Title: Sati – Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries and the Changing Colonial Discourse
Author: Meenakshi Jain
Publisher: Aryan Books, 2016 (First)
ISBN: 9788173055522
Pages: 464
On Sep 3, 1987, a young man aged 24 died in a Rajasthan hospital due to illness. On the next day, his widow, 18-year old Roop Kanwar, sat on the funeral pyre and burnt herself along with her dead husband. This caused a huge uproar in India and overseas. This was clearly a suicide but the fact that it was committed under the full glare of a large throng of people made them culpable. No cases were registered against anybody. However, by the time of the incident’s first anniversary in 1988, a stringent law had been in place and it came down heavily on a few people who glorified Kanwar and the practice. 45 people were charged for the offense which carried a prison sentence of seven years. The trial proceedings went on interminably as usual. After 17 years of deliberations, 25 were acquitted in 2004 for insufficient evidence, eight people were set free in 2024 for the same reason (after 37 years), four are still absconding and the remaining eight died in the meanwhile. This was a classic instance of overzealous legislation ruining innocent lives. Instances of widows immolating themselves on the pyres of their husbands have occurred intermittently even after the notorious 1987 Deorala incident. Despite the ban on glorification of sati, temples dedicated to sati matas exist and continue to thrive. This book is not a work on sati as such, its origins or voluntary or mandatory nature of its performance. The primary focus is on the colonial debate on sati and the role of evangelicals and Baptist missionaries in it. Sati was an exceptional act performed by a miniscule number of Hindu widows but its occurrence was exaggerated by the missionaries in the nineteenth century who were eager to Christianize and anglicize India. Meenakshi Jain is an associate professor in history at Gargi College, University of Delhi and is a former Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
Jain looks at information from foreign sources regarding the practice of sati and also at the religious sanction for this weird custom. Sati is not sanctioned in ancient texts. In fact, Vedas specifically ask the widow to return to life. Even Manu Smriti, which is generally deemed to be mildly misogynist, recommends the widow to remain chaste after the death of her husband and promises a place for her in heaven for that. Sati came into being in the Puranic age, but still its occurrence was highly sporadic. The Greek historian Diadorus writes about a voluntary immolation in 316 BCE in Persia where a contingent of Indian soldiers was stationed. All observations indicated that the rite was not obligatory and ridiculed the men folk for not dissuading the women from committing it. By the early middle ages, it became more common but never universal. Up to 1000 CE, satis were rare in the Deccan and an exception in the extreme South also. However, it flourished under the Chola dynasty.
The book notices the shift in European perspective on sati after they obtained political power in India. By the late-eighteenth century, the earlier sentiments of approbation and awe in foreign accounts which mostly stressed the voluntary nature of the rite, were replaced with condemnation and demands for intervention and abolition of the custom. This may also have something to do with the work of Orientalists. By the late-eighteenth century, a long line of scholars whose work worthily assessed ancient India’s contributions which put the country a notch higher in the cultural ladder even though she was chained in political bondage. Christianity was reinventing itself in Britain at that time from the ideals of Enlightenment with bold assertions to abolish slavery and carry the religion to every corner of the world to convert the heathens. This necessitated India to be projected in a bad light which urgently required the civilizing effort of missionaries. As a consequence, the 1800s witnessed foreign accounts suddenly assuming monumental dimensions which were at odds with earlier narratives. With the advent of the Baptists, earlier sentiments of wonder and astonishment were replaced with condemnation. The sati rites were sporadic but the Baptists asserted that it was rampant.
Jain makes a diligent assessment of the social climate in Britain at the moment it donned the mantle of self-righteousness and looked down upon India. Whatever might have been their antecedents back home, English society in late-1700s India was noted for their low morality, high cost of living, gluttony and concubinage. It was as if the Europeans left their religion behind them at the Cape of Good Hope to be resumed when they returned from India. Evangelicalism in India derived much of its motive force from hostility to the French revolution. They believed that the root of the crisis in France lay in the rampant irreligion and endeavoured to prevent a similar outburst in England by a religious movement to make the lower classes religious and reverent. Cambridge University was the intellectual centre of the Evangelical Movement under Isaac Milner and Charles Simeon. Till 1813, the East India Company did not permit the missionaries to operate in India for fear of an adverse impact on its trading activities. Charles Grant, who was the commercial agent of the company in Malda, was the first British official to argue for the Christianization and Anglicization of India. Grant’s commentaries invented the reform agenda for the British and thereby provided a justification for British rule in India. He termed Indian religions – all of them – ‘false, corrupt, impure, extravagant and ridiculous’ (p.99). He also pleaded for the permanence of British rule in the country. Intellectual heavyweights in England were arrayed on the side of the missionaries. James Mill was instrumental in underpinning a theoretical background for the effort of dismantling Indian civilization. His six-volume work ‘History of British India’ made a decisive and transforming contribution to reverse the trend of admiration for the civilization of the East due to the work of Orientalists. Mill categorized the Hindu civilization the rudest and weakest state of the human mind.
