Sati: Does it still happen?

The practice of Sati (Satee), where a recently widowed woman jumps, supposedly willingly, onto her husband's funeral pyre and is then considered to be a deity originated around 400AD. As you tour around Rajasthan, you might notice the set hands of royal Satis on the walls of forts. Legend has it that before a woman committed Sati she dipped her hand in red paint and then made an imprint of it on the wall. (The first two pictures above where taken at the entrance to the fort in Jodhpur).

The practice of Sati is outlawed in modern India.

The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act of 1987 Part I, Section 2(c) defines Sati as:

"The burning or burying alive of – (i) any widow along with the body of her deceased husband or any other relative or with any article, object or thing associated with the husband or such relative; or (ii) any woman along with the body of any of her relatives, irrespective of whether such burning or burying is claimed to be voluntary on the part of the widow or the women or other-wise."

However it is still socially devastating to become widowed in India and some widows can still be in their teens if they were married off young. There have been cases of Sati in certain villages in the last few decades. William Dalrymple follows one case that happened in the 1990s in a village just outside of Jaipur in his book Age of Kali. The widow was just 18.

Weirdly, these days, if you do see red hand prints at the door to a house, it may also mean that a woman there has given birth (see pic above).