The city of Jodhpur in Rajasthan , founded in 1459 by Rao Jodha was very rich thanks to the trade in opium, sandalwood, dates and copper. The kingdom of Rathore, which Rao Jodha belonged, was also known as Marwar, or "Land of the Dead " Of course the current Jodhpur not retain anything resembling its terrible reputation, but something troubling still is ... The
Meherangarh , still maintained by the Maharaja of Jodhpur is a formidable fortress with architecture: the access is allowed by seven gates, Jayapol , built by Maharaja Man Singh in 1806 after the victory over the armies of Jaipur and Bikaner, the Fatehpol, the Gate of Victory, erected by Maharaja Ajit Singh to commemorate his victory over the Mughals. The last door is Lohapol , the Iron Gate, beside which , just after the entrance, you notice the red imprints of thirty small hands : memory of "sati" widows of Maharaja Man Singh who threw themselves on his funeral pyre in 1843, local guides say that none of them even let out a groan.
The honor of a fort in Rajasthan was not represented only by that withstood sieges, but also by the number of sati occurred at a time in defeat. Before sacrifice the women left the imprint of their hands on the walls of the fortress, after having dipped nell'hennè red: what to us appears to be the sad memory of dozens of child brides is unfortunate, really, the way where the last port Meherangarh proclaimed the inviolability of his.
dell'autoimmolazione, whose report in India dates back at least to the first century BC, was widespread and handprints, such as those on the walls of the fort in Jodhpur, where indicated sati were sacrificed in battle after the death of their husbands.
The deep reasons underlying the ritual is still deeply rooted in many parts of rural India and Rajasthan, the current center of worship of the goddess Sati Mata. After the English ban in 1829, the practice of "suttee" began to disappear across India, but in Rajasthan has continued until today in some of the most remote villages, where they were registered at least 40 cases since the proclamation of independence . In 1987
the case of Roop Kanwar , an eighteen year old college student who committed suicide on the pyre of her husband in wedding clothes, shook India with a tough debate. She had led the funeral procession and sat on the pyre with the head in the lap of her dead husband. The family had lit a fire in front of hundreds of spectators and the term had been offered to thousands of these a banquet in honor of the new Sati Mata. One of the last cases occurred in May of 2005 in a village in 'Uttar Pradesh. The woman was 70 years old and children ensure that it did not noticed anything. In March of that year a huge crowd had gathered in Pali district in Rajasthan where it was a rumor that another woman was about to sacrifice himself on the pyre of her husband. After violent clashes with the police, the woman was arrested.
