Jauhar

For city in Somalia, see Jowhar.

The Rajput ceremony of Jauhar, 1567, as depicted by Ambrose Dudley in Hutchinsons History of the Nations, c.1910

Jauhar, sometimes spelled Jowhar or Juhar,[1][2] was a Hindu Rajput practice of mass self-immolation by women and girls[3] in the Indian subcontinent to avoid capture, enslavement,[4] and rape by invaders[5] when facing certain defeat during a war.[6][7][8] Some reports of jauhar mention women committing self-immolation along with their children.[9][10] This practice was historically observed in the northwest regions of India, with most famous jauhars in recorded history occurring during wars between Hindu Rajput kingdoms in Rajasthan and the opposing Muslim armies.[11][12][13][7] Jauhar was only performed during war, usually when there was no chance of victory. The term jauhar often connotes jauhar-immolation. Jauhar involved Hindu Rajput women committing suicide with their children and valuables in a massive fire, in order to avoid capture and abuse in the face of inescapable military defeat.[7][14] At the same time or shortly thereafter, the men would ritualistically march to the battlefield expecting certain death, which in the regional tradition is called saka.[1] This practice was intended to show that those committing it valued their honor more highly than their lives.

Jauhar by Hindu kingdoms has been documented by Muslim historians of the Delhi Sultanate, and the Mughal Empire.[14][15][16] Among the most often cited examples of jauhar is the mass suicide committed in 1303 CE by the women of Chittorgarh fort in Rajasthan, when faced with the invading army of the Khalji dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate.[17][18] The jauhar phenomenon was also observed in other parts of India, such as in the Kampili kingdom of northern Karnataka when it fell in 1327 to Delhi Sultanate armies.[16]

There is an annual celebration of heroism called the Jauhar Mela in Chittorgarh where the local people commemorate their ancestors.[19]

  1. ^ a b Margaret Pabst Battin (2015). The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources. Oxford University Press. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-19-513599-2.
  2. ^ Richard Maxwell Eaton (1996). The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760. University of California Press. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-520-20507-9.
  3. ^ Eaton, R.M., (2019), India in the Persiante Age 1000-1765, p219. Great Britain: Allen Lane
  4. ^ Levi, Scott C. (November 2002). "Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 12 (3): 277–288. doi:10.1017/S1356186302000329. JSTOR 25188289. S2CID 155047611.
  5. ^ Jayawardena, K.; de Alwis, M. (1996). Embodied Violence: Communalising Female Sexuality in South Asia. ACLS Humanities E-Book. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 120. ISBN 978-1-85649-448-9.
  6. ^ John Stratton Hawley (1994). Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India. Oxford University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-0-19-536022-6.
  7. ^ a b c Lindsey Harlan (1992). Religion and Rajput Women: The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives. University of California Press. pp. 160 footnote 8. ISBN 978-0-520-07339-5., Quote: "In this she resembles the sati who dies in jauhar. The jauhar sati dies before and while her husband fights what appears to be an unwinnable battle. By dying, she frees him from worry about her welfare and saves herself from the possible shame of rape by triumphant enemy forces."
  8. ^ Arvind Sharma (1988), Sati: Historical and Phenomenological Essays, Motilal Banarsidass Publ, ISBN 9788120804647, page xi, 86
  9. ^ Margaret Pabst Battin. The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources. Oxford University Press. p. 285. Jauhar specifically refers to the self-immolation of the women and children in anticipation of capture and abuse.
  10. ^ Mary Storm. Head and Heart: Valour and Self-Sacrifice in the Art of India. Routledge. The women would build a great bonfire, and in their wedding finery, with their children and with all their valuables, they would immolate themselves en masse.
  11. ^ Pratibha Jain, Saṅgītā Śarmā, Honour, status & polity
  12. ^ Mandakranta Bose (2014), Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0195352771, page 26
  13. ^ Malise Ruthven (2007), Fundamentalism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199212705, page 63;
    John Stratton Hawley (1994), Sati, the Blessing and the Curse, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0195077742, page 165-166
  14. ^ a b Claude Markovits (2004). A History of Modern India, 1480-1950. Anthem Press. pp. 57–58. ISBN 978-1-84331-152-2.
  15. ^ Dirk H. A. Kolff 2002, pp. 87, 100–101, 109.
  16. ^ a b Mary Storm (2015). Head and Heart: Valour and Self-Sacrifice in the Art of India. Taylor & Francis. p. 311. ISBN 978-1-317-32556-7.
  17. ^ Clifton D. Bryant; Dennis L. Peck (2009). Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience. SAGE Publications. p. 696. ISBN 978-1-4522-6616-9.
  18. ^ Gavin Thomas (2010). Rajasthan. Penguin. pp. 341–343. ISBN 978-1-4053-8688-3.
  19. ^ Nijjar, Bakhshish Singh (2008). Origins and History of Jats and Other Allied Nomadic Tribes of India: 900 B.C.-1947 A.D. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. ISBN 978-81-269-0908-7.