against sati

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The History of Doing An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and Feminism in India 1800-1990 RADH A KUMAR koli for women 1993

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The History of DoingAn Illustrated Account of Movements

for Women's Rights and Feminism in India 1800-1990

R A D H A K U M A R

koli for women

1993

The History of Doing: An IJJmtmted Account of Movementsfor Women's in 1800-1990

was first published by

Safi for Women.A 36 Gubnohar ParkNewDeIMH§049

© Radha Kumar 1993Photographs as credited at end

All fights r&erved81-85107-15-0

Typesetting by IPP Catalog Publications Pvt Ltd,, New Delhiand printed at Indraprastha Press (CBT), New Delhi

11. The Agitation Against Sati 1987-88

Protesting against Roop Kanwar'simmolation, Delhi 1987

THE AGITATION AGAINST SATI 173

Young widow with her husband'sdead body, just before immolation, private

family album, Sitapur, date not known

In September 1987, an incident of sati (widow immola-tion) in a village in Rajasthan sparked off a campaignwhich gave rise to a furious debate which spanned notonly the rights and wrongs of Hindu women, but ques-tions of religious identity, communal autonomy and the

Immolation, private family album,Sitapur, date not known

role of the law and the State in a society as complex andas diverse as India's. While some of the arguments usedin the debate were not new, its form and structure wereilluminating, as much for what they obscured as for whatthey revealed of the intricate web of social change inIndia (including the current state of the feministmovement).

In the course of the debate a series of binary opposi-tions were invoked, between rural and urban, traditionand modernity, complementarity and sameness, thestate and religious communities, spiritualism and mate-rialism, and so on. The invocation of these oppositionshad the effect of presenting either side (for and againstsati) as homogeneous, so that the former were describedas representing rural, traditional communities who werestruggling to preserve themselves from the homogeniz-ing tendencies of the Indian nation-state, while the latterwere described as representing elite, urban, modernsections of society, who were pressing the state to inter-vene in communities they bore no relation to, and werethus supporting and encouraging the nation-state toextend its sphere of control over civil society.

Versions of this argument began to be advancedwithin a couple of weeks of the incident of sati, andalmost immediately after the campaign against it began.While the argument itself was earlier used by the sup-porters of the Muslim Women's Bill in 1986-87, the wayin which it appeared in the debate over sati showed howgreatly the argument had developed. For example, inthe earlier agitation the argument was advanced mainlyby pro-Bill leaders, but in the latter it was advanced bothby pro-sati leaders and by a group of 'outsiders' (in theform of a series of newspaper articles). These appearedfirst in the Delhi-based Hindi and English languagenational dailies, Jan Satta, ('Banwari' 29.9.87), IndianExpress (Ashis Nandy, 5.10.87 and Statesman (Patrick DHarrigan, 5.11.87), and all three writers, in their various

Painted chariot celebrating widowimmolation, Rajasthan, 1987

174 THE HISTORY OF DOING

ways, lent a kind of outsider respectability to theargument so that it also began to be advocated byconsiderable numbers of those very urban, modernsections of society which it sought to attack.

Perhaps the most striking point about the articles by'Banwari', Ashis Nandy and Patrick Harrigan was that allthree propounded their arguments in the form of apolemic against the Indian feminist movement, accus-ing Indian feminists of being agents of modernity whowere attempting to impose crass market-dominatedviews of equality and liberty on a society which once gavethe noble, the self-sacrificing and the spiritual therespect they deserve, but which is now being rapidlydestroyed by the essentially selfish forces of the market.All three, moreover, defined these crass market-domi-nated views of equality and liberty as being drawn fromthe West, so Indian feminists stood accused of beingWesternists, colonialists, cultural imperialists, and—indirectly—supporters of capitalist ideology.

Though Indian feminists had suffered a series ofattacks in the eighties, this was to date the most major ofthem, for not only did it appear to be concerted, itstiming was such that it appeared to lend legitimacy bothto an ideology which claimed that the finest act a womancould perform was to die with her husband, and to aspecific incident of sad which was beginning to seemmore and more like an incident of murder. Outrageousas the accusations against themselves seemed to Indianfeminists, who had shown themselves to be anti-imperi-alist and anti-capitalist in a number of ways—and manyof whom had, ironically enough, themselves launched acritique of 'Western feminist' goals and methods manyyears prior to this attack—what made it worse was thefact that not one of these writers addressed themselvesto the question of what had happened, or was happen-ing, in Deorala where the sati had taken place, nor didany of them ask under what conditions Roop Kanwarhad lived, or under what conditions she had died.

