'Joining the Leader in Death Phenomenon Essay\r'

'1. understructure History is replete with incidences of free radical or mass self inflicted terminals pursuance the finis of powerful draws. In such instances fol disappoints, in varying snatchs, chose to run down, of their own will, either later on or on fore nameing the expiration of their loss attraction. sequence group or mass finales of this character have occurred at historic ally variant times in dissimilar cultures and globally diverse locations, and have been appropriately enter in historic docu ments, the evolution of anthropological studies in the last deoxycytidine monophosphate has conduct to significant research into the subject.\r\nResearchers have delved into the customss, fond customs, to a greater extents, demeanoral motivators and demotivators of people of different civilizations and roles to locate commonality and establish reasons for this kind of uncommon, if non deviant behavior. These studies have become increasingly relevant in th e current amicable and spectral scenario where instances of mass suicides have occurred in cults, involving hundreds of members, who, on with their leaders, have chosen to die painful and self inflicted expirys for illogical, inexplicable and horny reasons.\r\nThe J cardinalstown suicides of 1978 and the deceases of the members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of god in 2000 were oddly tragic and dismal display cases, in which hundreds of people along with their leaders, died. It is translucent that such irrational tendencies still live on, hitherto in advanced wattern societies.\r\nAnthropologists and historians hard believe that serious and detailed investigation into such attendants, with token emphasis upon the whence prevailing societal, environmental, political, sparing, and historical conditions, could well win clues to the reasons behind such uncommon behavior and help in preventing such tragedies in future. (Wessinger, 2000) T his paper aims to examine the historical springs of such incidents and educates up one particular incident for detailed social and anthropological analysis. 2.\r\nhistoric Overview Psychiatrists comm but think of potentially un adept people to be unhappy n primeval their current physical and emotional locating and un mulish about the path to be followed to resolve the crisis. Suicide is resorted to as a simple and easy solution to their problems and plays the employment of a convenient exit. Individual suicides go with or preceded by such argumentation is exceedingly common, and though tragic, is, in a number of societies, a routine particular among disturbed and underprivileged people.\r\nIts incidence, in the essendial nations, is still high in true segments desire mentally ill individuals, prisoners, prostitutes, drug addicts and HIV patients. Mass or group suicides pursuance the death or kill of a leader, time being ut just about to a greater extent(prenominal) uncommon than individual suicides, have, and occurred on a number of occasions, more(prenominal) particularly so in particularised cultures.\r\n mend historical instances of groups of people touch onion their leaders in death, have occurred extentically on that point is very little to connect these disparate incidents obscure from defeat and outrage in struggle and, in the slick of women, the desire to avoid consequent assault and molestation. During the closing solar days of the 2nd speed of light BCE, the Teutons, subsequently state of wards a series of blooming(a)(a) battles were defeated by the Roman full general Gaius Marius, (in 102 BCE), near Aix-en-Provence, and their leader Teutobod captured. The captured women, thin big businessman their superpower out of work and sure of being looted by Roman soldiers move suicide.\r\nironically the Teutons were the cause of a similar episode in 1336 at the siege of Pilena. The defenders, hem in by the marauding Teutons, joined their leader, Duke Marqueris in death when they realized that the battle was lost. The defenders rear the castle on fire and charge upted mass suicide along with their leader quite an than be captured by the invaders. (Purkiss, 1996) In India, both men and women of the warrior classes of the Indian region of Rajasthan have traditionally choose to commit suicide afterward the death of their leader.\r\nWomen, especially, the wives and concubines of the big businessman mole rat have, until recent times followed the ancient tradition of immolating themselves on the funeral pyre of their husbands. The custom, cognise as Sati, while illegal, is still followed in particularly backward aras of the region. Chittor, now an abandoned shield in West India became famous because of terzetto separate incidents in which hundreds of men and women killed themselves after the death of their leader.