ABSTRACT
The modern interpretation of Rajput culture as an exclusively male-dominated sphere is contradicted by historical evidence from the West Himalayan kingdoms, which indicates Rajputnis frequently played a leading part in politics, especially when acting as regents for minor sons. This chapter examines the roles and actions of Pahari noblewomen in the decades surrounding the transition to British rule to illustrate the creative methods devised by such Rajputnis for handling power, and the relation between these faculties and the contentious rite of sati. Commonly translated as ‘widow immolation’, sati was a multivalent, malleable concept that had already emerged as an ideal of Rajput womanhood before British rule, was significantly altered in the latter period (including its supposed ‘suppression’ in 1829), and has persisted in various forms to date (e.g., Kishwar and Vanita 1987). In scholarly circles, sati engendered heated academic debates that have extended beyond the question of female agency per se and into the wider field of postcolonial studies. Examining these debates illuminates the deep interplay between empirical facts and imaginative theorization that fed into the fabrication of colonial knowledge and that sustained its afterlife in academe today; a trajectory that is particularly discernible in the works of the prominent postcolonial discourse theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