September 1987 was not the first time that Indianfeminists encountered the problem of sati. The firstencounter in Delhi was in 1983, when a campaign tofurther popularize the ideology of sati was launched bya Marwari-funded organization known as the Rani SatiSarva Sangh. The RSSS, which already ran several satitemples in Rajasthan and Delhi, had got the then Gov-ernment to grant them a plot of land in Delhi to buildyet another sati temple, and had decided to celebratediis grant by leading a procession of men and women todie temple. Delhi feminists heard of this plan, anddecided to hold a counter-demonstration along theroute of the procession, which they did with signalfailure, partly because they had had no time to mobilize,and thus found themselves outnumbered, and partlybecause this was the first time that they had had toconfront a group of women in a hostile situation; this

was in itself so distressing that it took the heart out oftheir demonstration. Most distressing of all, however,was the way in which the processionists appropriated thelanguage of rights, stating that they should have theright, as Hindus and as women, to commit, worship andpropagate sati. At the same time, they also appropriatedfeminist slogans on women's militancy, for example,'hum Bharat ki nan hain, phool nahin, chingari hairi (we,the women of India, are not flowers but fiery sparks).The feminists who attended that demonstration experi-enced, therefore, the humiliating sense of loss whichaccompanies the discovery that your own words can soreadily be snatched and turned against you to serve anantithetical cause.1 This experience led to two differentreactions: one, the determination to research into theexistence of sati, sati temples and the proponents of'sati-dharma' in India; the other, to find non-confronta-tional ways in which to undermine the ideology of sati.Both, however, emphasized the need to study, compre-hend and deal with the traditional.

Whether for these reasons, or because no furtherpublic campaigns in support of sati occurred, the issuefaded out until Roop Kanwar's death in 1987. Given thatthere has been, on an average, something like one satia year in India, why did this incident arouse such frenzywhen others had not? Only four months earlier, thepolice had prevented a woman called Banwari fromcommitting sati, and had dispersed the twenty thousandodd people who had assembled at Bagda village in Palidistrict to witness the event.2 Two years earlier, in March1985, the police had prevented another sati in Jaipurdistrict and had used both tear gas and lathicharges todisperse the thirty thousand odd people who had col-lected at the proposed site.3 In neither incident didpolice intervention result in agitations against them. YetRoop Kanwar's death, which no-one prevented, led to amassive agitation both for and against sati. It was only asa campaign around me issue developed that it becameevident that this particular sati was indeed different frommost of the others. In contrast to some of the other areasin which sati had been attempted, Deorala was a rela-tively highly developed village. The family, while notperhaps wealthy, were well-to-do. Roop Kanwar's father-in-law was headmaster of a district school, while sheherself was a graduate. A Rajput family, they had linkswith influential Rajputs and mainstream state-levelpoliticians.

Roop Kanwar had only been married a short whilebefore her husband died. Her dowry included somethirty tolas of gold. Her husband suffered from mentaldisorder and they had spent only around six monthstogether. When, after his death, it was decided that RoopKanwar would 'become' sati, the impending event wasannounced in advance, because sati is always a publicspectacle. Yet her family were not informed. Evidence

THE AGITATION AGAINST SATI 175

which trickled out pointed to murder: some of herneighbours said that she had run away and tried to hidein a barn before the ceremony, but was dragged out,pumped full of drugs, dressed in her bridal finery andput on the pyre, with logs and coconuts heaped uponher. The pyre itself was lit by her brother-in-law, aminor.4

Hearing that the press was on its way, the organizersof her sati brought forward the 'event'. When the pressarrived at Deorala, they were abused and manhandledby self-appointed protectors of the Sati-sthal (site of sati).In other words, it was evident that the planners of thesati saw themselves as being in a state of siege before anyquestions of a battle had even arisen. Could it be thatthey themselves chalked out the battles: were they in factlooking for a battle? Some credence was lent to this viewby the response of the government,

Reports indicated that the local authorities knew ofthe planned sad, yet their only action was to despatch apolice jeep which had overturned on its way to the site.Following this debacle, three more days elapsed beforea government representative visited Deorala.5 Evenmore shocking was their general attitude, consisting asit were not of the usual tactic of slothful procrastinationwhich government uses when it wishes to avoid an issue,but of a kind of sullen paralysis in which over two weekswent by before any statement was made by governmentspokesmen, either in the state or at the centre. Noattempts were made to arrest anybody, despite mount-ing evidence of coercion and mounting public pressure.The doctor who drugged Roop Kanwar meanwhile dis-appeared.

