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Updated: May 15, 2025
Sher Singh consents that there shall be no suttee, and you agree not to interfere with the funeral in other words, to make no inquiry into the cause of the Rajah's death." "In other words, to condone an atrocious crime." "My dear Hal, what did you propose doing? If you were thinking of laying violent hands on the corpse but that would be absurd.
The rape of such men is left to the practical animal. So John sat alone with his old flame. He had become resigned to her perpetual lamentation and living Suttee for his defunct rival. But, ha! what meant those soft glances now addressed to him?
If, being born in China, we grew up with foot-bound women, we assumed that women were such, and must so remain. Born in India, we accepted the child-wife, the pitiful child-widow, the ecstatic suttee, as natural expressions of womanhood. In each age, each country, we have assumed life to be necessarily what it was a moveless fact.
Suttee is against the law as well as against all dictates of reason and humanity; yet the Hindoos make a constant practice of it here under our very eyes. These native states are under treaty to observe the law. I intend to do all in my power to put a stop to their ghoulish practices, and Maharajah Howrah knows what my intentions are.
If it was desirable to grant these other rights and privileges without the demand of a majority, why is the demand of a majority required before this one is granted? The child widows of India did not unitedly demand the abolition of the "suttee."
He loved most to think of those letters in which the women had gladly sought a spiritual suttee, and begged him to cement the stones of his temple of fame with the blood of their devoted hearts. To have had a share in building so distinguished a life that was enough for them! They asked no such inconvenient reward as marriage: indeed, one or two of them had already obtained that boon from others.
Hence she must be slain that his spirit may depart in peace with her, as well as with the weapons and other possessions which are buried with him or burned upon his funeral pyre. The Marathi proverb to the effect that "the husband is the life of the woman" thus becomes literally true. The best known case of widow slaying is of course the custom of "suttee" in India.
The widow, having drunk from a cup which contained opium, climbed to the top of the pyre where her husband lay, swathed in white. She gazed about wildly, and her courage and resolve took wings. She stumbled down. A low hissing ran about. "Make the white woman suttee in her place!" cried the drunken mahout. The cry was taken up by the spectators.
In his government on the Nerbudda he made a brave attempt on the 28th of March, 1828, to put down Suttee on his own hook and without warrant from the Supreme Government of India. He could not foresee that the Government would put it down itself eight months later. The only backing he had was a bold nature and a compassionate heart. He issued his proclamation abolishing the Suttee in his district.
Joe was Joseph, or Josiah, Townsend, a pilot of the Ganges, and tradition has it that he and Job Charnock, who, as an officer of the East India Company, founded Calcutta in 1690, saved a pretty young Hindu widow from ascending her husband's funeral pyre and committing suttee.
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