It happened one September in 1987. By one account, in the environs of Deorala, a village in Rajasthan’s Sikar district, the sale of coconuts suddenly shot up. Aware that the coconut is a customary offering at religious rites but clueless about any impending holy day, the local police reportedly did a bit of snooping. And chanced upon a horrendous scene in Deorala. A teenaged widow had been burned at her husband’s pyre, the legend of Roop Kanwar had been created and thousands of worshippers were flocking to the duly designated Sati sthal. Calendar art had taken ghoulish colours, and prints of Roop Kanwar amidst the flames, with her husband’s corpse on her lap, were selling briskly. The cops’ Sherlock Holmes take may be rather simplistic, but as news of the death spread, the battlelines were drawn. Twentieth century Indians shuddered at the perpetration of such inhuman practices. A new, never mind how defective, law was passed by Parliament and dozens of persons were booked for abetting and glorifying the sati. Some orthodox vigilantes may have banded together in groups like the Dharam Rakshak Samiti, but the feeling was that modern India had once again reiterated its commitment to modernity and gender equality.It’s time to amend that narrative. It seems that 17 years later, we cannot be quite certain that there was even a case of sati recorded in Deorala! Last week a special Jaipur court let off 11 persons accused of glorifying sati in the wake of Kanwar’s death. The prosecution, said the court, had failed to conclusively establish that an act of sati had in fact occurred at Deorala, September 1987; hence the question of them glorifying it did not arise.How very apt it all is. It took just days, perhaps hours, for Roop Kanwar’s death to pass into the realm of mythology. An act of murder was almost instantaneously recast as supernatural intervention — with stories circulating about the 18 year old ascending the pyre and raising her hand and the pyre lighting itself in response. Deorala was a key test for India. It highlighted the prevalence of savage rites, it reflected the sorry status of women. It focussed civil society on the rites and practices crying for reform. Who could have thought then that less than two decades later we’d instead be struggling to establish that the sati had actually occurred.
