Sati (practice)

Sati or suttee is a chiefly historical Hindu practice in which a widow burns alive on her deceased husband's funeral pyre, either voluntarily, by coercion, or by a perception of the lack of satisfactory options for continuing to live. Although it is debated whether it received scriptural mention in early Hinduism, it has been linked to related Hindu practices in the Indo-Aryan-speaking regions of India, which have diminished the rights of women, especially those to the inheritance of property. A cold form of sati, or the neglect and casting out of Hindu widows, has been prevalent from ancient times.

Greek sources from around c. 300 BCE make isolated mention of sati, and Hindu inscriptions from 464 CE onward, common by the 11th century, record the practice of a real fire sacrifice. The first references to sati in Brahmin law-books appeared in the 7th century. It was widely recognised, but not universally accepted, by the 12th century. Records of sati exist throughout many time periods and regions. There were significant differences in different regions and among communities; however, figures are scarce and incomplete for the number of widows who died by sati before the advent of the British period.

In the early medieval era, sati was prevalent mainly among certain groups of feudal elites, but it became more widespread across Hindu social groups during the late medieval era. During the early-modern Mughal period, it was notably associated with elite Hindu Rajput clans in western India, marking one of the points of divergence between Hindu Rajputs and the Muslim Mughals, as Islam allows for widow remarriage. Several European travelogues of the period attest to Mughal opposition to sati, as well as efforts to restrict and regulate the practice among their Hindu subjects. Sati was also widespread in the Maratha country in 17th to early 19th centuries. It was historically less common in South India. Still, several instances were recorded in the region as well. In Bengal, sati was practised by the 12th century, and later increased among other castes such Bengali Brahmins between 1680 and 1830, after widows gained inheritance rights.

In the early 19th century, the British East India Company, in the process of extending its rule to most of India, initially tried to stop the practice; William Carey, a British Christian evangelist, noted 438 incidents within a 30-mile (48-km) radius of the capital, Calcutta, in 1803, despite its ban within Calcutta. Between 1815 and 1818, the number of documented sati incidents in the Bengal Presidency doubled, from 378 to 839. Opposition to the practice of sati by evangelists like Carey, and by Hindu reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy ultimately led the British Governor-General of India Lord William Bentinck to enact the Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829, declaring the practice of burning or burying alive of Hindu widows to be punishable by the criminal courts. Rejecting a petition by 800 orthodox Hindus against the ban, the Privy Council upheld the ban on Sati practice in 1832. Isolated incidents of sati were recorded in India in the late 20th century, leading the Government of India to promulgate the Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, criminalising the aiding or glorifying of sati.