*To do my part in educating the next generation of White Soldiers, I decided to start a History series titled “How the White Race Improved and Saved The World.”
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In 1829 Great Britain outlaws “suttee” (or Sati) in India, a Hindu practice where a widow burns herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre, willing or unwillingly— was first encountered by the British in India shortly after their arrival.
The Story of the Burning Widow
The word sati in India is synonymous with ‘good wife’, originating from an Indian myth of the Sati, the Goddess Durga, who self-immolated because she was unable to bear her husband, Shiva’s, humiliation. The Indian practice of sati, which Reverend James Peggs zealously campaigned to outlaw, is when a widow, self-immolates by throwing herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre, to burn to death alongside him.
In pre-colonial India, support for sati was slowly diminishing, yet, with British occupation of India, the debate over sati was reinvigorated, and three prominent groups established themselves in the campaign to finally outlaw this cruel, obsolete practice. These groups consisted of the British officials; Evangelical missionaries; and the elite Indian males. Reverend Peggs is a perfect illustration of the British missionaries who armed themselves with scripture to ‘civilise’ the natives, and were the most vehement voice in the campaign to outlaw sati. Yet, as Lata Mani observes “the ignominy of sati does not…lie only in the cruelty of the practice…it rests equally and inextricably in the place accorded to the outlawing of sati”