The author notes that not all Orientalist writing was actuated by noble motives. Some of them translated Hindu texts to English with the intention to ‘expose those mysterious sacred nothings that had maintained their celebrity so long merely by being kept from the inspection of any’ (p.125). But old India hands and administrators refuted the missionary claim of women burning themselves on the pyres of their husbands as ‘not any more a religious rite than suicide was a part of Christianity’. The missionary effort in India was a concerted one and determined to show results. From 1793, missionaries started coming to Kolkata without valid licenses due to the encouragement Charles Grant in India and his Evangelical friends in England were providing them. Incidents of widow immolation in Bengal were embellished by Evangelicals and missionaries to gain the right of proselytization and to justify their presence and British rule in India. Missionaries falsely proclaimed that more than 10,000 widows were burnt a year in Bengal and 100,000 devotees committed ritual suicide under the wheels of Lord Jagannath’s rath at Puri. The Evangelical-missionary campaign against sati falls into two phases – the first, from 1803 to 1813 when the case was prepared and the second, from 1813 to 1829 when awesome figures were marshalled to demonstrate that it was a raging practice. The author points out that it was at this moment a pronounced anti-Brahmin sentiment became palpable in missionary writings because they were an obstacle to proselytization. The missionaries made all efforts to undermine the status of Brahmins.
This book also examines the demographic profile of women who performed sati and how could anyone voluntarily undergo immolation in public. The need to accompany her husband in death was carefully inculcated in girls’ minds so that it was not the result of a momentary impulse, but of a long-resolved determination. They conducted themselves not like mad enthusiasts but as martyrs expecting and getting respect from all assembled at the spot. However, in some cases use of psychedelic drugs is to be suspected. The British were at first agreeable to permit sati if neither coercion nor narcotics was involved and the voluntary nature of the act was convincingly established by interrogation of the widow by high officials. Brahmins constituted 34 per cent of the sati cases, Kshatriyas 14.8 per cent and Vaishyas 3.1 per cent. Almost half of the satis were in the age group of 50 or above and two-thirds 40 or above, but 5 per cent were between 11 and 20 years of age. State registration of cases of sati began in 1815. The appointment of William Bentinck as governor general in 1828 gave momentum to the campaign against sati. Bentinck had already decided on abolition even before his arrival in India. Hindu thinkers and social activists like Raja Rammohan Roy and Mrityunjaya Vidyalankar advocated for its abolition. They suggested an ascetic life for widows and remarriage was not there even in their horizon. They were also reluctant on an outright ban but in imposing harsher conditions so as to make its occurrence progressively more and more burdensome. Hindus who opposed abolition led by Radhakant Deb did not defend the legality of widow burning and opposed only the government intervention in Hindu affairs. They did not encourage sati in their own families. When the British finally decided to put down the practice, what worried them most was the backlash from Hindus as a response to British meddling in religion. Bentinck consulted 49 military officers on the effect abolition would have on their men. Most of them supported immediate action. Sati was abolished in December 1829. As it was never a commonly observed rite, there was little protest on its official prohibition.
