Revision summary
The 1829 ban criminalised widow burning after reformist pressure. It was a major legal strike at a sacralised evil. Widowhood as social death continued in property and honour. Colonial law also staged India as backward tradition. Annihilation needs kinship change, not only a prohibition.
Model answer
Introduction
The colonial ban on sati was a real strike at a spectacular patriarchal evil. It was not the annihilation of the social structure that made widows disposable.
Body
What the ban did
- Regulation XVII of 1829 in Bengal Presidency criminalised widow burning, after Rammohun Roy’s campaign and official inquiry.
- It named women’s death as a public crime, a heterogenetic legal shock to a ‘tradition’ that honour had sacralised.
What it did not annihilate
- Seed-and-Earth kinship, which Leela Dube later named, still treated the widow as a dangerous field without the rightful seed.
- Property, tonsure, and confinement continued as everyday sati of a life, which the pyre ban did not end.
- Colonial officials also constructed ‘tradition’ as India’s backward mark, a theme of later critique of colonial sociology.
Sociological comment
- Annihilation of an evil needs law plus a change in entitlement. The ban was necessary and incomplete.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD B[1829 sati ban] --> L[Criminalises pyre] P[Patriarchal property honour] --> W[Widow still diminished] B --> P
Conclusion
Banning sati attacked a major evil and saved lives. Attributing annihilation to the ban alone overstates a statute. Patriarchy in the family outlived the pyre.
Quick related
Students also ask
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How do you justify Dumont's deliberate stress on ideology that produce intellectualized account of Indian society?
Next question in the 2020 paper (Q1). View answer →
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Was sati universal Hindu practice?
It was regionally and status-specific, then generalised as ‘Hindu custom’.
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Did nationalism only praise the ban?
Some nationalists later defended ‘tradition’. The sociological task is women’s entitlement.
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