Widow's Way

Suttee, the old Hindu custom of widow's suicide on the funeral pyre, has been banned in India since 1829; today it occurs rarely and then only in inaccessible villages in backward regions. No one had expected to see the rite performed in the large, well-kept Rajasthan capital of Jaipur (pop. 175,000). One day last week Shroff Ballabhdas, a prosperous banker and coin appraiser of Jaipur, died. His fair and dainty widow Chhimi, 35, mother of five children, put on her many jewels, donned her finest mauve silk sari and announced that she would throw herself on her husband's pyre.

Word spread quickly. Thousands gathered outside the Ballabhdas house. When at last the widow appeared behind her husband's bier, surrounded by a cortege of weeping women, the crowd beat gongs, threw flowers and fried corn kernels, and sent up frenzied shouts of "Sati Mata ki jai" (Hail to the faithful mother-wife). Business in Jaipur came to a standstill; almost a third of the town's population moved out to the cremation grounds.

The funeral procession was a mile from the crematory when two platoons of Rajasthan police intercepted it. The crowd shouted threats and curses, but the cops managed to get the widow Ballabhdas into their jeep by promising to take her direct to the cremation ground. Instead they carted her off to the police station, where, though she beat her breast and wailed that she had been betrayed, she was held in custody until the cremation was over. She was released when she agreed not to attempt suicide. Jaipur's disappointed suttee fans were not so easily pacified. All that day they stoned and booed the police.

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