MANI601 Research Project

MANI601 RESEARCH PROJECT CRITICAL ASSIGNMENT n.3

*Case studies:

1) ‘Sati’

Directed by Aparna SenStarring Shabana AzmiCinematography Ashok MehtaRelease date(s) 1989Country IndiaLanguage Bengali

This film is a masterpiece of cinema describing the situation back in those days. The Sati case of eighteen years old, Roop Kanwar in 1987 being the latest was an example in that period. “The young Brahmin girl (Shabana Azmi) in this story has a disastrous horoscope. In an Indian village in 1828, this can be a real handicap. The fact that she is mute only compounds her difficulties. Her horoscope predicts that she will become a widow at an early age. If this turns out as predicted, in addition to being bad luck for her prospective husbands, it is bad luck for her, as she will, according to the customs of the time, have to commit suttee, sati. That means she will have to be burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. To avoid this fate, her family has hit upon the appealing stratagem of having her marry a banyan tree.”

The writer and the director have shown the lives of those people back in that period, where superstition was more than just a belief and being a girl was a curse. The ritual of sati was banned by the British Government in 1829 by Lord Bentinck, the Governor-General of India (1828 to 1835) and later the Sati (Prevention) Act 1987. In the modern times, there have been a few instances of sati in Rajasthan (1987), Utter Pradesh (2006) Madhya Pradesh (2002 and 2006) and in Chhattisgarh (2008). The practice of Sati mostly happens in parts of northern and central India. Few of the isolated cases did bring the country in turmoil. Questions were asked on the Government and their action towards it but everything failed in a way or so. Sati was never widespread, and it has been illegal since 1829 when Lord Bentick took steps and passed Anti-Sati Law, but a few cases of sati still occur in India every year. In choosing to die with her husband, a woman gains great merit and power and

Jivitesh Mazumdar

MANI601 Research Project

is thought to bring kudos to her husband's departed soul and to others who honor her. Thus, through her meritorious death, a widow avoids disdain and achieves glory, not only for herself, but for all of her kin as well.

The film covers every piece of this horrific superstition and accomplishes to create its own story of the protagonist who is physically handicapped and her life, which happened to be demolished by the astrologer who said she would bring bad luck to her husband and he would eventually die early. Her parents being afraid of her future and the Sati dharma forces her to marry a banyan tree and she meets her end with a storm hitting the village and herself dying under that very tree as there being no other place to reside. The film is a classic journey hitting the audience and making them ponder about the reality and the truth that the people try to cover and ignore even having the knowledge about it. It also describes how at the end Superstition conquers an individual’s mind over Science and wisdom. Traditionally the unfortunate women who could not commit or were prevented from committing sati were doomed to lead the most austere life. As a widow, a woman is devoid of reason to adorn her. If she follows tradition, she may shave her head, shed her jewelry, wear only plain white or dark clothing and eat a single meal and are sent to live the rest of their lives in economic, familial and romantic deprivation following their husbands’ deaths (Pramila Dandvate, Widows, Abandoned and Destitute Women in India, New Delhi, 1989 p.163). Their presence at family public functions was totally forbidden. The widows lived in joint families, died unwept and unsung. Vrindavan, a town in northern part of India, is a pilgrimage town, which is now home to thousands of destitute widows; they have been driven by poverty to this holy town. There, the lives of some of them are reduced to begging, prostitution and, in some cases, chanting hymns for eight hours in order to earn a mere handful of lentils and rice.  But situation today is improved significantly and not as bad as it was in 19th century. 

In some regions of India, women are still treated as appendages to their husbands, and are expected to either follow their husbands into death or to remain chaste throughout their widowhood. Social pressures to commit sati remain strong in certain areas of India. However the present government of India has dropped attempts to strengthen the anti-sati law (The Times of India, April 23, 2008), more than 20 years after it was first enacted. Last year, the government had proposed changes to India’s existing sati law - the Commission of Sati Prevention Act 1987. The amendments to the Commission of Sati Prevention Act, 1987, had met with resistance in the Cabinet over some clauses. Some cabinet members had objected to the amendments. The proposed legislation recommended that coercing a woman to commit sati be made a non-bail able offence. The ruling party as well as politicians from certain states had actually been actively campaigning and lobbying against tougher laws for those inciting sati.

