FREE  REFLECTION

Sati was one of the most bizarre death rituals which we have ever seen. It was a funerary practice in which recently widowed women sacrificed themselves on their husband’s funeral ceremony. It is thought to have been introduced to prevent women who had lovers from killing their wealthy husbands mostly with poison and marry with their lovers. Another claim is that it was seen as a way for a husband and wife to go into the life after death together so that they could get rid of potential female angels. In my opinion, this ritual was totally a tyrannous practice because there were many examples in which women were forced to commit suicide. Moreover, if we consider this ritual from a different perspective, I see this practice as a kind of punishment which was given to women whose husbands had died. In addition, I condemn this ritual because of the fact that it disregarded the right to life of women as it was thought that alone women had no right to live in the whole world after their husbands had died as if they counted for nothing and they were useless without their husbands. To sum up, this death ritual means not just an interesting and strange practice in the past but rather a practice which takes a tough stand against women’s main rights and also a practice which makes people think that women who are widowed have no value in no area of society.