From Sati Survivor to Bharat Mata: Superslave or Superhuman?

This paper was written in 2024

Exploring the construction of religious and national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is arguably incomplete without considering the role that women played in South Asian politics and culture. This is substantially due to role of British colonial powers within the subcontinent, which incited the persistent confrontation between ‘the native elite and the colonial rulers… for political legitimacy in an environment of growing nationalism. And women and their sexuality became the ground for this confrontation.’[1] The contestation of women’s bodies, their rights, and roles within Indian society positioned women in key, era-defining debates. This essay will begin by outlining the relationship between the coloniser and colonised female, which was heavily influenced by Christian missionary projects of civility and decency. My chosen case study will be sati (or widow immolation), its origins in India and the responses garnered by colonial powers during the early 19th century, all of which shaped operations of gender and religion via cultural influence and legislative action. I will proceed by outlining the ways in which these operations were co-opted and manipulated for the project of nationhood by elite Hindu men primarily through the configuration of Mother India. Inaugurated in art and literature during the late 19th century, Mother India or Bharat Mata stood for the sanctity of a nation that had been contaminated and corrupted by external forces, ultimately becoming a central figure during the movement towards independence in the 1930s and 40s. By presenting these two figures in succession, I seek to interrogate the significance of women in their given contexts, ultimately interrogating how and why they remained central to these pursuits of identity formation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Sati consists of ‘immolating women on their husband’s funeral pyres, often against their will’[2], a deed that ultimately earned a woman the title of a sati, ‘one who did not become a widow, but remained a wife until her last breath.’[3] Sati, as a Sanskrit term encompasses many meanings, including ‘she who is the embodiment of truth (sat = truth, i = indicative of femininity’ or ‘she who is the personification of spiritual knowledge itself, the consort of the personification of Absolute Auspiciousness (shiva).’[4] But perhaps the most popular interpretation is that which conflates the first two definitions to denote the faithful wife, a role ‘equal to divinity’, in part due to ‘being endowed with the ability to endure fire in silence.’[5] It’s origin is subject to contestation particularly with regards to Hindu teachings. Analysing the role of sati within Vedic scriptures is best prefaced with Latha Nrugham’s clarification that ‘Vedic scriptures do not have a central authority.’[6] The brahmin [teacher] of shruti [spiritual knowledge], would ‘learn, grasp, realise and share to a greater extent with competent others [which] was made simple and spread throughout society in the form of stories [smriti].[7] The most striking outcomes to be concluded from this are not only perpetuations of elitist cultures, which alienate the masses from the prospect of discursive knowledge, but also the issues of subjectivity and self-interest that may be rooted in the Brahmin’s positionality and embodied subjectivities. Among the many Vedic scriptures, the Manusmriti, which is a Smriti text, was considered important from the 1800s to the 1900s, [and] does not mention sati as a practice for young widows.’[8] However Nrugham continues, ‘there are verses in some Smriti texts which support or encourage sati as one of the courses open to a widow. However, these texts are not considered to be one of high status even within the Smriti itself and therefore have no status at all as a guide of living life or dying. One of these Smriti texts [even] forbid[s] sati for Brahmin widows.’[9]