\r\nChittor has been everyplacecome thrice and each time the consequent was Jauhar, when women along with their shaverren immolated themselves on huge funeral pyres on the death or capture of their leader, while the men, wearing chromatic robes endeavoured the enemy and faced authoritative death. Alauddin Khilji everywherepowered Chittor in 1303 A. D. , overcome by an obsessive appetency to own the regal bag, faerie Padmini. fiction has it, that he saw her face in the reflection of a mirror and was infatuated by her gripping lancinatingness.\r\nThe poove, along with her attendants, stock-still chose to follow her dead king rather than accept the invaders proposition jumped on to a huge funeral pyre lit in the middle of the castle and burned to death. In 1533 A. D. , during the endure of Bikramjeet, Bahadur Shah, the grand Turk of Gujarat, attacked Chittor and once more Karnavati, the then queen, along with more than a hundred women preferred to die following the death of the convention. The final episode occurred more than 30 years later whe n the Mughal emperor Akbar attacked the fortress.\r\nIn Rajasthan such incidences of fall in the leader in death had plastered particular features. Episodes necessarily commenced with the siege of a compress by an invasive army and terminate in mass death but if the invading army was successful. Once it was certain that the war was lost and the king was dead or would certainly die the warriors and their wives decided to end their lives, the men through self-destructive attacks on the enemy and the women by bounciness into enormous funeral pyres. The women were led in this travail by the queen of the fortress.\r\nIt is important to make that this pull was re grimed only to the warrior classes and did not extend to the priests, the traders, the farmers or the otherwise classes. Tales of invading armies entering deserted and lifeless stories are apocryphal and baseless as warriors and their families did not account for more than a twenty-five percent of the total populati on of a city. It to a fault needs to be pointed out that acts corresponding these had very little mythical precedent and ancient Hindi scriptures, like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, do not contain all such incidents.\r\nIncidentally the opposite appears to be more true and there are heterogeneous instances in the Ramayana of the wife of the King choosing to link up the invader after the defeat and death of her husband. (Harlan, 2003) This paper attempts to recreate the social and heathen scenario within the fort when Queen Padmini and hundreds of other men and women chose to die after the death of the King Rawal rattan and the fall of Chittor. The following section on Chittor is written in the present tense and from the perspective of an mobile observer of the complete episode. 3. Chittor a. caller\r\nChittor, today, (in the previous(predicate) fourteenth atomic number 6), is one of the many Hindoo kingdoms that dot the desert plains of Rajasthan in the trades union West region of the Indian subcontinent. Jewish-Orthodox Hindiism, over the first ten centuries of period that commenced after the birth of Jesus Christ, has succeeded in eliminating Buddhism from the land of its birth only to see it replaced by an aggressive Islam beating at its doors with unabated fury. Waves of Islamic soldiers have lashed at the borders of the Indian states for the last five hundred years until the establishment of Islamic rule at Delhi.\r\nDespite Islamic sovereignty a number of small Hindu kingdoms continue to exist, intimatelyly in the west and south, very much waging protracted battles with the rulers of Delhi. darn a certain amount of integration between Hindus and Muslims has taken place with time, it is still in any case early for any such skeletonative rapprochement to occur in Chittor. days of siege, first from an ever expanding Buddhism, and then from a militant Islam, has made structured Hindu society insular, orthodox and inward looking.\r\nT he set system has become rigid and spiritual laws and rules govern every aspect of society. Hindus are prohibited from marrying outside their castes and even the coup doeil of a Muslim is considered sacrilege, requiring inflexible and strict penance. The Muslim make out of”purdah” has been adopted comprehensively by the Hindus, ironically to treasure Hindu women from male Muslim look and women remain indoors most of the time. While every city has its share of courtesans, women do not work.\r\nThey are deprived of economic or political power, being subject matter to be glorified as mothers, sisters and wives. Society is structured into four main castes, the priests, warriors, traders and dismantle classes. Political and military power lies with the warriors and to a certain extent with the priesthood who are consulted by the kings and nobles before important finishs. The traders, despite their lower status, are economically powerful and unplowed in good humor by both the nobles and the priests.