Immediately after the immolation, the site became apopular pilgrimage spot, and, as in Jhunjhunu, a num-ber of stalls sprang up, selling auspicious offerings, me-mentoes (such as a trick photograph of Roop Kanwarsitting on the pyre with her husband's head on her lapand a blissful smile on her face, while the flames spurtedabout her,) and audio cassettes of devotional songs. Herfather-in-law, prominent men from the village, andmembers of a newly formed organization, the SatiDharmRaksha Samiti, (organization for the defence of the re-ligio-ethical ideal of sati), together formed a Trust alongthe lines of the Rani Sati Sarva Sangha Trust, to run thesite and collect donations. What passes for moderntechnology in our country was used by the Trust toorganize worship at the site: parking lots were arrangedand traffic controllers appointed; a control tower was setup near the site and a fairly elaborate system of loud-speakers was strung around the area, through whichinstructions from the control tower were transmitted topilgrims, Trust functionaries, et al. The mahajans tookthe responsibility of organizing stalls selling food, andaccommodation for the pilgrims (these are their areasof expertise). Though no information was collected as

In 1982 fundamentalist men and women in Delhi tookout a procession in support of sad. This picture shows

a small section of this march, with the men in thebackground for protection.

to how much money was made by them, or by thestall-owners, it was reported that within some threeweeks the Trust itself had collected around Rs 50 lakhs.6Sati is big business. Despite demands from feminists andsocial reformers, this money was not impounded.

While certain aspects of this business side of the satiare neither new nor particularly modern, such as the sitebecoming a pilgrimage spot and stalls springing up allaround it to sell objects to the devout, the scale of it andthe technologizing of the pilgrimage event is obviouslymodern, Kumkum Sangari has pointed out how the newpalatial sati temples replay the act of sati through modelsof the woman, the dead man and the burning pyre; sheshows, further, that the 'worship' of sati-dharm or sati isproduced and controlled through commodification, fornext to the new temples there are sad-memorial stoneswhich lie neglected and unworshipped.7

In other words, far from the feminists imposing mar-ket-dominated notions of equality on an anti-materialistsociety which celebrated self-sacrifice, the event revealedthe gruesome materialism of a society which permittedthe production of 'sacrifice' for profit.

Further, and in many ways more dismayingly, femi-nists discovered through this campaign the complexrelations through which issues concerning women canbe used to stake claims to power. Sudesh Vaid has shownhow the 'tradition' of sati and sati-dharma was createdin Shekhavati region (where Deorala is located) afterIndependence, largely to regain lost authority. (Interest-ingly, some three quarters of recorded satis since 1947have been in this region). Originally comprising smallprincely states and chiefdoms, the area had supportedthe outlawing of sati in 1846. After Independence, withthe abolition of princely states, and the further abolitionof the zamindari and jagirdari systems of land relations,

176 THE HISTORY OF DOING

Picketing pro-sati demonstration, Delhi, 1982

Demonstrating against Roop Kanwar'simmolation, Delhi, 1987

Joint Action Forum Against Sati(15 organizations) Delhi, 1987

together with land reforms, the Kshatriyas and baniaslost some of the power and privilege they had held.Anti-land reform agitations were launched first by ex-rul-ers and large land-owners under a newly formed organi-zation, the Kshatriya Mahasabha. When they weresuccessful in reinstating the Jagirdari system, small land-owners followed by launching a similar agitation andforming an organization called the Bhooswami Sangh.

