Suttee, the old Hindu custom of widow’s suicide on the funeral pyre, has been banned in India since 1829; today it occurs rarely and then only in inaccessible villages in backward regions. No one had ...

What’s the deal with suttee? For years I’ve been hearing that in India, widows are routinely thrown on funeral pyres alive. Is this just propaganda? And if not, is it just unpopular widows that it ...

Siva, the many-ratured and versatile god of destruction, is doing a land-office business in Jodhpur these days. Ever since the Hindu widow Sugan Kunwar Singh flung herself sacrificially—and ...