Bring back the Suttee!

Bring back the tradition of burning widows along with their deceased husbands on the funeral pyre.

That would satisfy the insatiable taste of India bound western journalists who fantasize, mentally masturbate at the prospect and excitement of witnessing such an event and write about it, in many words and descriptions, together with flowery narrations of the scene and background, the colors and pagan rites, sounds and hymns, emotions and wailings, the prelude and aftermath, setting a grim deceiving tone to qualify the mood, and then increase the frenzy of the narration like a symphony note spiraling up to a sharp shrill octave, interspersed with silent pontifications from a 'humane' viewpoint of which the western civilization believes to have a monopoly - thus deriving the moral authority to judge other supposedly lower cultures, to end in a climax of a memorable quote, one that is bound to make an impact - a lasting one... ... to later stand triumphant under the warm limelight, bowing to accolades and standing ovation for sensitive, remarkably life-like reporting.

For the pleasure of these journalists and sensation-seeking photo-reporters, bring it all back. Let them have the real thing. Though they don't tire of finding the crappiest excuse or pretext to bring it up and mention it., give them the real deal. Give them a Sattee. The agony of death by fire is far tamer than the pangs of pain from the fire of temptation to write about Sattee that rages in the hearts of those like Andrea Bruce. They are forced to write about it partially out of the conditioning they undergo at the altars of western liberal education and partially out of lust for the rewards of writing on these topics.

Andrea Bruce does it so flawlessly : Quote: The subject matter was about the Widows of Varanasi - well selected - a leaf out of the 'Water' movie where Deepa Mehta hiding from behind a facade of artistic prerogative succeeded to profit immensely both in terms of millions of dollars as well as popularity and orgasmic praises, from her carefully orchestrated film with dramatic, touching and shocking images of the hardships of Indian widowhood. It was as good as pimping those very widows - that would have only been a desecration of their physical self, while this newer digital avatar of pimping is by capturing their aged bodies draped with old cotton cloth meant to hide their modesty on film for millions to watch who would pay and praise the film-maker, silently abusing the widow's rights to privacy and self-respect, selling their pity, secretly reveling in the opportunity of a good story, and taking advantage of their sorrows. Deepa Mehta would talk about her own freedom of expression, but its raging silence when asked about the real impact if any on the Widows on whom the film is based. Is there a doubt as to who really benefitted from that film? Today, Andrea Bruce has earned her monthly salary out of this very sort of pimping she calls Photo-journalism.

The motivation is weakly artistic, rather overtly to quench the thirst of self-importance while satisfying the hunger of their readers/patrons for their daily emotional and curiosity fixes.

From where she prays on the Ganges River, Mahum is aware of the fires and smells of Harishchandra Ghat cremation grounds, where her husband was cremated 17 years ago. Widows are expected to devote the remainder of their lives to the memory of their husbands.
By the third morning, Mahum welcomed me by putting her cool hand on my cheek. This is the feeling I think most of us photographers yearn for -- to be invisible and accepted at the same time.

Mahum: Does she realise that she is being paraded before the whole world in all her pitiable condition? Did she know that her story wins thousands of dollars in salary for the deceptively sympathetic listenerwho seemed to lend her a compassionate ear and heard her out? Can she be told that she was approached not out of pity, but to obtain a character for their story? How will she feel if she learns that her narration matters more than herself? That she is just a faceless source for a creative storyline?

Sattee is but forgotten in India, rare as it is, and well condemned by all. But Andrea sees the connection and relevance. Widows? Oh Sattee!! How can she not give in into the temptation of mentioning this word in the context of widows? After all it is the mystical India - the nation of unwashed pagans she is covering and Sattee is at the top of the list of words a western journalist dreams to mention! Although long defunct, they beat the drums of Sattee to keep it alive for the western audience. It is an unparalled attention winner, a word that conjures up mental images of uncivilized brutality so characteristic of the old world surviving civilizations such as India.

Now, thanks to the Water film of Deepa Mehta, Widows of Varanasi will become a perpetual topic for western journalists to write about. The widows have just earned the honour of mention in the 'Must Write' list of Western Journalism.

Women were hunted down as witches and burned at the stake in the West around the same time when proud and brave Rajput women of besieged towns sent their warrior husbands, brothers and fathers to a sure death war and committed their own bodies to the Fire to destroytheir bodies into ashes preventing the Moslem invading hordes from hunting for their dead bodies to rape. That too was Sattee.

Anyway, we had Francois Gautier telling us way back in January 2000 in his article, 'India's Foreign Observers (Hinduism Today Magazine)

Foreign journalists and photographers covering India are generally interested in three kinds of India. First is the macabre and the negative: the widows of Benares, the caste system as practiced in Bihar, the rat temple, kidney traffic in Tamil Nadu, the slums of Calcutta, bride burning, etc. These subjects have their own truth and there do exist terrible slums, unacceptable exploitation of caste, dying people left unattended and bride burning. But by harping only on these topics, the foreign press always presents a strangely and unjustly negative image of India.

