Her Name Will Be Remembered

The British rulers banned it more than a century ago, educated Hindus deplore it, and law forbids it. But suttee, a widow's ritual suicide upon her husband's funeral pyre, still takes place occasionally in modern India, for the final test of wifely purity sends a shiver of admiration through the devout.

In the city of Jodhpur (pop. 250,000) last week, a woman named Sugan Kunwar mourned her husband, Brigadier Jabar Singh. The brigadier had been a man who played polo, spoke English with an Oxford accent and administered the Maharajah of Jodhpur's estates and palaces; but Sugan, married to him for 27 years, had chosen to remain in the veiled seclusion of purdah. When the brigadier died, Sugan put on her wedding dress of red silk, threaded with gold, and tied jasmine and gold ornaments into her black and lustrous hair.

All night long, chanting ancient Hindu laments, she kept vigil beside the body.

Early the following morning, about 500 Rajasthanis gathered before the brigadier's funeral pyre. Of the brief time that followed, those who saw it tell two stories: some claim that Sugan, resplendent in her wedding dress, wrenched free from those who restrained her and threw herself into the flames; others, that she sat calm and upright upon the unlit pyre, her husband's head cradled in her lap, while relatives kindled the faggots. "All we know," said the Jodhpur police, "is that the lady died in the fire. Her intention seems to have been a well-kept family secret."

The police got nowhere in their inquiries. Instead, reverent Rajasthanis thronged into Jodhpur to pay homage. By week's end 100,000 people had visited the tramped-out fire, some kneeling to scoop the dust, now sacred, into their mouths. "It was a great and noble act of suttee," observed one of Sugan's male relatives. "Her name will long be remembered."

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