This book does its job well. It has brought to light the ‘missionary position’ in effecting a ban on sati. It explains that what prompted them in this venture is a desire to demote Hinduism as barbarous and to get enough funding from England to gain maximum converts in India. It has also proved two points beyond doubt – that the act was voluntary in most cases and that the number of sati cases was statistically insignificant. This is an effective argument, but the fact remains that this was not ethically or morally acceptable. A huge crowd witnessing the immolation of a woman and facilitating it by pouring oil and other flammable articles on to the flame is impossible to accept as normal by any person. Sati would have had to go at any cost, but it would have been infinitely better if its demise was caused by the effort of Hindu reformers alone. This is the message sent out by this nice work which is well researched. Section B of the narrative, which is almost half of the book, is dedicated to foreign accounts of sati. It exposes the condemnation and attitude of racial superiority of the British towards their colonial subjects in India. One official remarks with scarcely hidden contempt that when he reached a place of sati, he found that the ‘coolies had dug a hole’. Here, the term ‘coolie’ refers not to the labourers but all Indians. Jain provides some references which show how the British estimated people of different provinces on their valour and sense of injustice. Bentinck notes that if sati was more prevalent in the upper provinces (present day Uttar Pradesh and parts of Bihar) from which most of the soldiers came, he would be more circumspect because the people are more bold and manly (p.409). An earlier review of the book ‘Immolating Women’ by Jorg Fisch can be read here as a related topic.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
Publisher: Aryan Books, 2016 (First)
ISBN: 9788173055522
Pages: 464
On Sep 3, 1987, a young man aged 24 died in a Rajasthan hospital due to illness. On the next day, his widow, 18-year old Roop Kanwar, sat on the funeral pyre and burnt herself along with her dead husband. This caused a huge uproar in India and overseas. This was clearly a suicide but the fact that it was committed under the full glare of a large throng of people made them culpable. No cases were registered against anybody. However, by the time of the incident’s first anniversary in 1988, a stringent law had been in place and it came down heavily on a few people who glorified Kanwar and the practice. 45 people were charged for the offense which carried a prison sentence of seven years. The trial proceedings went on interminably as usual. After 17 years of deliberations, 25 were acquitted in 2004 for insufficient evidence, eight people were set free in 2024 for the same reason (after 37 years), four are still absconding and the remaining eight died in the meanwhile. This was a classic instance of overzealous legislation ruining innocent lives. Instances of widows immolating themselves on the pyres of their husbands have occurred intermittently even after the notorious 1987 Deorala incident. Despite the ban on glorification of sati, temples dedicated to sati matas exist and continue to thrive. This book is not a work on sati as such, its origins or voluntary or mandatory nature of its performance. The primary focus is on the colonial debate on sati and the role of evangelicals and Baptist missionaries in it. Sati was an exceptional act performed by a miniscule number of Hindu widows but its occurrence was exaggerated by the missionaries in the nineteenth century who were eager to Christianize and anglicize India. Meenakshi Jain is an associate professor in history at Gargi College, University of Delhi and is a former Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
Jain looks at information from foreign sources regarding the practice of sati and also at the religious sanction for this weird custom. Sati is not sanctioned in ancient texts. In fact, Vedas specifically ask the widow to return to life. Even Manu Smriti, which is generally deemed to be mildly misogynist, recommends the widow to remain chaste after the death of her husband and promises a place for her in heaven for that. Sati came into being in the Puranic age, but still its occurrence was highly sporadic. The Greek historian Diadorus writes about a voluntary immolation in 316 BCE in Persia where a contingent of Indian soldiers was stationed. All observations indicated that the rite was not obligatory and ridiculed the men folk for not dissuading the women from committing it. By the early middle ages, it became more common but never universal. Up to 1000 CE, satis were rare in the Deccan and an exception in the extreme South also. However, it flourished under the Chola dynasty.
The book notices the shift in European perspective on sati after they obtained political power in India. By the late-eighteenth century, the earlier sentiments of approbation and awe in foreign accounts which mostly stressed the voluntary nature of the rite, were replaced with condemnation and demands for intervention and abolition of the custom. This may also have something to do with the work of Orientalists. By the late-eighteenth century, a long line of scholars whose work worthily assessed ancient India’s contributions which put the country a notch higher in the cultural ladder even though she was chained in political bondage. Christianity was reinventing itself in Britain at that time from the ideals of Enlightenment with bold assertions to abolish slavery and carry the religion to every corner of the world to convert the heathens. This necessitated India to be projected in a bad light which urgently required the civilizing effort of missionaries. As a consequence, the 1800s witnessed foreign accounts suddenly assuming monumental dimensions which were at odds with earlier narratives. With the advent of the Baptists, earlier sentiments of wonder and astonishment were replaced with condemnation. The sati rites were sporadic but the Baptists asserted that it was rampant.
Jain makes a diligent assessment of the social climate in Britain at the moment it donned the mantle of self-righteousness and looked down upon India. Whatever might have been their antecedents back home, English society in late-1700s India was noted for their low morality, high cost of living, gluttony and concubinage. It was as if the Europeans left their religion behind them at the Cape of Good Hope to be resumed when they returned from India. Evangelicalism in India derived much of its motive force from hostility to the French revolution. They believed that the root of the crisis in France lay in the rampant irreligion and endeavoured to prevent a similar outburst in England by a religious movement to make the lower classes religious and reverent. Cambridge University was the intellectual centre of the Evangelical Movement under Isaac Milner and Charles Simeon. Till 1813, the East India Company did not permit the missionaries to operate in India for fear of an adverse impact on its trading activities. Charles Grant, who was the commercial agent of the company in Malda, was the first British official to argue for the Christianization and Anglicization of India. Grant’s commentaries invented the reform agenda for the British and thereby provided a justification for British rule in India. He termed Indian religions – all of them – ‘false, corrupt, impure, extravagant and ridiculous’ (p.99). He also pleaded for the permanence of British rule in the country. Intellectual heavyweights in England were arrayed on the side of the missionaries. James Mill was instrumental in underpinning a theoretical background for the effort of dismantling Indian civilization. His six-volume work ‘History of British India’ made a decisive and transforming contribution to reverse the trend of admiration for the civilization of the East due to the work of Orientalists. Mill categorized the Hindu civilization the rudest and weakest state of the human mind.