Jivitesh Mazumdar

MANI601 Research Project

2) ‘Devon ke Dev Mahadev’

Genre Mythological DramaSpiritual Drama

Created by Life OKWritten by Utkarsh Naithani and Mihir BhutaDirected by Nikhil Sinha

Manish Singh

‘Devon ke Dev Mahadev’ which in English means Lord of the Lords Shiva is a television drama series, which is based on the legends of Lord Shiva and is aired on the Indian television channel Life Ok. The works of famous mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik inspires the television hit. The show narrates the stories and legends of Lord Shiva who is known as the Great God (Mahadev), who is one of the three Supreme Gods in Indian Mythology, which includes Lord Vishnu and Lord Brahma. The stories are in a form of a tale and have happened to be found in ancient scriptures know as Puranas.

The story starts with the tale of Shiva's marriage with Sati. Sati is a partial incarnation of the Supreme Goddess and is born as the daughter of Prajapati Daksha, who is a staunch devotee of Vishnu. She is drawn towards Shiva against the will of her father. Shiva and Sati get married and start living in Kailash. Soon after Daksha organises a yagya (a grand praying ceremony). All the gods except for Lord Shiva are invited to this ceremony. Sati is distraught as this slight, and against Shiva's wishes, journeys to her parental home to question her father. Daksha, drunk on his own power and piety insults Shiva in front of Sati. Torn with remorse on having ignored her divine husband's wishes Sati gives up her body in the fires which emanate from her own body –Pran agni. The grief-stricken Shiva produces an aaveshavatar an incarnation of a fierce mood, Virabhadra, who slays Daksha. Later, on hearing the prayers of Daksha's wife he restores Daksha's life. A distraught Shiva leaves with burnt corpse of Sati and wanders around the universe. Vishnu with the use of his divine discus dismembers the body into pieces, scattering them on earth. Shiva transforms the pieces into Shakti Peethas (Temples of Strength), embodiments of the power of the Goddess Aadi Shakti. The story continues. This TV series have won millions of hearts in India and have won numerous awards.

Jivitesh Mazumdar

MANI601 Research Project

The representation of Sati in these Puranas and Scriptures are described as a Mythological character and shows her journey of marrying Lord Shiva and the problems and hurtful situations she faced which in today’s World is the Social pressure. “Few reliable records exist of the practice before the time of the Gupta Empire, approximately 400 CE. After about this time, instances of sati began to be marked by inscribed memorial stones. The earliest of these are found in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, though the largest collections date from several centuries later, and are found in Rajasthan. These stones, called devli, or sati-stones, became shrines to the dead woman, who was treated as an object of reverence and worship. They are most common in western India [2]. A description of suttee appears in a Greek account of the Punjab written in the first century BCE by historian Diodorus Siculus [1]. The Padma Purana forbade Brahmins from the practice. A chapter dated to around the 10th century indicates that, while considered a noble act when committed by a Kshatriya woman, anyone caught assisting an upper-caste Brahmin in self-immolation, as a "sati" was guilty of Brahminicide [1].

The ritual has prehistoric roots, and many parallels from other cultures are known. Compare for example the ship burial of the Rus' described by Ibn Fadlan, where a female slave is burned with her master [3]. Aristobulus of Cassandreia, a Greek historian who travelled to India with the expedition of Alexander the Great, recorded the practice of sati at the city of Takshila. A later instance of voluntary co-cremation appears in an account of an Indian soldier in the army of Eumenes of Cardia, whose two wives jumped on his funeral pyre, in 316 BC. The Greeks believed that the practice had been instituted to discourage wives from poisoning their old husbands [4]. Voluntary death at funerals has been described in northern India before the Gupta Empire. The original practices were called anumarana, and were uncommon. Anumarana was not comparable to later understandings of sati, since the practices were not restricted to widows – rather, anyone, male or female, with personal loyalty to the deceased could commit suicide at a loved one's funeral. These included the deceased's relatives, servants, followers, or friends. Sometimes these deaths stemmed from vows of loyalty [2], and bear a slight resemblance to the later tradition of junshi in Japan [5].

It is theorized that sati, enforced widowhood, and girl marriage were customs that were primarily intended to solve the problem of surplus women and surplus men in a caste and to maintain its endogamy [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Apart from the Indian subcontinent, origins of this practice have been found in many parts of the world; the ancient Egyptians, Thracians, Scythians, Scandinavians, Chinese, as well as people of Oceania and Africa followed it [16].

