Something like rights? Faith, law and widow immolation debates in colonial Bengal
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7214146 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tanika Sarkar (Jawaharlal Nehru University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 295-320 |
| Publication date | 2012-08-28 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0019464612455276 |
| OpenAlex | W1979418784 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 12 |
The article straddles two separate but intertwined registers. One is the interface between faith and law under early colonial rule. I explore this through the lens of colonial governance of immolations of Hindu widows. The other is the gradual transmutation of an idea or a word: consent, the widow’s consent to burning alive. The early colonial state formally institutionalised the widow’s consent as the basis for all lawful immolations. That, I argue, eventuated, over a long stretch of time, and through a strangely twisted dialectic, in a horizon of female entitlements and immunities. Controversially but recognisably, she became the bearer of something like rights rather than of sacred prescriptions and injunctions alone. This was a development that neither the state nor its Brahman ritual specialists had actually intended
Colonialism · Dialectic · Faith · Hinduism · Islam · Political science · Sharia · Sociology · State (computer science · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,31 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2025 (13) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |