Week 9 Representing Sati: Continuities and Discontinuities – Rajeswari Sunder Rajan – Castle

The paradox in this article makes me sad. The Indian widows in the precolonial period were sacrificed to the crucial ritual that they were to choose or forced to be burned alive. And even though widows in the British India were emancipated from the ritual, their lives were still miserable, living in death for the pressure of the tradition. Rajan tells me well to understand the paradox through the three different periods: precolonial, colonial and postcolonial working along with feminist literatures.