Burning Women: Widows, Witches, And Early Modern European Travelers In India; Author: Banerjee, Pompa; Hardback; Book

Author: Banerjee, Pompa
Early Modern Cultural Studies; Hardback; Book
256 pages
Published: January 2003
Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1403960186

In early modern Europe, the circulation of visual and verbal transmissions of sati, or Hindu widowburning, not only informed responses to the ritualized violence of Hindu culture, but also intersected in fascinating ways with specifically European forms of ritualized violence and European constructions of gender ideology. European accounts of women being burned in India uncannily commented on the burnings of women as witches and criminal wives in Europe. When Europeans narrated their accounts of sati, perhaps the most striking illustration of Hindu patriarchal violence, they did notspecifically connect the act of widowburning to a corresponding European signifier: the gruesome ceremonial burnings of women as witches. In inferring a history from silenced voices and highlighting tPompa Banerjee explores early modern accounts and images of burning women bringing together travellers' accounts on sati in India with the burning of witches in EM Europe, a link that contemporary observers studiously repressed.