Although its origins can be traced back to 510 A.D.[10], its controversies begin to take shape more prominently during Mughal rule, wherein rulers from Persia were ‘under pressure due to social reforms carried out by the Sikh Gurus’.[11] Although records show that sati has garnered mixed responses, including that of ‘admiration for the heroic element’[12], condemnation ultimately continued to persist during colonial rule. Ashis Nandy argues that British colonialism ‘produced a cultural consensus in which political and socio-economic dominance symbolized the dominance of men and masculinity over women and femininity’[13], allowing for a hegemonical system rooted in patriarchal principles. This dynamic is substantiated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in Can The Subaltern Speak? where she observes that ‘white men are saving brown women from brown men.’[14] However this notion of ‘colonial rule as a “manly or husbandly” prerogative’[15] is one that came to prominence more so during the early nineteenth century, in part, due to the growing dissemination of Christian missionary values. Baptist missionaries, who had arrived in the early 1790s, worked mainly in North Bengal before settling in 1800 in the Danish settlement of Serampore.’[16] A significant investor to the missionary project was Claudius Buchanan, whose disapproval of ‘the moral state of Indians’[17] resulted not only from witnessing cases of sati, but additionally the horror of children sacrificed to the river at Saugor…. and of female infanticide.’[18] Missionaries argued that ‘it was Brahmanical Hinduism that divided people on caste lines and disseminated the ideas of purity and pollution.’[19] This incited the publication of a pamphlet in 1805, in which Buchanan urged the ‘right of Christian missionaries to operate in British India.’[20] Having witnessed cases of sati, members of the Serampore mission ‘condemned the rite forcefully and requested the government to ban it.’[21] This, coupled with the number of sati cases doubling between 1815 and 1818 in the Presidency of Bengal[22], prompted the eventual abolition of sati in 1829. The ban was proposed, in part, on the basis that sati was not prescribed in Vedic scripture, but a mere manifestation of knowledge being withheld as a ‘monopoly of Brahmin pundits… [whose knowledge] was believed to be corrupt and self-serving.’[23] Projecting an image of needing to protect women from such fallacies, although seemingly invested in female autonomy, is discredited by the ‘absence of women’s voices’[24] and the infantilization of the typical sati, who was frequently referred to as a ‘tender child’ despite 64% of satis in 1818 being above the age of 40.[25] What can be summarized is that ‘women were cast either as pathetic or heroic victims. The former were portrayed as beaten down, manipulated and coerced; the latter as selflessly entering the raging flames oblivious to any physical pain.’[26] What remains consistent here and continues to endure in the coming sections is the notion that ‘superslave or superhuman, women in this discourse remain eternal victims.’[27]

Although there are examples of Indian states ‘actively collaborating with the British in the suppression of sati’[28], including Jaipur, the Western reaction to sati was pronounced as ‘a noose which was being tightened around the neck of traditional Hinduism… [and] regarded by most historians as one of the factors contributing to the Mutiny’.[29] Part of this response included ‘the defender of tradition striv[ing] to retain some cultural practices of Hinduism in order to validate orthodox femininity.’[30] This response, in conjuncture with the development of the anti-colonial project constructed a 'Hindu nationalism that [sought] to reconstruct and glorify a ‘traditional’ model of Hindu femininity’[31] that permitted a wife’s right to choose sati. This model of Hindu femininity crystallized into the personage of ‘Bharat Mata’ or Mother India, which Kiran Chandra Banerjee used as the subject matter of her 1873 play of the same name, depicting the image of a dispossessed motherland.[32] Following this, ‘the metaphor rapidly gained secular and national character with the publication of Anandamath by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’[33] who introduced the hymn ‘Vande Mataram’, translating to ‘I praise thee, Mother’, which subsequently became a ‘de facto national anthem, sung at Congress sessions from about 1894’.[34] In producing this work, Chatterjee ventured to ‘associate the physical and cartographical dimensions of the Indian subcontinent under the British rule with the image of the mother-as-goddess’.[35] Being as the construction of nationalism and the modern nation ‘has often been explicitly imagined through gendered metaphors, particularly that of the female body. The many faces of ‘mother’ – motherland, mother tongue, motherhood’[36], it is therefore fitting that a rise in nationalistic imagery concerned with the image of Mother India; a sacrificing, selfless figure embodying the nation consequently defined many Hindu campaigns of independence.

Shiv Prasad Gupta, ‘a staunch nationalist and wealthy person of Banaras’[37] who had a ‘love for Hindutva, Hindi and Bharat Mata’[38], funded and constructed the Bharat Mata temple in 1936, during the late colonial period. The mandir [temple] ‘personified a symbol of pride, faith and confidence in Bharat, where all could express their loyalty and dedication to the nation in terms of devotion and sacrifice to the cause of one’s sacred motherland.’[39] However the mandir did not centralize ‘the female figure representing Mother India… and instead concretised into a political and geographical body of a map.’[40] The purpose of this was to conflate Hindu nationalism with India’s land wherein the map ‘was imagined as ‘mother’, as a gendered entity in a temple, inventing a tradition, and linking it to a poetics of love and longing.’[41] Mother was therefore present in ‘cities, districts, rivers and mountains’[42] and commitment to ‘mother as map as nation also served to define loyal political citizenry.’[43] Perhaps most interestingly, the archetypal dutiful child of the nation was none other than mother’s ‘male Hindu sons of the nation, who were promoted as constituting an ideal Indian.’[44] Coveting the preservation of mother’s remaining purity, which had been tainted by colonial powers was paramount, as this would symbolically sustain the rhetoric of Hindu nationalism. Substantiating this is the mandir’s inscription of ‘Vande Mataram’ at its gates, signalling that ‘it defined national identity in terms of Hindu piety and activism’[45] which is additionally rooted in quelling the impurities perceived by British officials and Christian missionaries. Not only did this perpetuate the view of women as eternal victims, but the very women on which the nationalist campaign was based, were equally alienated, as substantiated by M.K Gandhi’s approach to women. Although a staunch critic of ‘negative social norms and exploitative customs (such as child marriage, dowry system, enforced widowhood and so on… However, for him, ‘purification’ and ‘virtuous womanhood’ were important endeavours to obtain swaraj [self-governance].’[46] Emphases on purity amongst women estranged a vast percentage of the Indian population, on the basis that certain castes, occupations, and lifestyle choices were not in accordance, or rather, in obedience to expectations of womanhood and femininity.

