Abstract
Recent scholarship on sati has stressed the fact that the ‘problem’ of sati is that the problem extends far beyond and begins far before the act itself. One of the things that lies prior to and post the act is language, yet sati is an act that stands in a curious relationship to language. I will examine the relationship between the physical act of sati and the language that surrounds it: the ‘story’ prior to the act which gives the act its meaning; the act itself which stands in an ironic relationship to the story – I will argue that the act is in fact possible only because it displaces the original story, so that every act of becoming sati presents itself not as a radical act in experience, but as an ‘acting out’ of the original story. It is in this acting out of a displaced story, that the boundary between the physical act and language becomes obscured and the body doing the act begins to occupy a liminal position, as it itself begins to function as a language – a language, which in its aspect of an ‘acting out’ obscures its own act. Lastly, I will consider the implications of the symbolic language of sati for the contemporary woman.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The text used throughout is Srimad Bhagvatam translated by C.L. Goswami (1995). I will refer to it as SB. It must be borne in mind that the ‘act’ under discussion here, too, is available to us only through narrative, that is the story in the SB.
Pativrata literally means devotion to one's husband.
The dates of the Rgveda, Manu Smritis, and Srimad Bhagvatam are approximately thus: Rgveda: prior to 1000 B.C.; Manu Smriti: around the first two centuries A.D.; Srimad Bhagvatam: c. 500 B.C. and A.D. 500 (Thapar, 1996: 30, 121).
Veena Das comments on this phenomenon in her discussion of the Partition Riots of 1947. According to one story, a Hindu woman had tried to kill herself during the riots to prevent herself from falling into the hands of the Muslims. However, death did not come easily to her and she asked her brother to strangle her. When recounting the story to Das, the brother ‘substituted opium for crushed glass and was mute on both the painful death of his sister and his own role in it. Instead he had refashioned the story as one of a beatific sacrificial death in which the sister had voluntarily given up her life in order to uphold the family honour.’ Das goes on to comment, ‘It is clear to me that these crystallized narratives are based upon a culturally accepted code of censorship in which women who ‘betray’ the ideologies of purity and honour are simply obliterated from memory…Such memories are remarkably quiet on women who abandoned their kinsmen or men who welcomed their wives or daughters back despite their knowledge of the rapes and tortures to which their kinswomen had been submitted’ (Das, 1995: 187–88).
The Sanskrit root of the word sati is sat, meaning truth, reality, the good. Sati, the feminine form has come to mean ‘the chaste,’ and has substituted the original referent of god with that of the husband.
When I use the term ‘Hindu religion,’ I mean the dominant Brahmanic practicing of the religion. The term ‘Hindu religion’ includes a broad range of beliefs and practices, and there are several contentious strains within it, which I do not wish to subsume under my use of the term.
I assume that the woman becoming sati had a choice in the matter: between choosing widowhood and self-immolation. The issue at hand is examining the irony of this choice and how crucially the language of choice figures in the language around sati.
Andarmahal literally translates as ‘the inner palace,’ and is similar to the zenana.
I borrow this framing from R. Sunder Rajan's ‘The Subject of Sati: Pain and Death in the contemporary Discourse on Sati’ (Rajan, 1990).
The incident referred to is that of a woman named Roop Kanwar becoming sati in Rajasthan, India in 1987.
References
Bhabha, H.K. (1992) ‘Postcolonial criticism’ in S. Greenblatt and G. Gunn (1992) editors, Redrawing the Boundaries, NY: MLA, 437–463.
Das, V. (1995) Critical Events, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Doniger, W. and Smith, B. (1991) trans., Manu The Laws of Manu, London: Penguin.
Goswami Sastri, C.L. (1995) trans., Srimad Bhagvatam (Part 1), Gorakhpur, India: Gita Press.
Kishwar, M. (1999) ‘Sati Prevention Act is draconian, anti-people’ Times of India, December 1.
Leslie, I.J. (1983) ‘Essence and existence: women and religion in Ancient Indian Texts’ in P. Holden (1983) editor, Women's Religious Experience, London & Canberra: Croom Helm Ltd, 89–112.
Leslie, I.J. (1989) trans., Tryambakayajvan Stridharmapaddhati (The Perfect Wife), Delhi: Penguin.
Mani, L. (1990a) ‘Contentious traditions: the debate on Sati in Colonial India.’ in A.J. Mohamed and D. Llyod (1990a) editors, The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse, NY: Oxford University Press, 319–356.
Mani, L. (1990b) ‘Multiple mediations: feminist scholarship in the age of multinational reception’ Feminist Review, No. 35: 25–41.
Nandy, A. and Kishwar, M. (1999) ‘Are we still in the Dark Ages?’ The Sunday Times of India, November 28.
Nerurkar, S. (1999) ‘A man to die for’ The Sunday Times of India Review, November 28.
Rajan, R.S. (1990) ‘The subject of sati: pain and death in the contemporary discourse on sati’ The Yale Journal of Criticism, Vol. 3, No. 2: 1–19.
Scarry, E. (1985) The Body in Pain, NY: Oxford University Press.
Sharma, J. (1999) ‘Neither Sati nor suicide’ Times of India, November 20.
Spivak, G.C. (1987) In Other Worlds, NY: Methuen.
Spivak, G.C. (1988) ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (1988) editors, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 271–309.
Spivak, G.C. (1999) Critique of Post Colonial Reason, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tagore, R. (1915) in S. Tagore (1985) trans., The Home and the World, NY: Penguin Books.
Thapar, R. (1966) The History of India, Vol. 1, New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lakshmi, A. The liminal body: the language of pain and symbolism around Sati. Fem Rev 74, 81–97 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400066
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400066