Historically, efforts to prevent sati by formal means existed even before the Moghul rulers came to power. Under the Delhi Sultanates (Alauddin Khilji, 1294-1316 and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, 1325-1351) permission had to be sought prior for sati to be committed. In time this check against compulsion became a mere formality. In any case Hindu women from royal families continued to burn unchecked (Mahajan, V.D, History of Medieval India,

Jivitesh Mazumdar

MANI601 Research Project

S.Chand, N.Delhi). Humayun (1530-1540) tried to prevent sati, but eventually withdrew a royal fiat against it. Akbar (1556 -1606) insisted that no woman could commit sati without the specific permission of his Kotwals (police officers in charge of police station). They were instructed to delay the woman's decision for as long as possible. Pensions, gifts and rehabilitative help were offered to the potential someone who might commit sati to wean her away from committing the Act. Children were strictly forbidden from the practice. The later Moghuls continued to put obstacles in the way but the practice carried on in the areas outside Agra. In their own sphere of influence the Portuguese, Dutch and French banned sati but efforts to stamp out sati were formalised only under Lord William Bentinck after 1829 (Anne E. Carr, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Religion, Feminism, and the Family, Westminster John Knox Press, 1996).

*References:

[1] Doniger, Wendy (2009). The Hindus: An Alternative History. Penguin Books. p. 611. ISBN 9780143116691.

[2] Shakuntala Rao Shastri, Women in the Sacred Laws -- The later law books (1960), also reproduced online at Sos-sexisme.org. Retrieved 2010-07-26.

[3] Ibn Fadlan, Risala: Ibn Fadlan's Embassy to the King of Volga Bulgaria (English-language translation)

[4] Strabo 15.1.30, 62; Diodorus Siculus 19.33; "Sati Was Started For Preserving Caste"

[5] "Bhagwan Swaminarayan's Life: Biography — Uplift of Women". Swaminarayan.org. Retrieved 2010-04-23.

[6] Nagendra Kr. Singh (2000) p. 214.[7] Ekta Singh, Caste System in India: A Historical Perspective, p.133[8] Ailsa Burns, Cath Scott, Mother-headed families and why they have

increased, p.131[9] John Ernest Goldthorpe, The sociology of the Third World: disparity

and involvement, p.143[10] Steven J. Kautz, The Supreme Court and the idea of

constitutionalism, p.136[11] Indian antiquary, Volume 46 p.87[12] M. P. Joseph, Legitimately Divided: Towards a Counter

Narrative of the Ethnographic History of Kerala Christianity, p.108[13] Meera Nanda, Prophets Facing Backward, p.198[14] Elizabeth Joy, Lived realities: faith reflections on gender justice,

p.99[15] Saroj Gulati, Women and society: northern India in 11th and

12th centuries, p.122[16] "Encyclopaedia Indica", by S. S. Shashi, p. 200-204

Jivitesh Mazumdar

MANI601 Research Project

*Bibliography:

M. A. Radford, E. Radford; ‘Encyclopedia of Superstitions,’ 1949, Philosophical Library, New York

Edgar Thurston; ‘Omens and Superstitions of Southern India,’ Ch. VII, p 199, 2011, Project Gutenberg License

Bharat D, “Science and Superstition”, Vol. 28, No. 19 (May 8, 1993), p. 913, Economic and political weekly

I Kshetrimayum, “Superstition, Indian Literature”, Vol. 53, No. 4 (252) (July/August 2009), p. 50, Sahitya Akademi

Wendell T. Bush, “Superstition and logic”, Vol. 29, No. 9 (Apr. 28, 1932), pp. 236-241,The Journal of Philosophy Inc.

Paul G. Hiebert, “Cults, Customs and Superstitions of India: John Campbell Oman”, Vol. 32, No. 3 (May, 1973), pp. 536-537

*Filmography:

Aparna Sen, ‘Sati’ 1989 India Nikhil Sinha and Manish Singh, ‘Devon ke Dev Mahadev’ 2011, Life

Ok, India

*Experiments:

Jivitesh Mazumdar

MANI601 Research Project

Jivitesh Mazumdar