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French travellers, during their travels in the Orient in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have always shown intense curiosity for diverse issues, besides pursuing political and commercial objectives. A theme that they were immensely interested in, and extensively wrote about in their travel- ogues is the inhuman practice of sati or widow burning in India. This issue has received much scholarly attention, yet a lacuna persists in the literature, as the varied observations and impressions of French travellers about the custom have not been properly explored. Using specifically the accounts of French travellers and adventurers (both translated and untranslated) about India, this article highlights the diverse and hitherto understudied perceptions of these travellers about sati as practiced in Mughal India. With regard to sati, Gayatri Spivak's essay, 'Can the Subaltern Speak?',1 raises a valid point that whatever details of the practice one gets, are from the accounts of the British colonial officials or upper-caste Hindu social reformers, as there was no written account on the narrative of sati -performing-widow herself. She elaborates her argument by showing that while the ban on sati by the colonial government was, in the colonial perception, an act of 'white men saving brown women from brown men', Indian nationalists emphasised on the heroism of'women [who] wanted to die' through self-immolation. She comes to a conclusion that subaltern (as woman) were not allowed to speak.2 Lata Mani goes a step further to raise a question: 'Can she (the woman immolating herself) be heard?'3 According to her, woman was neither the subject nor even the primary object of concern in the contestations among the colonial rulers, Christian missionaries and the local elite.4 This argument has been questioned by Urna Narayan5 who argues that Mani disavows the woman's desire to become a sati. In a similar vein, Catherine Weinberger-Thomas6 perceives sati as an act of devotional suicide, fidelity and heroism. This essay tries to show that the arguments of both Mani and Thomas were already mentioned by different French voyagers much before the establishment of colonial empire in India. These diverse facets recorded by French voyagers have enormous relevance in order to understand their opinion about sati of the 'Oriental' world.
The Sati System
In contemporary world, sati has become the contested...