Sati, Somnath, and Rajiv Bhai...

MY respected senior and one time beat colleague in Gandhinagar Rajiv Shah recently wrote a blog on litterateur-politician K M Munshi’s Jay Somnath and the practice of Sati as portrayed in the novel. In his piece, Rajiv bhai recalls the historical as narrated by his Baa during summer breaks from school. For some reason, he selectively remembers only the chapter on Sati, terms it an evil practice, and goes on to brand it an “evil Hindu ritual” in the same breath. Rest of the blog focuses on how the novel seeks to glorify an understandably abhorrent practice.

Though Rajiv bhai also mentions studying about reformist Raja Rammohun Roy’s work against Sati in passing, I thought the focus on the subject needs a certain perspective that is missing from the write up. Like him I too had to dig into memory and go back to my preparations for the civil services exam I took in 2000-01. History was one of my electives.

Wars in ancient times were not fought on borders as now, with rules of engagement driven by some convention authored in rarified climes of a Swiss resort. Wars were a no-holds-barred contest in which the winner took all, with women seen as legitimate war-booties, to be dishonoured if met with resistance. It was only in this limited context that the practice of Sati arose, gaining ground toward second millennium coinciding with the invading hordes from central Asia during what constitutes the medieval period of Indian history. Munshi’s Jay Somnath is a record of exactly this period.

But what is important for our purposes is that the practice never got mass approval. In any case it was never eulogized. I recall studying that King Harsha, who ruled much of India immediately after the classical Gupta period, prevented his sister Rajya Sri from committing Sati. She had escaped a marauding army that had defeated her husband, the Maukhari king of Kanauj, and was literally snatched from the pyre by Harsha as she tried to self-immolate.

Kadambari, a Sanskrit text written by Harsha’s court poet Banabhatta, in fact rails against the “evil” practice. It calls Sati a “pointless” path followed by the illiterate, infatuated, and the ignorant! Bana termed it an act of the rash who took a narrow view of the things. According to him, it was a foolish blunder that brought no good whatsoever to the one who is already dead, and amounted to the sin of suicide by those who committed it.

To underscore that Sati was never extolled in the period under review, we have the example of Padma Purana (written about 1000 A.D.) which says that though it might be noble for Kshatriya women to commit Sati (being directly affected by the ravages of war), it was not to be committed by other women.

And even as we see numerous instances of Jauhars by Rajput women – the most famous one of Rani Padmini – given the times they lived in, we have the example of Rani Ahilya Bai as well. From the Maratha dynasty of Indore, Ahilya Bai’s husband Khanderao Holkar had died in the battle of Kumbhet, prompting her to take to the pyre. But she was stopped by none other than her father-in-law Malhar Rao who explained to her that the conditions that prompted the Jauhar of Padmini did not exist for her. This must have been around 1750.

Why Rajiv bhai chooses to focus on Sati and its glorification in Munshi’s novel is not clear. Perhaps the answer is in how he frames the central question. According to him, it is “Should one see Somnath from Munshi’s eyes?” After which he brushes it with the paint of national revivalism. Thankfully, he does not term it as Hindu revivalism. Also, he refers to Munshi’s tale as “history” in double quotes not specifying whether by this he is questioning its authenticity, for, when it comes to Romila Thapar’s account he accepts it as “received wisdom” with no double quotes this time. On the contrary if he is merely indicating towards it as an alternative narrative of history, one would say what’s wrong with that?