Indian Muslim Archives@Rustum_0
Indian Muslim rulers effectively abolished Sati, not the British. It was not mere discouragement either, but an outright state enforced ban.
Europeans themselves burned some 50,000 women under the pretext of witch-hunting. Niccolao Manucci (1638-1717) described the ban as follows:
“The king (Aurangzeb) issued an order that in all lands under Mogul control never again should the officials allow a woman to be burnt. This order endures to this day.”
Jean de Thévenot (1633-1677) wrote how Hindu females rejoiced when this ban was imposed:
“To conclude, the Women are happy that the Mahometans (Muslims) are become the Masters in the Indies, to deliver them from the tyranny of the Bramens (Brahmins).”
John Ovington (1653-1731) described the ground effect of this ban as follows:
“Since the Mahometans became masters of the Indies, this execrable custom is much abated, and almost laid aside, by the orders which the nabobs receive for suppressing and extinguishing it in all their provinces. And now it is very rare, except it be some Rajah's (Hindu princes) wives”
This ban was so successful that the British governor general William Bentinck himself declared in the Sati Regulation Act (1829) that:
“The practice of suttee... by a vast majority of that people throughout India the practice is not kept up, nor observed: in some extensive districts it does not exist”
Some may be argue that Sati was not stopped completely by Muslims. To such people, it may be asked: so what? How does that transfer the credit for banning Sati to the British? Throughout the entirety of the British Raj, Sati continued to be practiced and never fully disappeared.
In fact the last Sati in India was Roop Kanwar, in 1987, or 40 years after India gained independence. In August 2009, the sixty-year old widow of Nanchhu Ram Meena of Kuchar village in Sikar district, Rajasthan, attempted to immolate herself, but was thwarted by her family, the village community, and the police.
Then why this selective credit-distributioj bias towards the Europeans? The same Europeans whose deeds were as follows:
“From the early decades of the 14th century until 1650, continental Europeans executed between 200,000 and 500,000 witches, 85% or more of whom were women.”
— The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective.
“The witch-hunt tilted heavily toward women, particularly older women and widows. About 85 percent of the accused were women”
—Witch hunts in Europe and America : an encyclopedia by William E. Burns.