\r\nThe warriors are bound by a strict code of honor, which in fact has been the main causal chemical element behind hundreds of members of the warrior community choosing to die after defeat in battle and the death of their leader. b. Politics and Religion Chittor, in the early years of the fourteenth century is one of the smaller Hindu kingdoms resisting the Islamic emperors occupying the hatful at Delhi. The warrior classes of Chittor trace their lineage for centuries and, apart from being engaged in ongoing strife with the Delhi throne, constantly wag war against the other Hindu kings in the region.\r\nIt is too not uncommon for Hindu kings to form alliances with the Muslim emperor and wage war against each other. The political scenario is extremely fluid, (much like medieval Europe), and with numerous kings and noble breathing in uneasy alliances, war often breaks out over trivial reasons. While the official religion of the Delhi court is Isl am, and parallelism is usually in Arabic, migration of traders, artisans and workers ensure that Hindus and Muslims coexist, albeit with a certain amount of resentment and antagonism.\r\nSati, the rule of self immolation by women on the death of their husbands, is a common practice in Hindu states. The practice is prevalent more among the priestly and martial classes and is practically disappear in the other castes and the aboriginals. The prevalence of Sati among the priests and warriors is callable to the traditionally inferior status of women and their uselessness to society in the absence of child bearing potential. As such while wives are looked upon as necessary because of their mental ability to bear children, widows are conceit to be non contributing burdens. (Harlan, 2003)\r\nA widow’s unwanted status is also because of religious taboos that prevent her from participating in domesticated chores as her touch, her voice, and even her appearance is thought unholy , impure and to be shunned and abhorred. The sanctification of virginity in brides also makes it practically impossible for them to remarry after the death of their husbands. As such the practice of immolation is an extreme but logical outcome of these circumstances. The priests and the warrior classes of Rajasthan have also perpetrated the tradition by providing it with a halo of honor and deifying women who chose to take this route.\r\nThe episode that occurred in Chittor before my eye in the early years of this century (the 1300s) and involved hundreds of men and women fall in their leader in death needs to be analyzed in light of the live social and political environment in order to obtain an appropriate perspective. c. connecter the Leader in Death The ruler of Chittor, Rana Rawal rattan palm married the girlish Padmini, the daughter of a Rajasthani prince, when he was in his early teens, and she was yet to enter her adolescence.\r\nIn accordance with existing tradition th e bride proceed to live in her paternal space until she reached puberty and Rawal Ratan brought her to Chittor with much flourish on her fourteenth birthday. Padmini was an acknowledged beauty and became a much appreciated princess as she grew up, know in princely circles for her exquisite looks, aristocratic breeding and regal demeanor. When Rawal Ratan succeeded to the throne of Chittor in the closing years of the thirteenth century she took her place by his side in an extravagant service attended by princes from all over India as well as nobles from the Delhi throne.\r\nIt was this ceremonial that led to further speculation and lambast about Queen Padmini and aroused the distinctiveness of Sultan Alauddin Khilji at Delhi. Rawal Ratan was known to be a fair and dependable king and, apart from his well known love for Padmini, was a patron of the arts. hotshot of his court musicians, banished from Chittor because of his involvement in witchcraft, ingratiated himself with Al auddin Khilji, and persuading the Sultan of the ethereal beauty of the queen Padmini incited him to attack Chittor and take the queen for himself. On attain Chittor, Alauddin found the fort to be severely defended.\r\nDesperate to see the fictionary queen he sent a letter of the alphabet to the King that he thought of Padmini as his sister and wished to make her acquaintance. While the trusting king did not find any reason to doubt Alauddin’s intentions, the wiser queen refused to meet the grand Turk personally and quite agreed for him to see her reflection in a specially constructed mirror. The wily sultan came to the fort with his selected warriors, and after the meeting with the queen, managed to hook the king even as he was escorting them back to the gate.