Both organizations invoked a chivalric 'Rajput' tradi-tion in which men defended die Hindu tradition onbattlefields by killing and being killed, while womendefended it at home by killing themselves (jauhar andsati). Rajput identity was, further, fused with a militantneo-fundamentalist Hinduism, with demonstrations of'tens of thousands of lathi-weilding saffron-clad Raj-puts'. Sati now began to be projected as exemplifyingthe true Rajput identity: the first post-Independence satiin this area was in 1954, and at the same time an oldsati-memorial, Jhunjhunu, was rebuilt and expanded.Annual 'sati melas' now began to be held.8

This glorification of sati was funded and supported bymahajans, in particular, marwaris. It was they who redis-covered and rebuilt old sati shrines, and founded theRani Sati Sarva Sangh, which now runs 105 sati templesall over India. In a sense therefore the old relations ofmutual advantage between Rajputs and mahajansgained a new fillip through sati.

The parallels between the 1950s use of sati to assertan identity and the event of 1987 are fascinating. Hardon the heels of Roop Kanwar's death, a Sati DharmaRaksha Samiti was formed in Jaipur city, whose leaderswere urban men, many of them professionals or busi-nessmen from land-owning families, whose sphere ofinfluence extended over both rural and urban areas.Together with the Deorala Trust, this Samiti announcedthat a Chunri mahotsav (veil festival) would be held someten days after Roop Kanwar's death. A ritual cremationof the veil after the woman's death is, it seems, tradi-tional in the area, but never before had it been called amahotsav or festival.

Feminists in Jaipur petitioned the High Court to for-bid the ceremony, and the High Court instructed thestate government to prevent it from taking place.Though the Attorney-General announced that it wouldbe stopped, the sole action of the state government wasto stop vehicles at a certain point, but to allow people todisembark and join the procession. Five hundred police-men were posted along the route, clothed 'in civiliandress so that they would not offend the crowd'.9 Themahotsav was performed, and from an act of mourningit was transformed into a show of strength, a victorycelebration, with the male marchers, traditionallydressed, waving their fists aloft in triumph and shoutingslogans. The site itself was transformed into a politicalrallying ground: a highly charged state-of-siege

THE AGITATION AGAINST SATI 177

atmosphere was created by sword wielding youth whosurrounded the sati-sthal, and instead of devotionalsongs they shouted slogans which were clearly modelledon mainstream political slogans. Madhu Kishwar andRuth Vanita have shown how these slogans fell into threemajor groups:

(1) Slogans based on leader glorification, such as 'Satiho to kaisi ho? Roop Kanwar jaisi ho', which is based on'Desh ka neta kaisa ho? Rajiv Gandhi (or x) jaisa ho'.

(2) Victory chants, such as, 'Ek do teen char, sati mala kijaijai kar'.

(3) Slogans drawn from Hindu communalist move-ments, such as 'Desh dharam ka nata hai, sati hamari matahai ' which is based on 'Desh dharam ka nata hai, gai hamarimata hai.'10

Even though several laws exist under which the ide-ologues and profiteers of sati could have been punished,the state government took no action, largely because theissue had become one of Rajput community identity,and the Rajputs are an influential community. In fact,several state level politicians immediately rushed downto pay their respects at the site, among whom were thestate Janata Party Chief, a Bharatiya Janata Party

A group of schoolchildren at theanti-sati march in Delhi. Many schools gave

their students a day off to participate in the march.

'You are possessed by the truth, you arepossessed by the truth, Delhi, 1987

member of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly and a LokDal member, the acting president of the Rajput Sabha,and an ex-member of the Legislative Assembly from theCongress-I." So almost all the major centre to right wingpolitical parties went to the site, not to enquire into whathad happened but to stake their own claim to 'tradition',and via this to the Rajput vote. Behind this there alsolurked the spectre of the 'Hindu vote', and behind bothwere questions of majority-minority politics, caste andcommunal representation.

The process through which this happened is a reveal-ing one, for it sheds light on communal formations inIndia and shows how issues of gender can become cen-tral to these. At the policy-maker and intelligentsia levelsthe major argument of the pro-sati camp was that if thestate represented the people, then the Rajputs were apeople among whom sati was an ideal and a traditionand as such it should be recognized and legitimized. Onthe ground, however, it was argued that a refusal tolegitimize sati was a deliberate attempt to marginalizethe Rajputs. The opponents of sati, for example, werepresented as people who were using the issue as a coverto attack the Rajputs per se. The widespread appeal ofthis argument became clear to feminists who were active

178 THE HISTORY OF DOING

All India Democradc Women's Association activist, Brinda Karat at a demonstration againstRoop Kanwar's immolation, Delhi 1987

in the campaign against sati, fora majority of the Rajputswhom we met focussed on this point rather than on adefence of sati itself. Almost without exception, theyasked why such an issue was being made of sati and,almost without exception, they saw the campaign asbeing directed against the Rajputs per se.

