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Sati (Self-Immolation by a widow)
Sati i.e. self-immolation by a widow would normally be looked upon as a negative aspect of culture. When confronted with questions as to why such a practice should have existed, a student of history with misplaced national pride would try to explain away such practices.
According to Hindu mythology, Sati the wife of Dakhsha was so overcome at the demise of her husband that she immolated herself on his funeral pyre and burnt herself to ashes. Since then her name 'Sati' has come to be symptomatic of self-immolation by a widow.
Today Sati is illegal, it is also generally looked down upon but it continues to exist in the rural corners of our country. One still does hear of stray incidents of woman being forced to or trying to commit Sati. The country owes the abolition of this deplorable practice to the crusading efforts of Raja Rammohan Roy the 18th century social reformer.
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