Murderous Ritual versus Devotional Custom: The Rhetoric and Ritual of Sati and Women’s Subjectivity in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies

Barnali Sarkar

doi:10.3390/h3030283

Abstract

The representation of the practice of sati, the immolation of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyre, has garnered interest for long from postcolonial and feminist discourses among others. While advocates of Western modernity perceive sati as a murderous ritual, the proponents of orthodox Hinduism, on the contrary, claim sati to be a courageous cult of “wifely devotion”. In both bigoted beliefs, as poststructuralists observe, women largely appear as “mute objects”. Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008) brilliantly sidelines the conundrum of polarizing representation of sati along the East-West axis and reflects instead the subjective experience of women as sati. The article examines how the rhetoric and ritual of sati in the novel enable marginalized women to acquire consciousness of their subjectivity in a colonized society. To this end, the paper analyzes deconstructive readings of sati, such as by Gayatri Spivak, and explores the way the novel uses religion as a ploy, which, instead of perpetrating violence, confers a subjective entity on the sati that can even subvert the constrictive norms of a colonized society.

Highlights

The custom of sati, the practice of immolation of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyre, has been at the center of debate over the representation of the East in texts and paintings by the West
It is often argued that it is the misogynist colonial attitude to Hindu women which came to light with the codification of Hindu law and its customs that denied women rights to their property and this policy was hardly related to the rules of Smritis [15]. Spivak in her seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” shifts the blame on to the representation of sati in texts. She argues that while much attention has been allowed to settle on the practice of sati as a blot on Indian culture, few attempts have been made to unearth the vast body of misogynistic ideology knitted into the fabric of Indian society, and Indian women, in the process, who had to go through such customs, are often represented as objects of study ([16], pp. 302–03)
Rather it is argued that, for Deeti, the rhetoric and ritual of the cult of sati serve as a means by which she acquires subjectivity and authority over the course of her life, which aid in the formation of her consciousness that nullifies the gender-restrictive norms of a colonized society

Summary

Introduction

The custom of sati, the practice of immolation of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyre, has been at the center of debate over the representation of the East in texts and paintings by the West. The essay claims to show how the text’s representation of sati departs from traditional explanations of sati as an entirely religious practice since the novel, instead of focusing on the rite itself, emphasizes the subjective consciousness of the woman who undertakes the rite. To this end, the article relies principally on deconstructive readings of Hindu religious texts such as those proposed by Gayatri Spivak and Sakuntala Narasimhan.

Discourses–Counter Discourses and the Problem of Representing Sati

The Background of Sati and the Contrasting Reality

Sati and Her Religious Creed

The Ideology of Subjugation and the Celebration of Self-Sacrifice

Reversals of Rules

Conclusions