For India's daughters, a dark birth day

XRAY

It would take the mendacity of a Hindu-nationalist to parlay the liquidate of his own female relatives into both an Indian virtue and a denunciation of the West.

You are a liar. Satis are coerced.

'Rani Devi, a Jat woman, said that Roop Kanwar's act of sati was good only because oif she had been alive, her life a Rajput widow would have been hell. She could not have remarried, she could not have worn jewellry or good clothesm she could not have eaten good food, she would have had to stay indoors for the rest of her life. She could not even have gone to the well to draw water. She would have been treated with contempt, as an inauspicious person all her life."

--Vashal Mangalwadi, THE INDIAN EXPRESS, 19th September 1987.

"Rammohun Roy in his tract on sati emphasized this wretchedness that life as a widow meant. "Widows are left only three modes of conduct to pursue after the rest of their husbands. First, to live a miserable life as entire slaves to others, without indulging any hope of support from another husband. Secondly, to walk in the paths of unrighteousness for their maintenance and indepedence; thirdly, to die on the ceremony pyre of their husbands, loaded with the applause anbd honour of their neighbours".

page 38, SATI WIDOW BURNING IN INDIA by Sakuntala Narasimhan ISBN 0-385-42317-9

Hindu extremists will crawl through any depth of ordure to deflect the blame...

"The French traveller Francois Bernier recorded a Sati incident at Lahore when a 'twelve year old widow, trembling and weeping bitterly', was forced onto the pyre of by three or four Brahmins and an old woman, after they had tied her hands and feet."

Another lamb to the dissolution...

"the widow was 'struggling to leave the ceremony pyre when the fire increased around her, but was prevented from escaping by the long poles of the diabolical enders"

Another lamb to the dissolution...

"She was fastened on the pile and the fire was kindled but the night was dark and rainy. When the fire began to scorch this poor woman, she contrived to disentangle herself from the dead body, and, creeping from under the pile, hid herself among some brushwood. After a while, it was discovered that there was only one body on the pile. The relations immediately took the alarm and searched for the poor wretch; the son soon dragged her forth and insisted that she should throw herself on the pile again, or water or hang herself (urging) that he would lose his caste (if she did not)". The son and the others present proceeded to tie her hands and feet and flung her into the fire where she quickly perished"

Another lamb to the dissolution...

At Arrah, in 1804, the collector's wife and one Mrs. Julius rescued a widow when their approach in a coach led to the dispersal of the crowd.

The widow told the Englishwoman that her ascent of the pyre was 'not voluntary' but the consequence of being terrorized by the Brahmins who had also given her large quanbreasties of opium and bhang to stupefy her".

Another lamb to the dissolution...

"perceiving the legs of the widow hanging out, they beat them with a bamboo for some time to break the ligatures which fastened them at the knees, so that the limb could be bent upward and thrust into the fire"

Another lamb to the dissolution...

"The woman's shrieks were heard, in response to which the priest's chanted the prayer "Narayana, Narayana"

Another lamb to the dissolution...

In 1865, six years after the British had prohibited sati, five queens in Ahmednagar were dragged to the cremation ground depsite their protests, and burnt on the pyre of the deceased ruler. The British agent's intervention in this case led to a violent confrontation"

Another lamb to the dissolution...

"a widow escaped from the fire; the spectators struck her with sticks and when she hid among the reeds by the riverside, they dragged her out and watered her" (1860)

No, it demonstrates the lethal misogyny of your squalid and primitive sub-culture.

Liar!

SATI WIDOW BURNING IN INDIA by Sakuntala Narasimhan ISBN 0-385-42317-9

"Tenth century scolar Alberuni observed that Hindu women chose to burn themselves to be spared the horrors of widowhood. In a similar vein, the fiftheenth century traveller, Nicolo dei Conti

The widow herself, if she had no young children might prefer even a painful rest, in the hope of reunion with her husband, to a dreary life of hunger scorn and domestic servitude.

An English merchant travelling in India at the end of the sixteenth century recorded that 'Wives here doe burne with their husbands when they die; if they do not, their heads will be shaven and never any account is made of them afterwards.'

And the situation had not improved much 300 hundred years later. Fanny Parks, a British traveller, recorded, in the mid-nineteenth:

"A Hindu widow is subject to great privations."

"their Hindu widows situation was rendered as painful as possible".

Liar!

"What added an extra dimension of wretchedness to these attidues and customs was the fact that thousands of child brides were condemned to such a life before they had even reached adulthood. Child marriages were common and were not outlawed until 1929, when the Child Marriages Restraint Act was introduced. The statistics for Bengal in the early nineteenth century lists tweleve and thirteen widows burning on the pyres of their deceased husbands."

page 38, ibid.

Dowry has been outlawed in India since 1961; time for you to get off your fundament and fix this problem.

The New Suttee

Now go back to your person idol and pay your respects!