Word: jodhpur
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...still rates two wives, a 17-gun salute abroad, 19 guns at home. Because of his high status among Indian princes, and the fact that he approved independence of India despite personal losses, he was named Rajpramukh of Rajasthan, a new state made up of Jaipur, Jodhpur* and 16 other principalities. In his new lifetime job, the maharaja holds the rank, but few of the responsibilities of governor, draws an adequate salary of 18 million rupees ($3,780,000) a year. And, since his job does not require him to stay at home much, he has adapted himself...
...fever spread to neighboring Rajasthan state, where anxious parents began marrying off every tot in sight. In Jodhpur district there were 10,000 marriages in which the brides and bridegrooms were between three and twelve years of age, while in Nagor district, mothers carried babies in arms seven times around the sacred fire to solemnize marital vows...
Siva, the many-ratured and versatile god of destruction, is doing a land-office business in Jodhpur these days. Ever since the Hindu widow Sugan Kunwar Singh flung herself sacrificially-and illegally-into the flames of her husband's funeral pyre last October (TIME, Nov. 1), Jodhpur has been on a religious binge. Self-styled holy men from miles around have swarmed into town to cash in on the popular fervor. Hawkers in the city's crowded bazaar are peddling ballads and poems extolling the virtues of suttee, the accepted name for the widow's sacrifice...
...Jodhpur's cops, under the agitated command of Police Superintendent Sobhagmal Surana, have been on constant guard at the city's cremation grounds to prevent further acts of suttee. The priest who had charge of the original Singh funeral is in jail awaiting trial for making a pyre built for two. But every day and night, crowds of worshipers throng the death site with offerings that range from coconuts to gold plate, and from all sides the halt, the near hopeless and the blind hobble into the city, seeking miracles and willing to pay the holy men generously...
...police got nowhere in their inquiries. Instead, reverent Rajasthanis thronged into Jodhpur to pay homage. By week's end 100,000 people had visited the tramped-out fire, some kneeling to scoop the dust, now sacred, into their mouths. "It was a great and noble act of suttee," observed one of Sugan's male relatives. "Her name will long be remembered...