStudieseditedby LawrenceGrossberg,CaryNelsonandPaula
Treichler,New YorkandLondon,1992,p. 400.
Dead Women Tell No Tales
225
15 GayatriChakravortySpivak,'Canthe SubalternSpeak?'in Marxismand the Interpretationof Culture,editedby CaryNelsonandLawrenceGrossberg,UrbanaandChicago,1988,
p. 297.
16 KatherineMayo, MotherIndia, New York, 1927,p. 22; the reviewis quotedby Rama
JoshiandJoannaLiddle,Daughtersof Independence:Gender,Casteand Classin India, 1986,
p. 31.
17 GeorgeMacmun,TheReligiousandHiddenCultsof India, 1931,p. 174.
18 'Of Virtue', in The CompleteEssaysof Montaigne,translatedby Donald M. Frame,
Stanford,1958,p. 535.
19 VasudhaDhagamwar,'Saint,Victimor Criminal',Seminar,no. 342, Feb. 1988,p. 35.
20 Mani, 'ContentiousTraditions'p. 98. One exampleis worthquotingin detail:
The questionposed to the punditwaswhethersatiwasenjoinedby the scriptualtexts. The
pundit responded that the texts did not enjoin but merely permitted sati in certain
instances.. . Neverthelessbasedon thisresponsethe NizamatAdalatconcludedthat'The
practice,generallyspeaking,beingthusrecognizedandencouragedby the doctrinesof the
Hindoo religion,it appearsevidentthat the coursewhichthe Britishgovernmentshould
follow, accordingto the principleof religioustolerance. . . is to allowthe practicein those
casesin whichit is countenancedby theirreligion;andto preventit in othersin whichit is by
the sameauthorityprohibited(p. 99).
21 Veena Das, 'StrangeResponse', The IllustratedWeeklyof India, February28 1988,
p. 31. See also her 'GenderStudies, Cross-Cultural
Comparisonsand the ColonialOrganizationof Knowledge',BerkshireReview,21 (1986),pp. 58-76.
22 The CalcuttaReviewcommentedthat 'the Governmentandthe SudderCourtwere, in
fact, gettinginto a dilemmaby attemptingto introducejusticeandlaw into whatwas, in itself,
the highest kind of illegality, the most palpable injustice and the most revoltingcruelty'
(Thompson,Suttee,p. 65).
23 Ashis Nandy, 'Sati: A Nineteenth CenturyTale of Women, Violence and Protest',
pp. 1-31.
24 Thompson, Suttee, p. 65. The presence of British officers at the immolationsare
supposedto have 'thrownthe ideas of the Hindoosupon the subjectinto a completestate of
confusion',accordingto one Mr. C. Smith, a second judge of the SudderCourt, '. . . they
conceiveourpowerandourwillto be commensurable'
(pp. 64-65). The ironiesattendantupon
policingsati do not stop there:in 1987,the IndiangovernmentpassedThe Commissionof Sati
(Prevention)Act whichsoughtto intensifythe existingban on sati by outlawingits spectacle:
hencewitnessinga satibecamea potentialabetmentof the crime.Ironically,wherethe British
half-measurenecessitatedthateachsatieventbe policed,watched,observedanddocumented,
the latestact hasled to a paradoxicalsituationwheresurveillanceis criminal;now, as Rajeswari
SunderRajanhas acutelyobserved,to reportsati is to renderoneselfvulnerableto law so that
today,whena womandies, a 'collectiveamnesia'suggeststhat'herdeathneveroccurred','The
Subject of Sati: Pain and Death in the ContemporaryDiscourseon Sati', YaleJournalof
Criticism,3: 2, 1990,p. 13.
25 Nandy,'Sati',p. 7.
26 Anand Yang, 'WhoseSati? WidowBurningin Early 19th CenturyIndia',Journalof
Women'sHistory, pp. 19-21; SanjuktaGupta and RichardGombrich,'Another View of
Widow-Burningand Womanlinessin IndianPublicCulture',Journalof Commonwealth
and
ComparativePolitics 22, 1984, p. 256. But the latter article also endorses the tired (and
potentiallycommunal)claim that the Hindu emphasison chastitywas a consequenceof the
Muslimthreatto the purityof Hinduwomen(pp. 255-56).
