Word: sugan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
...city of Jodhpur (pop. 250,000) last week, a woman named Sugan Kunwar mourned her husband, Brigadier Jabar Singh. The brigadier had been a man who played polo, spoke English with an Oxford accent and administered the Maharajah of Jodhpur's estates and palaces; but Sugan, married to him for 27 years, had chosen to remain in the veiled seclusion of purdah. When the brigadier died, Sugan put on her wedding dress of red silk, threaded with gold, and tied jasmine and gold ornaments into her black and lustrous hair...
Early the following morning, about 500 Rajasthanis gathered before the brigadier's funeral pyre. Of the brief time that followed, those who saw it tell two stories: some claim that Sugan, resplendent in her wedding dress, wrenched free from those who restrained her and threw herself into the flames; others, that she sat calm and upright upon the unlit pyre, her husband's head cradled in her lap, while relatives kindled the faggots. "All we know," said the Jodhpur police, "is that the lady died in the fire. Her intention seems to have been a well-kept family...
...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...