\r\nOn the following day when the Chittor generals heard about the ransom demand, that of the peck of the queen for the sultan, in exchange for the safe release of the king, the Chittor generals went into a hudd le, and with the assent of the queen, sent word that the queen would come to the sultan the next day along with a hundred and fifty attendants. At the disperse of dawn the next morning a hundred and fifty palanquins, each carried by four strong men bruise their way to Alauddin’s camp and stop in front of the tent where the king was being held prisoner.\r\nAs the sultan rejoiced a hundred and fifty armed men rushed out of the palanquins before his stupid(p) eyes, freed the king and along with the bearers galloped back to Chittor on horses seized from the sultan’s stables. A roughshod Alauddin ordered his army to storm Chittor, ferine resistance from the defenders of the fort led to the decision to lay siege to the fort, an operation that carried on for many months until dangerously low supplies constrained the honor bound warriors to take a decision to storm the vastly larger sultan’s armies in what could only lead to certain death.\r\nThe queen, who was pa rty to all the confabulations, decided that as the army, led by her husband rode out to certain death, she, along with the wives of the warring soldiers and all the children would jump into a huge fire lit in the centre of the fort and end their lives, therefore joining the king in death. Rawal Ratan and his warriors, though immensely saddened agreed to this to be the most fitting and honorable denouement.\r\nAt the end of a brutal and bloody battle fought between the troops of the Delhi Sultanate and the suicidal warriors of Chittor, Alauddin entered the fort only to find the ashes of the queen and the wives of the warriors, a pyrrhic victory, if ever there was one. (Bose, 2000) 4. Conclusion The instance of Padmini, her female attendants and the wives of the warriors of Chittor, joining the leader in death has been chronicled a number of times by confused historians for it to be reasonably accurate.\r\nWhile the case of male warriors following the leader into certain death has t aken place on many occasions, instances of women dying en masse are rare, and occur because of specific historical and environmental reasons. Anthropologists feel that in most such cases the persona of the leader, his mesmeric hold back over his followers, and the accompanying trauma and bleakness felt at the death of the leader induce the followers to embroil death and join their leader. A number of instances, including the suicides of several(prenominal) of Hitler’s trusted generals, provide few evidence that the argument could hold several(prenominal) merit.\r\nIn the case of Padmini while legend and myth continue to pay bow to her love for her husband, the mass deaths, especially of the go to ladies, necessarily needs to have a more significant historical and social reason. The decision to embrace mass death at the fall of the fort and the certain death of the king Rawal Ratan is most plausibly due to a number of reasons, chief among them being the prevalent pra ctice of sati and the halo of honor that the act had acquired over the centuries.\r\nThis halo of honor has to be seen in the light of the compulsions of Islamic rule in India during the medieval ages and is essentially logical and in accordance with social patterns and expectations. From the 13th century until the establishment of the British Empire, the position of women proceed to remain insecure due to the autocratic power structure associated with the feudal society, and the compulsions of perpetuating a male dominated inherently unequalized society.\r\nEven though the Mughals tried to wreak in a modicum of gender par the subservient status of women continued to exist until the middle of the twentieth century. It was most probably this craving for honor, accompanied with a authorized fear of the treatment that the women would receive at the hands of the furious invading soldiers that tilt the scales in favor of the decision to embrace death to that of joining Alauddinâ⠂¬â„¢s harem.\r\nIn any case the episode stiff one of the more abiding instances of joining the leader in death phenomenon and continues to intrigue historians and anthropologists. Pages: 10 Word Count: 3000 References Bose, M. (Ed. ). (2000).\r\nFaces of the maidenly in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India. juvenile York: Oxford University Press. Harlan, L. (2003). The Goddesses’ Henchmen: grammatical gender in Indian Hero Worship. cutting York: Oxford University Press. It’s All the Raj; Travelindia. (2005, December 14).\r\nThe periodical Mail (London, England), p. 45. Maaga, M. M. (1998). Hearing the Voices of Jonestown (1st ed. ). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Metcalf, B. (2005). David Chidester. salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown. Utopian Studies, 16(2), 335+. Purkiss, D. (1996). The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. New York: Routledge. Wessinger, C. (2000). How the Millennium Co mes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York: Seven Bridges Press.\r\n'