27 See for example, Partha Chatterjee, 'The NationalistResolution of the Women's
Question'in RecastingWomen,pp. 233-53.
28 RosalindO'Hanlon, 'Issuesof Widowhoodin ColonialWesternIndia', in Contesting
Power,Resistanceand EverydaySocialRelationsin SouthAsia, editedby DouglasHaynesand
GyanPrakash,Delhi, 1991,p. 77-79.
29 'TheHumanFactor',TheIllustratedWeeklyof India,January17 1988,p. 22.
30 Here NandyclaimedRabindranath
Tagoreas an illustriouspredecessorin severingthe
'idea' of sati from the practice, and also extensivelyreferredto Anand Coomaraswamy's
notoriousdefenseof sati in his influentialbook TheDanceof Shiva.
31 It is significantthatnowthe traditionor culturebeingdefendedby the pro-satilobbywas
226
History Workshop Journal
of sati was stressed.Of course, in this
that of the Rajputs,whereasonce the pan-Indian-ness
instance,the 'Rajput'becameencodedas the essenceof Indian-ness.
32 MadhuKishwarandRuthVanita,'TheBurningof Roop Kanwar',Manushi,no. 42-43,
1987,p. 16. See alsoSudeshVaid, 'ThePoliticsof WidowImmolation',Seminar342, February
1988,pp. 20-23.
33 Mani,'ContentiousTraditions',p. 110.
34 MarkTully,'TheDeoralaSati',in No FullStopsin India,pp. 210-236.
35 'Tyrannyof the Elect? BringingBharatMataUp to Date', Statesman,Delhi edition,
Nov. 5, 1987.
36 For an analysisof some of these positionssee KumkumSangari,'Perpetuatingthe
Myth',Seminarno. 342, Feb. 1988,pp. 24-30.
37 PamelaPhiliposeandTeestaSetalvad,'DemystifyingSati',p. 41.
38 Quotedby Steinin 'Womento Burn',pp. 260-61.
39 In contemporarypro-satidiscourses,the satiis repeatedlyspokenof in termsof herlove
for herhusband,a love whoseeverydayexpressionis subjectionandserviceto himandwhichis
markedby a consistenterasureof the self. All other formsof female desireare, withinsuch
discourses,repellantandabnormal.
40 Dhagamwar,'Saint,Criminalor Victim',p. 38.
41 RosalindO'Hanlon'sessay, 'Recoveringthe Subject:SubalternStudiesandHistoriesof
Resistance in Colonial South Asia', Modern Asian Studies, 22: 1, 1988, pp. 189-224,
perceptivelyreviewsthese materials.
42 Anand Yang, 'Whose Sati?' pp. 8-33 and 'The Many Faces of Sati in The Early
NineteenthCentury',Manushi,no. 42-43, 1987,pp. 26-29.
43 Gayatri ChakravortySpivak, 'Can the SubalternSpeak? Speculationson WidowSacrifice',Wedge,Winter/Spring1985,pp. 120-130,p. 120, and p. 129. The other two essays
are, 'Canthe SubalternSpeak?'in MarxismandtheInterpretation
of Culture,pp. 271-313and
'TheRaniof Sirmur',Historyand Theory,24: 3, 1987,pp. 247-72.
44 AntoinetteM. Burton,'TheWhiteWoman'sBurden,BritishFeministsand"TheIndian
Woman",1865-1915',in WesternWomenand Imperialismedited by NupurChaudhuriand
Margaret Strobel, Bloomington, 1992, pp. 137-157, suggests that feminists in Britain
constructed'the Indianwoman'as a foil againstwhichto guagetheir own progress;for them
empirewasan integralandenablingpartof 'thewomanquestion'(p. 139).See alsoBarbaraN.
Ramusack,'CulturalMissionaries,MaternalImperialists,Feminist Allies, British Women
Activistsin India, 1865-1945'in the samevolume,pp. 119-136.
45 Burton,'TheWhiteWoman'sBurden',p. 144.
46 Ibid., p. 148.
47 Spivak,'Canthe SubalternSpeak?',MarxismandtheInterpretation
of Culture,p. 296.
48 Ibid, 308. See also her 'SubalternStudies:DeconstructingHistoiography'in Subaltern
StudiesIV: Writingson SouthAsianHistoryandSocietyeditedby RanajitGuha,Delhi, 1985.
