The subject of Sati (Suttee) or Hindu rituals of widow-burning in India has generated enormous scholarship on Hinduism, gender, and modernity, even if the term Sati has multiple meanings, which are discussed in this article. While the academic fascination with Sati remains deeply invested in European scholarship and the Western gaze, recent events from the last two decades have led to renewed debates on Sati that have revealed complex perspectives relevant for discussions on gender and religion in India.
To begin with research that analyzed the representation of Sati in Europe, Figueira’s research on the German representation of Sati notes the divergences within European attitudes, which exhibit a binary in attitudes between denouncing heathenism on the one hand and lionizing the Sati as a remarkable self-dedicatory act on the other [1]. Fisch’s research (translated from German) studied the practice of Sati within the contexts of global funerary practices that accorded communities...
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Dandekar, D. (2018). Sati (Suttee). In: Jain, P., Sherma, R., Khanna, M. (eds) Hinduism and Tribal Religions. Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1036-5_249-1
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