lbo-talk-digest V1 #4706

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 09:51 AM 8/9/01 -0500, Michael wrote:
>The Brits certainly milked sati for all the propaganda value it was worth,
but any notion that they "suppressed" it has to be taken with all the
grains of salt you can afford, given the heavily taxed imperial salt
monopoly.  It's simply an urban legend that sati was anything like a
universal practice, even in Bengal, before the Brits got there.  Even the
Brits saw it from the first as a practice of particular high-caste groups.
And there's the rub.  Since the Brits were also engaged in sorting out who
was high-caste and who was low-caste (and treating them accordingly), they
created perverse incentives for the more widespread practice of sati.
After all, if your widows threw themselves on funeral pyres, it was prima
facie evidence for the Brits that your caste was twice-born.
>

Yeah, that's it, the man made them do it.  

Wife burning in India is also an urban legend, I presume.

wojtek