49 SunderRajan,'TheSubjectof Sati',p. 5.
50 Thompson,Suttee,137-38.
51 Mani,'ContentiousTraditions',p. 92.
52 Mani writes:'It is difficultto know how to interpretthese accounts,for we have no
independentaccessto the mentalor subjectivestates of widowsoutside of these overdeterminedcolonialrepresentationsof them. In any case, the meaningof consentin a patriarchal
contextis hardto assess.Still,it is fairto assumethatthe mentalstatesof widowswerecomplex
and inconsistent.Some widowswere undoubtedlycoerced:the decisionsof otherswouldbe
difficultto reduceto "'force"','ContentiousTraditions'.
53 'ContentiousTraditions',CulturalCritiqueNo. 7, fall 1987, p. 97. This sentencewas,
significantly,droppedin laterversions;Loomba,'Overworlding',
p. 187.
54 See forexample,KumkumSangari,'Thereis no suchthingas voluntarysati', TheTimes
of India,SundayReview, Oct. 25 1987.
55 Elaine Scarry,TheBody in Pain: TheMakingand Unmakingof the World.New York
andOxford,1985.
56 LataMani,'CulturalTheory,ColonialTexts:ReadingEyewitnessAccountsof Widow
Burning, in CulturalStudiesedited by LawrenceGrossberg,Cary Nelson and Paula A.
Treichler,New YorkandLondon,1992,pp. 392-408.
57 Ibid., p. 408. See also Mani'sdiscussionof the differentresonancesof her workin the
US, in India and in Britain in 'MultipleMediations:Feminist Scholarshipin the Age of
MultinationalReception',FeministReview,no. 36, 1989,pp. 24-41.
Dead Women Tell No Tales
227
58 Mani, 'CulturalTheory,ColonialTexts',p. 403.
59 SunderRajan,'TheSubjectof Sati',p. 14.
60 JoanScott, 'Experience',in FeministsTheorizethePoliticaleditedby JudithButlerand
JoanW. Scott,New York andLondon,1992,p. 33.
61 Satis were of course not always or even mostly the nubile young things they are
portrayedas in suchaccounts,as AnandYangandLataManibothindicate.
62 See SudeshVaid and KumkumSangari,'Satiin ModernIndia:A 'Report',Economic
and Political Weekly, 16:31, August 1, 1981, pp. 1284-1288, and 'Institutions,Beliefs,
Ideologies,WidowImmolationin ContemporaryRajasthan',Economicand PoliticalWeekly,
26: 17, April27, 1991,pp. WS-2-WS-18.
63 'The femininemystiqueunveiled', TheIndianExpressSundayMagazine,August25,
1991.
64 Rose, Sexualityin theFieldof Vision,1986,p. 5.
65 The relationshipbetween'will'and'willingness'areworthconsideringin this context.
66 See Nivedita Menon, 'Abortion and the Law: Problemsfor Feminism', Canadian
Journalof Womenand theLaw, 6: 1, 1993,pp. 103-118.
67 The silence of Shahbanodid not stifle the voices of Indianwomen on the subjectof
religion, the state and the female subject. See Zakia Pathakand RajeswariSunderRajan,
'Shahbano'in FeministsTheorizethePolitical,pp. 257-279.
68 'Theirpain from the sati incident',concludedVeena Das 'stemsfrom the mannerin
which they see their own lives as intrinsicallyboundwith the lives of women such as Roop
Kanwar','StrangeResponse',p. 31.
69 See Kavita, Shobha, Shobita, Kanchanand Sharad,'RuralWomenSpeak', Seminar
no. 342, February1988,pp. 40-44.
70 WomenWritingin India, edited by Susie Tharuand K. Lalita,Volume 1, New Delhi,
1991andVolume2, New York, 1993arevaluablerecentresourcesforfeministsworkingin this
area.
71 See Tanika Sarkar, 'The Woman as CommunalSubject', Economic and Political
Weekly,26: 35, August1991,pp. 2057-2067.
72 See Tapan Basu, PradipDatta, Sumit Sarkar,TanikaSarkar,and SambuddhaSen,
KhakiShortsand SaffronFlags:A Critiqueof theHinduRight,New Delhi, 1993.But thisissue
needs deeper analysis,as do the imagesof femininityandfemalemilitancyamongthe Indian
left.
73 WomenWritingin India,pp. 359-63.