Word: rajasthan
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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Suttee, the old Hindu custom of widow's suicide on the funeral pyre, has been banned in India since 1829; today it occurs rarely and then only in inaccessible villages in backward regions. No one had expected to see the rite performed in the large, well-kept Rajasthan capital of Jaipur (pop. 175,000). One day last week Shroff Ballabhdas, a prosperous banker and coin appraiser of Jaipur, died. His fair and dainty widow Chhimi, 35, mother of five children, put on her many jewels, donned her finest mauve silk sari and announced that she would throw herself...
...funeral procession was a mile from the crematory when two platoons of Rajasthan police intercepted it. The crowd shouted threats and curses, but the cops managed to get the widow Ballabhdas into their jeep by promising to take her direct to the cremation ground. Instead they carted her off to the police station, where, though she beat her breast and wailed that she had been betrayed, she was held in custody until the cremation was over. She was released when she agreed not to attempt suicide. Jaipur's disappointed suttee fans were not so easily pacified. All that...
...massive election was a triumph for the democratic process: of 173 million adults eligible to vote (80% of them illiterate), 100 million cast their ballots. Old customs held down the vote in some sections. Around Rajasthan, 3,000,000 women failed to get on the electoral rolls because they would not break with custom and declare their names...
Died. Shri Hanwant Singh ("Funny Face") Bahadur, 28, Maharaja of Jodhpur, amateur magician, who was trying to perform a difficult political trick: persuading Indian voters to honor his past princely glory by electing him an independent member of both the national Parliament and his own Rajasthan state assembly (TIME, Jan. 14); in the crash of his private plane in the midst of his campaign; in Jawai Bund, Rajasthan...
...Joke. "The princes are sadly mistaken," said India's Congress Party Premier Nehru last week, "if they think that they can turn back the clock of progress." Nevertheless, in Rajasthan the wise money was ten to one on the Maharaja...