Death by Fire

About Death by Fire

The Indian village of Deorala in Rajasthan is neither remote nor feudal. There is running water and electricity, and the villagers have had television for over twenty years. On 4 September 1987, before a crowd of several thousand people, mostly men, eighteen-year-old Roop Kanwar was burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre, dressed in her bridal finery. The apparent revival of an ancient tradition opened old wounds in Indian society and focussed world attention on the status and treatment of women in modern India. The ancient practise of sati - the self-immolation of a woman on her husband's funeral pyre - was outlawed by the British administration in India in 1829. Since Independence, the practice was widely believed to have died out. The fate of Roop Kanwar changed that perception. This book is part journey through the India that the author knows and loves, part exploration of the enigma that India still remains in the minds of many. Starting with Roop Kanwar, Sen enters the worlds of three women: a goddess, a burned bride, and a murderess and shows how, in this society in which ancient and modern apparently comfortably co-exist, there is increasingly cause for real alarm. She creates an image of a state in which political turmoil is constantly at the surface, and in which the role of women is being constantly redefined