For years, it has been argued that the distinction sought to be made between a ``voluntary sati'' and an ``involuntary sati'' is a false one. There is no such thing as a ``voluntary sati''. Even if a woman ascends her husband's funeral pyre, apparently of her own volition, it cannot be termed an independent act because it is the result of a multiplicity of factors and perceptions. A woman need not be driven to the pyre with sticks and stones,she could just as well make her way there driven by family coercion, fear of the consequences of being widowed, and the social valorisation accorded to such an act. Yet this crucial aspect is still not comprehended by our law-makers and law-keepers. According to media reports, although it was widely known that Shaha was to jump on to her husband's pyre, there was not a single policeman in sight. What's more, the additional district magistrate of Mahoba can still argue, as he did to visiting mediapersons recently, that Charan Shaha had committed suicide. In fact, under the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, it is the woman who commits the offence in this case sati who would be punished apart from those who had abetted her in the act. Such a provision indicates that in the eyes of the State the woman had taken such a step on her own and should be held responsible for it. If Charan Shaha had, by any chance, escaped the flames she would very likely have found herself in jail that is the irony of satiprevention in this country. The National Commission of Women had recommended changes in the Act, including the excellent one that wherever the word ``sati'' appears in it, it should be replaced by the words, ``sati murder''. The Commission had also ur-ged that the provision for punishing acts glorifying sati be made more stringent and had wanted people convicted under the Act to be debarred from seeking public office for a period of five years.

But the law, such as it is, is only a feeble instrument with which to tackle a crime like sati, where the horror of a human being actually being burnt alive before reverential hordes is often subsumed by notions of the sanctity of tradition, religious or otherwise. In fact, after the Roop Kanwar incident in September 1987, the then Janata Party President Kalyan Singh Kalvi had argued after he would oppose any interference of the government in what he considered was a ``religious rite''. For weeks after Roop Kanwar's death, the place where she was burnt alivecontinued to attract hundreds of worshippers. If there is one lesson that emerges from that sorry story it is this the State and civil society must not just defeat the practice of sati but all attempts at glorifying it, indeed one cannot be done without the other. It is only to be hoped that the newly-installed chief minister of Uttar Pradesh will do just this in Satpurwan village.