The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c9.93

c9.93

Though the custom of Satī was prohibited in British India in 1829, it continued to linger in Rajputana, its greatest stronghold, for about thirty years more. At the deaths of Maharana Jivan Singh of Udaipur in 1838 and of Maharaja Man Singh of Jodhpur in 1843, several women mounted the funeral pyre. Jaipur first agreed to give up the custom in 1846 and other Rajput states gradually followed. Udaipur was the greatest stronghold of the orthodox Rajput tradition and the last public case of a legal Satī took place there in 1861 at the death of Maharana Sarup Singh in 1861. But even the Rajput public opinion had by this time so strongly ranged itself against the custom that not a single one among the legal wives of the Maharana felt it necessary to accompany her husband. Frantic efforts were made to induce at least one of them to become a Satī in order to ‘preserve the honour of the Sisodias by preventing its chief being burnt all alone’. All of them however flatly refused to mount the funeral pyre. Eventually a slave girl was induced to become a Satī and was burnt with the remains of the Maharana. The incident will show how firmly even the Rajput public opinion had ranged itself against the custom by this time.