Both arguments were taken a step further by two othergroups. The first, head priests of the major Hindu tem-ples in such centres as Benares and Puri, issued state-ments that sad represented one of the most nobleelements not only of Rajput culture, but of Hinduism,and claimed scriptural sanction for this view. Whilere-iterating the need to legitimize sad, the main thrustof their argument was that such issues came under theirpurview and not that of the state. At the same time theyalso raised the bogey of 'Hindusim in danger' from theopponents of sati.

The second group consisted of a section of extremeright Hindu nationalists, spearheaded by the Shiv Sena.The Shiv Sena was active in the pro-sati agitation, organ-izing demonstrations on the Hinduism-in-danger line,

and arguing that the State is particularly biased againstthe Hindus, for it is willing to accede to the demands ofminority communides for representation, but is unwillingto do the same for the majority. (The particular point ofreference here was to the Muslim Women's Bill).

In a way the definition of the democradc state in Indiahas always been deeply ambivalent on the relationshipbetween secularism and religious representation. Whatis new really is the extent to which the two are todayconverging, so that secularism has become synonymouswith providing 'fair' representation to different religiouscommunities, which are defined in opposition to eachother. Thus the 'true' representatives of different relig-ious communities are held to be their fundamentalistleaders, rather than, say, the reformers within theirranks. Mobilization on communal grounds is thus anextremely effective political tool, both to gain politicalspace and State recognition, and to create political-electoral bases. An index of the mainstream communali-zation of politics and the constituency of women as acommunal 'sign' is the rise of two centrist Janata Party

THE AGITATION AGAINST SATI 179

College girls marching against sati, Delhi 1987

politicians, Syed Shahabhuddin and Kalyan Singh Kalvi,both of whom shot into prominence as communal fun-damentalist leaders, the former via the Muslim Women'sBill agitation, and the latter via the pro-sati agitation.Shahabuddin today heads his own political party, whileKalvi is an elected representative of the Janata Dal.

Questions of representation, politics and the statearose in a new way for feminists in 1987-88. Religiousfundamentalism, as we find all over the world, not onlyrationalizes the sexual oppression of women, but alsomobilizes them in support of their own oppression. Thepro-sati agitationists mobilized considerable sections ofwomen in their own support, both on a castiest (Rajput)and on a religious (Hindu) platform. That is to say, theymobilized women who would seem to be direcdy af-fected by their demands. This allowed them to claim thatthey represented the 'true' desires of Hindu women,and to accuse the feminists of being unrepresentative.So the feminists were placed in the anomalous positionof appearing to speak in the interests of women whomthey could not claim to represent and who defined theirinterests differently.

The tradition versus modernity argument entered thiscontext in such a way as to further isolate the feminists.The bogey of modernism was so successfully created thatthe fact that sati was being used to create a 'tradition'went unrecognized despite feminist efforts to emphasizeit. Tradition was defined so historically and so self right-eously that it obscured the fact that sati was being usedto reinforce caste and communal identities along 'mod-ern' lines, with modern methods of campaigning andorganizing, modern arguments, and for modern ends,such as the reformation of electoral blocs and caste andcommunal representation within the state.

Worst of all, by polarizing women along the rural-ur-ban, traditional-modern axis, it disallowed a whole seriesof questions and insights. For example, looking moreclosely at the nature of women's support for the pro-satiagitation, it became clear that this was ambiguous, andat many points consisted of drawing a firm line betweenworship of sati and the actual practice of it.

Secondly, an examination of the women who weremobilized for the pro-sati demonstrations made it clearthat they were not, in fact, the women who were most

180 THE HISTORY OF DOING

Street play against widow immolation,Sabala Mahila Sangh, Delhi, 1987

directly affected by the issue. The figure of the widowwas conspicuously absent. The elevation of sati into atradition of ideal man-woman relations, in the contextof widowhood, not only obscured the miserable condi-tions under which most Hindu widows live, it actuallyrationalized their slavery: for if the widowed woman isnot capable of living up to the sati ideal by immolatingherself, then what better fate for her than to be theservant either of her family or of the temple?

