A ‘Sati’ in contrasting avtaars

Sati, also spelt as Suttee, was a practice among Hindu communities especially within undivided Bengal where a widowed woman, either voluntarily or by force, immolated herself on her deceased husband’s pyre. But since girls were married very young to much older men, the question of “voluntary” does not arrive at all. It was always forced when gentle persuasion, social conviction failed which it always did. The then Governor-General Lord William Bentinck and the reason for the law as the regulation described it was “the practice of Sati was revolting to the feelings of human nature.”

Sati is sacrifice by fire. In the Vedas, Agni, the god of fire, is said to transfer the substance of the sacrifice and convey this ethereal smoke to the realm of the gods, where it is imbibed by the sense of smell. In later developments of Brahminism, a purificatory power was attributed to fire, which is important in the rite of sati. 

Before Sati came into existence, widows in Bengal led the life of humiliation, torture, deprivation. Their entire life changed with the death of husband they probably did not know at all as their marriage would be consummated only when they reached puberty. So, it was believed that if she died with her husband on the funeral pyre, she would be saved from such a terrible fate. But this was deeply entrenched in patriarchy as many of these widows stood to inherit large tracts of land and property as the sole heir of the dead husband so they were exiled to Kashi or Vrindavan – some widows still are – and the husband’s family would usurp her inheritance. Such stories are aplenty in Bengali literature including the works of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee.

Late Agehananda Bharati, the Austrian-born anthropologist (born Hindu), declared that sati was the nicor (essence) of pativratadharma (moral action appropriate for married women) Sati had gained acceptance as a prefix to a woman’s name to denote extreme devotion to the husband. 

In 1961, actor-director Bikash Roy produced and directed a film called Carey Shaheber Munshi based on a magnum opus authored by Pramathanath Bishi.  It is a historical novel about 19th century Bengal life. Pramathanath Bishi portrayed the civilian life of Kolkata in 19th century, the urban life of Bengal in detail. The Black-and-White film was a reasonable success while the novel was a thumping hit with the readers. Tandra Burman debuted in the film as the beautiful, teenage wife of an aristocratic family whose old husband dies and she is forced to join her dead husband on the pyre.

In the 1980s, two significant films that analysed the practice in two different ways are Aparna Sen’s Sati (1989) and Goutam Ghose’s Antarjali Jatra (1987).  Both are contemporary filmmakers distinguished by memorable films exploring significant social issues through cinema. 

Aparna Sen chose to focus her third film Sati on the tragedy of a period in Bengal when ‘choice’ was a forbidden word. Perhaps, the tragedy was more in the case of women, but that does not mean that men could have their own way. While unfolding the story of a young girl born with and into misfortune, Sen also unfolds the tragedy of power versus the lack of it. Her celebration of Uma’s sahamaran with her tree-husband evolves both into a comment on and a critique of the socio-religious custom of sati indulged in by a majority of Brahmins in Bengal in the 18th and 19th century. Uma’s sati counteracts and contradicts every rule in the sati book.

Woman is an expendable sex, the film spells out. For the young girl drugged into sati in the first scene, it is murder committed in cold blood. It is the violent termination of a young life about to bloom. For Uma, death is redemption from a life lived in eternal humiliation. Uma’s death marks the most violent closure among Sen’s films. The violence of the storm and the lightning is designed to put an end to the (in)human violence Uma is subjected to all her life. This manifestation of violence through Nature, which acts as a pacifist force is striking in its originality. 

Gautam Ghose’s Antarjali Jatra, (Death by Drowning) based on a story by Kamal Kumar Majumdar, also revolves around a ‘potential’ sati when an octogenarian Kulin Brahmin is brought to the crematorium just before he is to die. He is married off hurriedly to a young girl named Yashobati at the burning ghat itself, so that the girl’s father, an impoverished Kulin, can liberate himself of the possible ‘guilt’ of failing to marry his daughter off to a Kulin groom and that too, without the burden of a dowry. He promises the pandits (priests) that his daughter will commit sati the moment her husband dies. The marriage is conducted at the burning ghat and Yashobati, decked up in bridal finery, waits to become a sati as soon as the husband dies. 

The story is set in 1832, immediately after the abolition of sati in Bengal. Yashobati is left alone with her dying husband on the burning ghats on the banks of the river Ganga, with only the chandal (the untouchable ghat-keeper, the burner of the corpses) for company. When the chandal persuades her to run away, she refuses despite being faced with death. She tends to her dying husband who revives under her care. The chandal does not like this and castigates her. Yet, with time, the two the chandal and Yashobati are physically attracted to each other and become lovers. The river gets flooded taking the bier with the dying man away with its torrential waters. Yashobati swims out in search of her husband, only to find an empty bier. She drowns in the flooded rivers of the Ganga, defying death of the sati by fire, while at the same time, conforming to the custom by dying when her husband does, and through the same agency – water. 

Unlike Sen in Sati, Ghose falls back on the stereotypical ‘narrative of rescue’ pointing out perhaps, to the difference in perspective between two directors on grounds of gender, never mind the fact that the ‘narrative of rescue’ is blurred beyond recognition. 

The other point of difference between Sati and Antarjali Jatra is Uma is plain-looking but Yashobati is beautiful. The obsessive male gaze, directed by the husband, the male lover and the director of the film at the female body is inevitably sexual. But it is also a reminder that the same body will burn. The male gaze does not exist with reference to Uma in Sati though her body too, is ultimately destroyed through death. While Antarjali Jatra blatantly foregrounds the body of the woman, Sati keeps it beyond the cinematic space and characteristically low-key for Uma, the protagonist. Yet, both Yashobati and Uma are ‘sacrificed’ through natural calamities.

Water defines itself as an agency of death for both women. Both Uma and Yashobati belong to extremely impoverished Kulin Brahmin families, though their victimisation is distanced in terms of their class, backdrop and in their power of articulation. Uma is mute. Yashobati is not. Uma is an orphan. Yashobati is not. Yashobati has the ability to exercise her choice – in her love-making with the chandal as well as in her choice of rescuing her dying husband from the floods and thereby, underwriting her own death. 

Uma has never learnt to articulate her choice because she does not have a choice. She is born into a life of genetic silence. When compared with Yashobati, she is more vulnerable and therefore, has no power. Yet, in the ultimate analysis, they must both die because they are hopelessly trapped into a birth and a family over which they have no control. They are born and bred in desperately poor Kulin Brahmin families where poverty is a greater curse because of their high birth and not inspite of it.