Word: jaipur
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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 expected to see the rite performed in the large, well-kept Rajasthan capital of Jaipur (pop. 175,000). One day last week Shroff Ballabhdas, a prosperous banker and coin appraiser of Jaipur, died. His fair and dainty widow Chhimi, 35, mother of five children, put on her many jewels, donned her finest mauve silk sari and announced that she would throw herself on her husband...
...Ballabhdas house. When at last the widow appeared behind her husband's bier, surrounded by a cortege of weeping women, the crowd beat gongs, threw flowers and fried corn kernels, and sent up frenzied shouts of "Sati Mata ki jai" (Hail to the faithful mother-wife). Business in Jaipur came to a standstill; almost a third of the town's population moved out to the cremation grounds...
...take her direct to the cremation ground. Instead they carted her off to the police station, where, though she beat her breast and wailed that she had been betrayed, she was held in custody until the cremation was over. She was released when she agreed not to attempt suicide. Jaipur's disappointed suttee fans were not so easily pacified. All that day they stoned and booed the police...
...party faithful who showed up at Gandhinagar near Jaipur, the Congress session was an occasion for letting off steam, like a U.S. national political convention. Such relaxation is the exception rather than the rule in the Indian National Congress. The Congress is not only India's biggest political party (10½ million members), it is also the largest association in the world of people pledged to puritanism (Indian brand). To join, one must give up liquor. If he entertains political ambitions, he must give up wearing anything but khadi (handspun cloth), and content himself with a modest salary. Recently...
Bright & White. Of all the provincial delegation gathered at Jaipur, the Madrasis were the strictest adherents to Congress rules. Their leading crusader is a 45-year-old bacheloi named Avinashilingam Chettiar, Minister of Education for Madras province. A great admirer of the late Mahatma Gandhi, Chettiar invariably wears a jibba (a loose long-sleeved shirt) and a Gandhi-type loincloth. As a member of the provincial cabinet, he voted with the majority to forbid expansion of the textile industry, on the ground that it would conflict with the ministry's "wear more khadi" program. Recently in the Madras legislature...