For the feminists the realization of how these polari-zations between tradition and modernity, materialismand spiritualism, rural and urban, had successfully side-lined all questions of affection or compassion for womenwas a bitter one. Even worse, because peculiarly ironic,was the way in which these polarizations forced theminto positions which appeared not only to contradictearlier stands but also to diverge sharply from the direc-tions which they had been pursuing. One such positionwas the demand for state intervention, made in threeways: first, that Roop Kanwar's in-laws and the doctorwho drugged her should be charged with murder; sec-ond, that all those who profited financially or politicallyfrom her death should be punished; and third, that anew law should be promulgated banning both the com-mittal and glorification of crimes against women in thename of religion.

Feminist unease about demands of this kind has ex-isted from the beginning of the contemporary women'smovement and has been a kind of constant undercur-rent in all their campaigns, most of which have, for fairlyobvious reasons, tended to focus on demands of thestate. Partly due to this unease, the draft Bill which wasprepared by a sub-committee of the Joint ActionCommittee Against Sati in Delhi was never circulated toM.P.s and so never tabled in Parliament. Instead, theGovernment was left to introduce its own Bill (which it

Critiquing the 'martial honour' ideology,anti-sati march, Delhi 1987

only did because of opposition furore) under which satiwas defined as suicide and the first person to be pun-ished was the woman herself, for attempting to commitsuicide.

For most of us, at the time, the campaign aroundsati revealed the growing strength of the oppositionto feminism, and spelt a considerable setback to themovement, Yet the challenges it posed to our selfdefinitions yielded some insights of value: a morecomplex understanding of the ways in which differentgroups and communities saw themselves; that it is nothelpful to view the state as a monolithic entity from apurely oppositional stance, especially at moments ofcrisis, for it is important for us to assert that we havethe right to a voice in the administration of our soci-ety. Thirdly, that representation consists not merelyin a show of numbers but in the seeking and encour-agement of a plethora of voices, which is to someextent taking place through the feminist and associ-ated movements. Opposition to sati, for examplecame from a variety of sources: both the right-wingHindu reformist tradition and maverick left-wingHindu reformers such as Swami Agnivesh of the AryaSamaj, opposed it. Swami Agnivesh in fact went ondharna outside Deorala, and challenged the headpriests of the Puri and Benaras temples to a debate onthe scriptural 'sanction' of sati. His challenge wasdeclined. Opposition also came from sections of theGandhians, who held a rally of about 10,000 womenin Orissa, who gheraoed the head priest of the Puritemple, calling him to account for his views, which hewas unable to do. And it also came from the anti-castemovement in Maharashtra, who announced theiropposition to sati. Finally, within Rajasthan, consider-able opposition both to sati and to state inaction ofRoop Kanwar's death was voiced by huge numbers of

THE AGITATION AGAINST SATI 181

women, largely rural, who joined demonstrations toprotestagainsttheglorification of her death.

Most of these voices and actions were not co-ordinatedat the time, because feminist resources did not permitof co-ordination. But in a sense co-ordination was notreally necessary, because the problem of sati, like mostother problems of women, cannot be resolved simply

through a campaign. Perhaps one of the most valuableinsights in this regard has been the understanding thatwhile specific and short term campaigns are necessary,if only in order to mark reactions, the roots of feminismare now spreading in a variety of ways of across thecountry.

NOTES

1. Recounted to me by Nandita Haksar and ShebaChhachi, December 1983.

2. Indian Express, 10.5.1987.3. Hindustan Times, 6.3.1985.4. Statesman, 18-20.9.1987.5. Times of India, 17.9.1987.6. Ibid.7. Kumkum Sangari, 'Perpetrating the Myth', Semi-

nar, No. 342, February, 1988.8. Sudesh Vaid, 'Politics of Widow Immolation', Semi-

rar No. 342, February, 1988.9. Hindustan Times, 17.9.1987.

10. Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita, ' The Burning ofRoop Kanwar', Manushi, No, 42-3,1987, The slo-gans/chants listed above translate as follows:(1) 'What should a sati be like? Like Roop Kanwar;which is based on ' What should a country's leaderbe like? Like Rajiv Gandhi; (2) 'One, two, three,four, raise your voice in praise of sati'; 'Our landand our religion have decreed this: that sati is ourmother', which is based on 'Our land and ourreligion have decreed this: that the cow is ourmother'.

11. Times of India, 17.9.1987.