India is a land of many contradictions. Unique in its Goddess lineage of spiritual traditions and deification, it carries shameful smudges such as Sati and Dowry deaths as paradoxical values, which debase and terrorize women through the ages. Sati however has stood out as the most macabre of them all, where a living being is persuaded to burn alive with a dead husband. Many sociological and moral explanations have been offered by scholars as a burgeoning ‘modern’ state struggles with understanding where exactly does its gender philosophy lie.

Frankly, the source does indeed begin with Sita. Known for little else through the ages than her complete subjugation to the irrational ethics of her husband Ram, she is little more than a totem for the water-tight ‘morality/chastity’ icon that the Ramayana spins around her. Evident colloquially, in the way her name became synonymous with virtuous, self-negating wifehood. Now the crucial marker here is that Sita was none other than a princess in her own right, the wife of a God, known for great characteristics etc. And yet she had no independent value, self than that assigned by her marriage, husband, subjects especially when it came to her sexual autonomy.

For instance we can safely assume that ‘all concerned’ thought that Ravana abducted her to rape and ‘have his way ‘ with her, since that is the ultimate revenge against any man. Surely none would suggest (especially Ram) that Sita was guilty of some consensual, happy times with Ravana to chase away her boredom and endless wait for the rescue team (seeing that she was without e-mail, SMS or any telecom network with the home team). Right then, if Ravana was this big ogre, king and undisputed Goliath of Lanka, forced and raped the beautiful Sita, then whose fault was it anyways??

Well for starters Ram’s, for leaving a stunning wife unprotected in a forest, Lakshman (Ram’s arrogant little bro) for being rude and obnoxious to Swaroopnakha (Ravana’s sister who was smitten with Lakshman and came to flirt with him and he in impeccable social manner chopped off her nose) and finally Ravana’s, for rather than fighting it out like a man he went and kidnapped a woman to settle scores. And of course we can also blame the times, for with some fast-moving war jets, ground to air missiles etc, the matter would have been over, before anyone could focus on Ravana and his manly tools. Oops and I nearly forgot to blame Mum Kekaiyee, whose step-mom gene started it all in the first place for she had Ram banished for 14 years to the jungle, or then why leave wimpy Dad Dasharath out of it for not informing her that step-mom genes made bad plots in God tales and sent her packing to the jungle for a start. See the whole tale is about less than kosher people no? And this is the epic where people dive deep for spiritual direction! Sigh!!

Now clearly since nowhere was this Sita’s fault, if she were raped i.e. no longer ‘chaste’ then rather than all the above characters being chastised, flogged where necessary and the matter of rape (or suggested rape as in this case) be settled as the man’s fault once and for all, we had the Divine Lords set the stage for how rape became a woman’s fault, damned her from home hearth and society etc. etc. And the rest that you know as the cultural and perhaps legal responses to rape is as they say plain history.

So now, once Divine Will settled Sita as the half which gets cast away, it also leaves us with the heritage that without husband there is little value, reason to breathe. I mean it’s not as if kosher women’s shelters like Valmiki’s ashram abound or anything. So where can the women go? In Bengal etc for many years widows, young (all the way down to 5 yrs) and old, were packed off to Benaras for life where priests and anyone else had them as prasad in God’s city. Perhaps the numbers were getting out of hand so burning them on the pyre was cleaner, quicker less taxing for the priest’s libido etc. Sounds plausible?

There is another mythological reference to the term Sati for those who may bring it up here. The word ‘Sati’ finds it origin from the myth of Shiva’s wife Sati who immolated herself in the yagna fire. According to this myth when Sati found that Daksha, her father, had not invited Shiva to the ceremony she insisted on knowing the reason. Daksha, began to insult and make fun of Shiva for being a vagrant, fakir not fit to be called into gentile company. The other sages and gods (obviously hugely envious of Shiva) joined in and enraged and humiliated Sati jumped right into the yagna fire and ended her life. Just to add, this also basically destroyed the ritual fire, its spiritual purpose and the entire ceremony, throwing everyone into panic and fear. Technically the end of this story yields Sati’s body falling in 12 pieces in different parts of India creating historic Shakti piths (centers) deified as primal Shakti energy centers.

This story nowhere links with some weak self-effacement or worthlessness but a story of focused rage and a rather autonomous (and innovative) act of fixing the power hegemony of that time, unleashing her husband’s rage (Shiva goes totally ballistic after this and tandavs them all to dust) and immortalizing the land with autonomous Shakti powers. How could this tale possibly be linked to the death pyre nonsense where women are murdered with impunity??

Sita walking into the fire to prove ‘purity’ on the other hand could be easily twisted to say, well that’s what wives should do and hey if the fire doesn’t get her we’ll worry about it later. Anyways with a dead husband, the fire is going to ensure that she be kept pure as his property and the only way now is to keep her dead! Oh! and to ensure she’s not walking out of this one, we’ll just rearrange the letters of her name for good measure. Sati will make sure that she is the Sita who burns.

Myths are nothing more than collective aspirations of man’s ideals. That is how man creates Gods and Goddesses to project an ideal which collective society can aspire too. Naturally then, myths will be told and re-told to fit the picture of dominant thought and desire. Fossilizing them in religious sentiment traps man’s (and society’s) evolution and nowhere is it more obvious than the trap that it sets up for exploiting and damaging a group/gender/race. Ruling something sacrilege and sacrosanct is a perfect way to stop enquiry and hence growth. Mercifully, what makes Indian wisdom so unique and rich is that it leaves itself open to such enquiry.

For instance, there is intimate equation drawn between Sita and the earth (nature). In Vedic literature, Sita is regarded as a fertility goddess, worshipped by farmers. In the Rig Veda Sita is mentioned as the earth’s furrow, propitiated for her potential fruitfulness and fertility, as the source of life. Valmiki’s choice of Sita, as the heroine of his Ramayana, was because of this divine quality of the deity. Sita’s ‘birth’ from a furrow while her adoptive father Janak is ploughing in the field emphasizes this dimension of her nature.

Sita’s connectivity to nature is mentioned throughout the epic. She is described as talking to plants, trees and animals. Animals are mentioned to have turned their heads towards the direction, which Ravana had taken after kidnapping Sita. The most prominent expression of Sita’s association with nature and earth is the inability of even ‘Agni’ the fire god to burn her body. And finally Sita’s request to be reunited with Mother Earth. The epic describes this as the splitting of the earth engulfing Sita into its depth.

Perhaps the subtle strains of Valmiki’s tale were lost on most, for he weaves through Sita’s femininity where depth, subtlety and her sexuality cannot be contained in the physical confines of a marriage, kingdom or society. Reuniting the males, who interact through her (father and sons) she returns to her autonomy. Sita’s (re) entry into the welcoming depths of the earth, in fact signifies the vastness and singularity of her depths, sexual and emotional. The only character in the whole tale, who steps out of the dance and merges with her cosmic self.