Mound Of The Dead

For a state confronting myriad problems, sati never figured on Bihar's list of infamy and was regarded as one belonging to faraway Rajasthan. Last week that myth was shattered in the backward Shakardiha village of Samastipur. The funeral pyre was ready. The skinny corpse of 90-year-old Raghu Yadav was put in a sitting posture over the small heap of cow dung and wood and son Nageshwar Yadav, in keeping with the custom, lit the pyre. When the wood caught fire, the men retreated. Back home Nageshwar found mother Rukia Devi, 75, upset but calm. She drew one last drag of the hookah and disappeared. Nobody noticed where she went. A few hours later she was found on her husband's pyre, charred beyond recognition.

Even though it is now being bandied as the first case of 'sati' in Bihar—and performed by a backward caste woman—many people do not believe Rukia Devi really committed sati. Samastipur district magistrate Narmadeshwar Lal calls it a case of 'suicide', while SP Meghnath Ram claims she fell into the pyre due to a sudden cardiac arrest. Whatever the version, villagers now see her as 'sati devi'.

Over a furlong away from their brick-walled straw-roof house—across ripe golden wheat and corn fields—stands a three-foot-high mound of clay decorated with half-a-dozen small red triangular flags where a yellow satin cloth with religious inscriptions lies. And people from nearby areas are landing at the site in droves. A village chowkidar stands guard and nobody is allowed to enter the periphery. Prohibitory orders under section 144 have been promulgated by the administration after top district officials accompanied state women's commission chairperson Manju Prakash to the spot last week, five days after the incident. "Some vested interests, journalists and photographers were found creating unnecessary nuisance there," says district magistrate Lal, justifying the prohibitory orders.

Villagers, though shocked, say that after the news spread, people from neighbouring villages began arriving for darshan and to learn about 'sati mata'. Some outsiders impress upon the locals that a non-stop puja there would move the government to build a temple on the site. Says a villager: "If the government permits, a temple can be raised." Scared villagers, however, don't want to say anything 'on record' and are reluctant to give their names. Says a local woman: "It's a case of sati but there is no glorification."

Nageshwar stoutly denies that villagers ever demanded any temple on the spot or organised any puja. He turns furious over the reports that his mother laid down her life because she apprehended torture by her son and family. Says a frail-looking, 47-year-old Nageshwar: "She was a caring wife, mother and grandmother; what happened is very unfortunate." A labourer in a warehousing company in Assam, Nageshwar had returned to Shakardiha in January on learning about the deteriorating condition of his father. This is an extremely backward village of Dalits and Yadavs. It is from places like this that young men go off to Assam, Punjab and Haryana in search of unskilled jobs. The nearest hospital is in Rosera, 15 km away. The village doesn't even have a temple.

According to locals, Rukia Devi was devoutly religious and regularly performed puja and chanted mantras. On that fateful day, when everybody was busy with her husband's funeral, she reportedly told one of her relatives: "Don't you prepare another funeral pyre." She was neither understood nor taken seriously. She quietly left the house, holding her garland of beads, and reached the pyre of her husband that was still burning.

There are no eyewitnesses to what actually transpired. When she was found missing, her family launched a search. Someone had seen her going towards the fields.Fearing the worst, some relatives rushed to her husband's pyre only to find one more charred body. She could be identified by the thick silver bangles she wore. "We've no idea what her feelings were and absolutely no inkling of her intention," pleads a gloomy Nageshwar, whose five children, all below 10, were looked after by his mother. Whatever the true sequence of events leading to Rukia Devi's death, it's for the administration and, more so, the people to see that this barbaric medievalism doesn't return.