No Jauhar without Saka

The courage of rape survivors is different from the courage of men and women who resisted enslavement. One does not diminish the other

In the recent controversy about Jauhar, ignited by Swara Bhasker’s argument that the depiction of Jauhar in Padmaavat (2018) would make rape victims feel that they are cowards for not committing suicide, almost no one has mentioned Saka. Saka was the ritual by which all the men went to battle when they were outnumbered and sure to be killed.

Jauhar was always accompanied by Saka. Both were performed to avoid not just rape but capture, enslavement, forced conversion, torture, and death. (Wikimedia Commons)

Jauhar was always accompanied by Saka. The men did not survive the women. This is what Swara and those who agree with her forget. Both Saka and Jauhar were performed to avoid not just rape but capture, enslavement, forced conversion, torture, and death. A very early example, not termed Jauhar at the time but similar to it, was recorded by Greek historians. About 20,000 men and women of a tribe in Punjab fiercely resisted Alexander the Great’s army, and when defeated, collectively jumped into the fire along with their children.

Amir Khusro, the poet and courtier of Alauddin Khilji, described the Saka and Jauhar that took place at the Ranthambore fort in 1301. Alauddin besieged the fort, so the King Hammiradev and his warriors decided to perform Saka. The Queen Rani Rang Devi, her daughter Padmala, and the other women jumped into a reservoir as there was no time to build a fire. Dressed in saffron robes, the men marched out to fight to the death. Likewise, Akbar’s historian Abul Fazl, describing the battle at Chittorgarh in 1568, says that the men walked out to die, throwing away their lives.

Some women also chose to die while fighting. During Akbar’s third siege of Chittorgarh in 1567-68, the 16-year-old commander Patta Sisodia’s mother told him to wear saffron and die for Chittor. At the same time, she and her daughter-in-law went out, armed with lances, and fought to the death. In 1564, regent queen Rani Durgavati of Gondwana killed herself while fighting on the battlefield to avoid being taken captive. Rana Sanga’s wife Rani Karnavati defended Chittor after his death and committed Jauhar seven years later, in 1535, only after defeat by Bahadur Shah.

Were there options other than suicide? Yes. And we know what the options were. In 1635, Aurangzeb, who was then a prince, besieged the Bundela fort, Orchha, Madhya Pradesh. Women began Jauhar, but the fort fell and some were taken captive. They were converted and forced into Shah Jahan’s harem. This means that they were enslaved and subjected, not to one or ten or twenty rapes, but to a lifetime of rape.

What happened to the men who did not die in this battle? They were offered the option of converting. The ruler Jujhar Singh’s younger son, Durgbhan, and grandson, Durjansal, were brought before Shah Jahan and ordered to convert, which they did. They were renamed Islam Quli and Ali Quli. Jujhar’s older son, Udaybhan, and the royal minister, Shyam Dawa, refused to convert and were executed.

If women killed themselves, as men did too, for honour, what did honour mean in those circumstances? Swara says that honour is not about the vagina. True. But for some people honour was about avoiding enslavement and repeated ravaging not just of the vagina but of the whole body, whether that body is male or female. Honour is dignity, avoiding a lifetime of humiliation.

Nor was there any guarantee that following mass rape, women would not be killed anyway. Some might be enslaved for life, but others might be killed by soldiers in the massacres that followed victory. Facing these possibilities, it might seem preferable to some to choose their own form of death.

Jauhar and Saka also contained an element of triumph in leaving no one for the conquerors to conquer. A modern historian says that when Akbar entered Chittorgarh in 1568, it was nothing but a vast crematorium. Slaves, especially royal slaves, were prized as tokens of victory, and as valuable for labour and for sex. Committing Jauhar and Saka denied this pleasure to the conquerors.

Whether or not Queen Padmavati existed or committed Jauhar is not important because the film Padmaavat is based not on history but on Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s 1540 epic poem, Padmavat, which depicts both her Jauhar and the men’s Saka. These particular events may or may not be historical fact, but they are based on historical truth, because many such events did occur.

Contrary to the stereotype, Jauhar and Saka did not occur only among Rajputs or only in Rajasthan. The earliest reported case occurred in 712, when Rani Bai (a Brahmin, not a Rajput) of Sind, continued to fight against Muhammad bin Qasim after her husband’s death, but finally committed Jauhar and the men Saka, several months later. Apart from the Rajput cases at Gwalior Jauhar and Saka took place in 1232, against Shamsudin Iltutmish; at Chittor in 1303 against Alauddin Khilji; at Kuva in Gujarat in 1486, against Mehmud Begada; 1528, at Chanderi against Babar’s army; at Raisen Fort in 1532 and 1543, Bahadur Shah's and Sher Shah Suri's armies, respectively. There were also the women of Kampili, Karnataka, who were Nayaka, not Rajput, against Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s army in 1327, and in 1710, the Sayapaneni women, who were Kamma, not Rajput, set fire to their houses in Daddanapalla fort, Andhra Pradesh, battling against Mir Fazlullah.

A couple of Muslim generals practised a form of Jauhar. In 1617, facing defeat by a Burmese King, Mughal governor of Bengal, Qasim Khan and his companions beheaded their wives to avoid them being captured. Qasim did not die, however. In his memoirs, Emperor Jahangir stated that a nobleman, doing battle with Sher Shah Suri, ordered his wives to commit Jauhar. Seventeenth-century Mughal general Mirza Nathan records in his Persian chronicle that when fighting an Ahom King, he left instructions with his officer Sa’adat Khan to conduct Jauhar for women and children in the camp if news came that he had been killed. This never happened, though, because he survived.

The courage of rape survivors is different from the courage of men and women who resisted enslavement. One does not diminish the other.

Ruth Vanita is the author of many books including The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics. The views expressed are personal

(This is a Hindustan Times digital exclusive)