The ancient world was shaped not only by empires and monuments but by the strange and symbolic rituals that people believed kept their worlds in balance. Across continents, civilisations practised ...

Witness the sea of color that floods western Pakistan every spring to honor the Goddess Sati. Hindu pilgrims climb the steep flanks of a mud volcano to throw coconuts into the crater—a ritual ...

Also, they say sati is a Hindu ritual and Janakrani was a tribal. But many here say that some of the Hindu social and religious practices have been adopted by the tribes in the recent years. Roop ...

Sati was first banned in 1829 by the British colonial rulers, ... Despite the court ban, 200,000 people attended a ceremony 13 days after Kanwar’s death, ...

While it is true that sati gave rise to lurid, often ridiculous propaganda in the colonial period—foreigners, part scandalised, part transfixed by it, gave it many strange origin myths—it was ...