BANNING RITUAL SLAUGHTER

Mohan Guruswamy 

I have been getting messages to suggest that my comments on banning animal sacrifices in temples and for rituals did not go down well with some people. Some said it amounted to interference with religion. Others said it was as much a cultural practice as it was a sacred ritual. Some of these "some" people are fairly high up in life and their view matters.

It reminded me of what William Bentick, Viceroy said in 1826 about sati. When some Hindu bhadralok protested to him that it was a traditional practice, he just said" "In my country we have a tradition too. When a person kills or is forces someone to die, we just say Hang the blighter!" My custom is better than yours.

An 1829 reported statistics for the period 1815-1824 yields a total of 5997 instances of sati for the Bengal presidency in that period, i.e., in average 600 per year. In the 575 reported cases from 1823, for example, 41 percent were Brahmins, some 6 percent were Kshatriyas, whereas 2 percent were Vaishiyas, and 51 percent Sudras. In Banaras, though, in the 1815-1828 British records, the upper castes were only for two years represented with less than 70% of the total ; in 1821, all sati were from the upper castes there.

When British rule extended to all parts of the country by 1842, Sir Charles Napier, Commander-in-Chief replied to protests saying :"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

Hindu texts such the Rig Veda are quite contradictory about sati. The Rig Veda states: "Let these women, whose husbands are worthy and are living, enter the house with ghee (applied) as collyrium (to their eyes). Let these wives first step into the house, tearless without any affliction and well adorned.(RV 10.18.7). But it also states in teh following verse: "Rise, come unto the world of life, O woman — come, he is lifeless by whose side thou liest. Wifehood with this thy husband was thy portion, who took thy hand and wooed thee as a lover." (RV 10.18.😎

The Portuguese abolished sati in 1515, but most Indian princely states did so only after the British enactment. Benticks enactment boldly stated: 

"The practice of suttee, or of burning or burying alive the widows of Hindus, is revolting to the feelings of human nature; it is nowhere enjoined by the religion of the Hindus as an imperative duty; on the contrary a life of purity and retirement on the part of the widow is more especially and prefera-bly inculcated, and by a vast majority of that people throughout India the practice is not kept up, nor observed: in some extensive districts it does not exist: in those in which it has been most frequent it is notorious that in many instances acts of atrocity have been perpetrated which have been shocking to the Hindus themselves, and in their eyes unlawful and wicked. The measures hitherto adopted to discourage and prevent such acts have failed of success, and the governor-general in council is deeply impressed with the conviction that the abuses in question cannot be effectually put an end to without abolishing the practice altogether. Actuated by these considerations the governor-general in council, without intending to depart from one of the first and most important principles of the system of British government in India, that all classes of the people be secure in the observance of their religious usages so long as that system can be adhered to without violation of the paramount dictates of justice and humanity, has deemed it right to establish the following rules, which are hereby enacted to be in force from the time of their promulgation throughout the territories immediately subject to the presidency of Fort William."

I say let the Narendra Modi government be the one that gave religion back its humanity by banning animal sacrifice as a religious ritual. Narendra Modi has shown he can appropriate other personas, as he has done with MK Gandhi now. This is good. Now is the time for him to become the Raja Ram Mohan Roy of our times, by begining the full reform of Hindu samaj, its laws and practices.