The second reporters' India is that of folklore/myth and the superfluous: Maharajas, whom Westerners are charmed by, although they are mostly irrelevant to modern India; festivals, the camel fair, kumbha melas, dance performances in Khajuraho. All these have their own beauties, but they represent only a small part of this great and vast country.

The third is the politically correct. If you give the 300 foreign correspondents posted in Delhi a subject to write about--any subject--say Ayodhya, the RSS, fanatic Hindus, secularism or recent elections, you will get 298 articles which will say more or less the same thing. This is not to say that there are no sincere Western journalists who write serious stories which do homage to India's greatness and immense culture, but they are rare. And at the end, the result is more or less the same: a downgrading of India, a constant harping on an anti-Christian "Hindu fundamentalism," conveniently forgetting to mention that Christians have found refuge in this country for 2,000 years and have often taken advantage of this Hindu tolerance.

'.

India's Foreign Observers

How Western reports maintain the stereotype

By Francois Gautier, Pondicherry

Foreign journalists and photographers covering India are generally interested in three kinds of India. First is the macabre and the negative: the widows of Benares, the caste system as practiced in Bihar, the rat temple, kidney traffic in Tamil Nadu, the slums of Calcutta, bride burning, etc. These subjects have their own truth and there do exist terrible slums, unacceptable exploitation of caste, dying people left unattended and bride burning. But by harping only on these topics, the foreign press always presents a strangely and unjustly negative image of India.

The second reporters' India is that of folklore/myth and the superfluous: Maharajas, whom Westerners are charmed by, although they are mostly irrelevant to modern India; festivals, the camel fair, kumbha melas, dance performances in Khajuraho. All these have their own beauties, but they represent only a small part of this great and vast country.

The third is the politically correct. If you give the 300 foreign correspondents posted in Delhi a subject to write about--any subject--say Ayodhya, the RSS, fanatic Hindus, secularism or recent elections, you will get 298 articles which will say more or less the same thing. This is not to say that there are no sincere Western journalists who write serious stories which do homage to India's greatness and immense culture, but they are rare. And at the end, the result is more or less the same: a downgrading of India, a constant harping on an anti-Christian "Hindu fundamentalism," conveniently forgetting to mention that Christians have found refuge in this country for 2,000 years and have often taken advantage of this Hindu tolerance.

These three kinds of reporting about India have been going on for fifty years, and very few Indians have dared--or bothered--to complain. But the interesting question is: Why is the foreign press always harping on the negative, the folklore or the politically correct? Why this uniformity of views in a country which is so ancient, so diverse and profound that there are thousands of extraordinary topics which could be exploited?

The first reason is that the foreign correspondent comes to the job with narrowly fixed ideas about India. Then, we Western journalists are influenced by what is said about India in the "serious" books of distinguished Indologists, who have it all wrong: the supposed invasion of India by the Aryans (which never happened); the great achievements of the Moghul culture (borrowed from Hindu genius); the supposed fanaticism of Hindu social and political movements; the need for modern India to be "secular." These historians have a very strong hold on the image of India abroad.

The second factor is simple: India is a vast and complicated country, often contradictory, full of paradoxes. The foreign correspondent turns for advice to his counterpart, the Indian journalist, who is frequently witty and well informed. And here lies the crux of the matter, because Indian journalists are often the worst enemies of their own country--they are more secular than the secular, more anti-India than its worst adversaries and often play the hands of India's foes. We have then come into full circle: we thought that the Western press was negative about India, out of a personal bias, but we have found that it is influenced by the Indian press. We thought that the Indian press was negative about its own country, because of some dark, skeptical, self-destructive streak in itself, but we found out that it was a tendency generated by the Congress, which in turn was manipulated by its British masters. And thus, we have come full circle.

We have got to change the image of India. Who in the West wants to do business with a country with a backward image, one associated with slums and bureaucratic inefficiency? The Western press is not playing its true role of providing objective information. But that should not be a problem--look at China: less than thirty years ago it was considered in the West as the "Red Devil," a feudal country, closed to the world. Then in 1971 Nixon went there and suddenly it became acceptable to do business in China. Today it enjoys in the West an image of a fast-forward, modern nation--although the Chinese killed a million Tibetans, gave Pakistan nuclear technology and still claims part of Indian territory. Many of us are trying to change India's image abroad. But unless the Nehruvian legacy of bureaucracy and centralization is discarded, unless India starts looking at herself differently, unless its people have a little more pride in being Indian, there is very little we can do.

Francois Gautier,is correspondent in South Asia for Le Figaro, France's largest circulated newspaper.