{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.015952143569292122, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003988035892323031, 'mean_word_length': 5.605263157894737, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Ritual Disintermediations: Tradition and Transformation of Sati Worship

Abstract This article examines the consecration and transformation of the customary practice of sati (widow burning) in the aftermath of a violent case of immolation in 1987 in Rajasthan, India. Focusing on debates around a penal law that was subsequently passed to criminalize all “glorification” of sati, I follow how the material substrate of the practice of worship got implicated in rivalling forms of adjudication. I draw on my historical and ethnographic research on the eponymous Rani Sati Temple in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, to disentangle the overlapping discourses of civil activism, legal intervention and ritual practice through which the specific offering of chunari (red veil) became available for signification and intervention. The article advances the concept of disintermediation to understand the shifting semiotic trajectory of the custom as it gets reflected in the changing discursive fate of this one offering.