Although this paper does not explore the women’s movement in India, it is important to note the instrumental organizations that dominated the field, including the Women’s Indian Association (WIA), the National Council of Women in India (NCWI) and the All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC). My investigation has not sought to overlook the magnitude of these contributions as I do not wish to diminish women’s roles in religious and national movements, but rather delineate the most prominent methods of identity formation during late colonial rule. What then do the outlined historical events dictate with regards to the centrality of women in religious and national identity formation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Both the Bengal Sati Regulation (1829) and the insurgence of Mother India are seemingly transfixed with the idea of emancipating and liberating India’s women. These two methods of acquiring freedom are entirely juxtapositional, with the former marking a top-down approach and the latter indicating a rise from the grass roots. Despite the heterogeneity apparent in the motivations of the coloniser and the colonised man, one cannot help but observe their shared propensity to paradoxically limiting women. However while both rely almost entirely on the victimization and alienation of women,  the coloniser demarcates the female body, whilst the colonised man sanctuarizes her.

The ancient lawgiver Manu is credited by some with creating ‘a cultural ecosystem where women were not only overlooked but also were seen as dependent creatures that can never be independent in thinking and action’[47], which is an ideological approach internalized by both colonial officials and anti-colonial activists. Their principles rest upon the involvement of these women, their bodies, and all that they represent, however both group’s proximity to them demands an unwavering submission that not only exploits their presence but decentres them as people and instead centres them as symbols and objects. Therefore it can be concluded that if women were only privileged with involvement as superslaves or superhumans, they were in fact not central to religious and identity formations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

[1] Chitnis, Varsha, and Danaya Wright. "Legacy of Colonialism: Law and Women's Rights in India." Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 64 (2007): 1346

[2] Chancey, Karen. "The Star in the East: the Controversy over Christian Missions to India, 1805–1813." The Historian 60, no. 3 (1998): 511

[3] Nrugham, Latha. "Sati-suicide by widows sanctioned by Hindu scriptures and society?." Suicidologi 18, no. 1 (2013): 18

[4] Nrugham, Sati: 18

[5] Nrugham, Sati: 18

[6] Nrugham, Sati: 18

[7] Nrugham, Sati: 18

[8] Nrugham, Sati: 19

[9] Nrugham, Sati: 19

[10] Michaels, Axel. Hinduism: past and present. Princeton University Press, 2004: 149

[11] Nrugham, Sati: 19

[12] Sharma, Arvind. Sati: Historical and phenomenological essays. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1988: 3

[13] Nandy, Ashis, and American Council of Learned Societies. 1988. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. ACLS Humanities E-Book. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 4

[14] Morris, Rosalind C., ed. Can the subaltern speak?: Reflections on the history of an idea. Columbia University Press, 2010: 48

[15] Taranath, Anupama. “Disrupting Colonial Modernity: Indian Courtesans and Literary Cultures, 1888–1912.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2000: 9

[16] Laird, M. A. “The Contribution of the Serampore Missionaries to Education in Bengal, 1793–1837.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 31, no. 1 (1968): 92–112.

