The British rulers banned it more than a century ago, educated Hindus deplore it, and law forbids it. But suttee, a widow's ritual suicide upon her husband's funeral pyre, still takes place occasionally in modern India, for the final test of wifely purity sends a shiver of admiration through the devout.
In the city of Jodhpur (pop. 250,000) last week, a woman named Sugan Kunwar mourned her husband, Brigadier Jabar Singh. The brigadier had been a man who played polo, spoke English with an Oxford accent and administered the Maharajah of Jodhpur's estates and palaces; but Sugan, married to him...
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