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Updated: May 15, 2025
We must be moderately slavish to keep our place; which is given us in appearance; but appearances make up a remarkably large part of life, and far the most comfortable, so long as we are discreet at the right moment. He is a man whose pride, when hurt, would run his wife to perdition to solace it. If he married a troublesome widow, his pamphlet on Suttee would be out within the year.
In 1829 an Act of the Supreme Government in Bengal made Suttee or the burning of a widow upon the dead husband's pyre an offence for all concerned. In 1830 similar Acts were passed by the Governments of Madras and Bombay, and the abolition of Suttee is now universally approved. Such is the educative influence of a good law.
I suppose it is quite safe to conclude that that fire-bug is in holy orders. Close to the cremation-ground stand a few time-worn stones which are remembrances of the suttee. Each has a rough carving upon it, representing a man and a woman standing or walking hand in hand, and marks the spot where a widow went to her death by fire in the days when the suttee flourished. Mr.
Early in the reign, in 1847, an energetic Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, went out to India, who introduced railways, telegraphs, and cheap postage, set on foot a system of native education, and vigorously fought the ancient iniquities of suttee, thuggee, and child-murder.
I warned you, when that information reached me, that your priests have been deliberately lying to you that the Vedas say: 'Thrice-blessed is she who dies of a broken heart because her lord and master leaves her. They say nothing, absolutely nothing, about suttee or its practice, which from the beginning has been a damnable invention of the priests. But the practice of suttee has continued.
The pyre of Partab Singh Rajah and his Rani shall not be left to the care of a Feringhee and a Christian." "There will be no suttee," said Gerrard decisively. "The matter is not in your hands, Jirad Sahib," said Sher Singh, as a murmur broke from the councillors.
If we were to undertake the task of looking into Indian affairs as we look into British affairs, if we were to have Indian budgets and Indian estimates, if we were to go into the Indian currency question and the Indian Bank Charter, if to our disputes about Belgium and Holland, Don Pedro and Don Miguel, were to be added disputes about the debts of the Guicowar and the disorders of Mysore, the ex-king of the Afghans and the Maharajah Runjeet Sing; if we were to have one night occupied by the embezzlements of the Benares mint, and another by the panic in the Calcutta money market; if the questions of Suttee or no Suttee, Pilgrim tax or no Pilgrim tax, Ryotwary or Zemindary, half Batta or whole Batta, were to be debated at the same length at which we have debated Church reform and the assessed taxes, twenty-four hours a day and three hundred and sixty-five days a year would be too short a time for the discharge of our duties.
It would be more seemly, perhaps, if all these things which have belonged to us so intimately were to perish with us in a general suttee.
Courage and fear are feelings that depend upon conditions that seem to be fairly evenly distributed all over the world, and where the virtue of courage in the form of pugnacity is comparatively lacking, as amongst the bulk of the population of India, other forms thereof are met with, such as that wonderful contempt of a painful death by burning which was so often displayed by the widows of that country in following their ancient custom of suttee.
Be it so; the fact itself I shall not dispute. Nor shall I defend the practice except to point out that a woman more or less in the world does not matter, that the babe suffers no pain and knows no ill, that had she lived it might have been to a life of widowhood if courage were wanting to choose the suttee and therefore to long days of shame and sorrow.
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