[17] Chancey, The Star in the East, 510

[18] Chancey, The Star in the East, 511

[19] Doss, M. Christhu. "Religions, Women and Discourse of Modernity in Colonial South India." Religions 13, no. 12 (2022): 1225

[20] Chancey, The Star in the East, 507

[21] Sharma, Sati: 7

[22] Sharma, Sati: 7

[23] Mani, Lata. Contentious traditions: The debate on sati in colonial India. Univ of California Press, 1998: 95

[24] Mani, Contentious traditions: 97

[25] Mani, Contentious traditions: 97-8

[26] Mani, Contentious traditions: 97

[27] Mani, Contentious traditions: 97

[28] Major, Andrea. Sovereignty and social reform in India: British colonialism and the campaign against sati, 1830-1860. Routledge, 2010: 93

[29] Sharma, Sati: 9

[30] Doss, ‘Religions, Women and Discourse of Modernity’: 1225

[31] Major, Andrea. "A question of rites? Perspectives on the colonial encounter with sati." History compass 4, no. 5 (2006): 785

[32] Mukherjee, Bidisha. "NATION AS MOTHERLAND: DECONSTRUCTING THE IMAGE OF “BHARAT MATA”.": 583

[33] Mukherjee, “NATION AS MOTHERLAND”: 584

[34] Sarkar, Tanika. "Birth of a Goddess:'Vande Mataram'," Anandamath", and Hindu Nationhood." Economic and Political Weekly (2006): 3963

[35] Mukherjee, “NATION AS MOTHERLAND”: 584

[36] Gupta, Charu. "The Icon of the Mother: Bharat Mata, Matri Bhasha and Gua Mata." In Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India, pp. 196-221. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2001: 4291

[37] Gupta, “The Icon of the Mother”: 4292

[38] Ibid

[39] Ibid

[40] Ibid

[41] Ibid

[42] Ibid

[43] Ibid

[44] Ibid

[45] Gupta, “The Icon of the Mother”: 4293

[46] Parmar, Vandana. "MK Gandhi and Question of Women." International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science 4, no. 7 (2020): 642

[47] Doss, ‘Religions, Women and Discourse of Modernity’: 1226

Bibliography:

Chancey, Karen. "the Star in the East: the Controversy over Christian Missions to India, 1805–1813." The Historian 60, no. 3 (1998): 507-522.

Chitnis, Varsha, and Danaya Wright. "Legacy of Colonialism: Law and Women's Rights in India." Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 64 (2007)

Doss, M. Christhu. "Religions, Women and Discourse of Modernity in Colonial South India." Religions 13, no. 12 (2022): 1225.

Gupta, Charu. "The Icon of the Mother: Bharat Mata, Matri Bhasha and Gua Mata." In Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India, pp. 196-221. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2001.

Laird, Michael Andrew. "The contribution of the Serampore missionaries to education in Bengal, 1793–1837." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 31, no. 1 (1968): 92-112.

Major, Andrea. "A question of rites? Perspectives on the colonial encounter with sati." History compass 4, no. 5 (2006): 780-799.

Major, Andrea. Sovereignty and social reform in India: British colonialism and the campaign against sati, 1830-1860. Routledge, 2010.

Mani, Lata. Contentious traditions: The debate on sati in colonial India. Univ of California Press, 1998

Michaels, Axel. Hinduism: past and present. Princeotn University Press, 2004

Morris, Rosalind C., ed. Can the subaltern speak?: Reflections on the history of an idea. Columbia University Press, 2010.

Mukherjee, Bidisha. "NATION AS MOTHERLAND: DECONSTRUCTING THE IMAGE OF “BHARAT MATA”.” IMPACT: International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Literature Vol 7, Issue 2 (2019)

Nandy, Ashis, and American Council of Learned Societies. 1988. The Intimate Enemy : Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. ACLS Humanities E-Book. New Delhi: Oxford University Press

Nrugham, Latha. "Sati-suicide by widows sanctioned by Hindu scriptures and society?." Suicidologi 18, no. 1 (2013).

Parmar, Vandana. "MK Gandhi and Question of Women." International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science 4, no. 7 (2020): 642-644.

Sarkar, Tanika. "Birth of a Goddess:'Vande Mataram'," Anandamath", and Hindu Nationhood." Economic and Political Weekly (2006): 3959-3969.

Sharma, Arvind. Sati: Historical and phenomenological essays. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1988.

Taranath, Anupama. “Disrupting Colonial Modernity: Indian Courtesans and Literary Cultures, 1888–1912.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2000.