> 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.
>
you sarcasm is well received. i presume we should start bombing new delhi forthwith?
--ravi