The author notes that not all Orientalist writing was actuated by noble motives. Some of them translated Hindu texts to English with the intention to ‘expose those mysterious sacred nothings that had maintained their celebrity so long merely by being kept from the inspection of any’ (p.125). But old India hands and administrators refuted the missionary claim of women burning themselves on the pyres of their husbands as ‘not any more a religious rite than suicide was a part of Christianity’. The missionary effort in India was a concerted one and determined to show results. From 1793, missionaries started coming to Kolkata without valid licenses due to the encouragement Charles Grant in India and his Evangelical friends in England were providing them. Incidents of widow immolation in Bengal were embellished by Evangelicals and missionaries to gain the right of proselytization and to justify their presence and British rule in India. Missionaries falsely proclaimed that more than 10,000 widows were burnt a year in Bengal and 100,000 devotees committed ritual suicide under the wheels of Lord Jagannath’s rath at Puri. The Evangelical-missionary campaign against sati falls into two phases – the first, from 1803 to 1813 when the case was prepared and the second, from 1813 to 1829 when awesome figures were marshalled to demonstrate that it was a raging practice. The author points out that it was at this moment a pronounced anti-Brahmin sentiment became palpable in missionary writings because they were an obstacle to proselytization. The missionaries made all efforts to undermine the status of Brahmins.
This book also examines the demographic profile of women who performed sati and how could anyone voluntarily undergo immolation in public. The need to accompany her husband in death was carefully inculcated in girls’ minds so that it was not the result of a momentary impulse, but of a long-resolved determination. They conducted themselves not like mad enthusiasts but as martyrs expecting and getting respect from all assembled at the spot. However, in some cases use of psychedelic drugs is to be suspected. The British were at first agreeable to permit sati if neither coercion nor narcotics was involved and the voluntary nature of the act was convincingly established by interrogation of the widow by high officials. Brahmins constituted 34 per cent of the sati cases, Kshatriyas 14.8 per cent and Vaishyas 3.1 per cent. Almost half of the satis were in the age group of 50 or above and two-thirds 40 or above, but 5 per cent were between 11 and 20 years of age. State registration of cases of sati began in 1815. The appointment of William Bentinck as governor general in 1828 gave momentum to the campaign against sati. Bentinck had already decided on abolition even before his arrival in India. Hindu thinkers and social activists like Raja Rammohan Roy and Mrityunjaya Vidyalankar advocated for its abolition. They suggested an ascetic life for widows and remarriage was not there even in their horizon. They were also reluctant on an outright ban but in imposing harsher conditions so as to make its occurrence progressively more and more burdensome. Hindus who opposed abolition led by Radhakant Deb did not defend the legality of widow burning and opposed only the government intervention in Hindu affairs. They did not encourage sati in their own families. When the British finally decided to put down the practice, what worried them most was the backlash from Hindus as a response to British meddling in religion. Bentinck consulted 49 military officers on the effect abolition would have on their men. Most of them supported immediate action. Sati was abolished in December 1829. As it was never a commonly observed rite, there was little protest on its official prohibition.
This book does its job well. It has brought to light the ‘missionary position’ in effecting a ban on sati. It explains that what prompted them in this venture is a desire to demote Hinduism as barbarous and to get enough funding from England to gain maximum converts in India. It has also proved two points beyond doubt – that the act was voluntary in most cases and that the number of sati cases was statistically insignificant. This is an effective argument, but the fact remains that this was not ethically or morally acceptable. A huge crowd witnessing the immolation of a woman and facilitating it by pouring oil and other flammable articles on to the flame is impossible to accept as normal by any person. Sati would have had to go at any cost, but it would have been infinitely better if its demise was caused by the effort of Hindu reformers alone. This is the message sent out by this nice work which is well researched. Section B of the narrative, which is almost half of the book, is dedicated to foreign accounts of sati. It exposes the condemnation and attitude of racial superiority of the British towards their colonial subjects in India. One official remarks with scarcely hidden contempt that when he reached a place of sati, he found that the ‘coolies had dug a hole’. Here, the term ‘coolie’ refers not to the labourers but all Indians. Jain provides some references which show how the British estimated people of different provinces on their valour and sense of injustice. Bentinck notes that if sati was more prevalent in the upper provinces (present day Uttar Pradesh and parts of Bihar) from which most of the soldiers came, he would be more circumspect because the people are more bold and manly (p.409). An earlier review of the book ‘Immolating Women’ by Jorg Fisch can be read here as a related topic.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
