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Bentinck: Humanitarian and Imperialist—the Abolition of Suttee

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Nancy G. Cassels
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Extract

The conscience of British humanitarians of the early nineteenth century was troubled by many practices which they regarded as inhumane — none more so than the practice in India of suttee or the self-immolation of widows. The prevailing humanitarian drive for the abolition of suttee drew its strength from an alliance between evangelical and utilitarian propagandists who urged upon the British public a sense of responsibility for the welfare of their brethren across the sea. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, the efforts of these reformists were offset by what amounted to a determined indifference on the part of the East India Company to all aspects of Indian society. At the turn of the century the practice of suttee was well protected by the Company's policy of noninterference with native “religious usages and institutions” established in 1772. Governor-General Cornwallis refused to allow a Collector at Shahabad to dissuade a suttee victim. Yet his successors, Lord Wellesley and Lord Hastings, pondered at considerable length the possibility of abolishing suttee. With the Regulations of 1813 the Supreme Government in Bengal began a consistent policy of prescribing strict limitations upon the practice of suttee. Although interpreted by some as official government approval of suttee, these regulations were continued sine die by the superior court in Calcutta. Encouraged in part by the example set by the Supreme Government, Governors Elphinstone and Malcolm in Bombay were less inclined than the Supreme Government itself to seem to interfere with native socio-religious custom, and therefore in western India toleration of suttee was more apparent than its restriction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , November 1965 , pp. 77 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1965

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References

1. For an analysis of the abolition of suttee as a partial and political response to evangelical influences, see Bearce, George, “The Application of Liberalism to India,” J.M.H., XXVIII (1956), 237, 245Google Scholar; Sir Percival Spear discusses the utilitarian inspiration behind such reforms as the abolition of suttee in his “Lord William Bentinck,” Journal of Indian History, XIX (1940)Google Scholar.

2. For this official policy of procrastination see Parliamentary Papers (1821), XVIII, 749Google Scholar; (1823), XVII, 466; (1824), XXIII, 443; (1825), XXIV, 508 and 518; (1826-27), XX, 354; (1828), XXIII, 547; and (1830), XXVIII, 178 and 550. Kenneth Ballhatchet has made a thorough study of the unique problems of Bombay and the Western Provinces where suttees were comparatively rare in his Social Policy and Social Change in Western India 1817-1830 (London, 1957), pp. 275–91Google Scholar.

3. Nottingham University, Bentinck Papers, PwJf 2616. Of the Bentinck Papers on file in the Department of Manuscripts at Nottingham University, folders PwJf 2597-2624 deal exclusively with the issue of suttee and its abolition.

4. Perhaps the most outspoken of Bentinck's admirers was the dramatisthistorian Edward Thompson who declared that “the credit [for the abolition of suttee] is almost entirely personal and it is Bentinck's.” Thompson, Edward, Suttee. A Historical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Hindu Rite of Widow-Burning (London, 1928), pp. 77–78Google Scholar. See also Boulger, D. C., Lord William Bentinck (Oxford, 1892), pp. 78, 92–94Google Scholar; and Mill, J. S. and Wilson, H. H., The History of British India (London, 1848), IX, 265, 273Google Scholar. A recent treatment of the subject by Seed, Geoffrey, “The Abolition of Suttee in Bengal,” History, XL (1955), 286–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, presents the traditional stereotype of Bentinck as an heroic humanitarian because the author has ignored important evidence in the Bentinck papers.

In 1940 Sir Percival Spear insisted that “the decision to abolish, after a generation of moral paralysis, was Bentinck's and the credit cannot be denied him.” “Bentinck,” Journal of Indian History, XIX (1940), 103Google Scholar. Twenty years later the same author is more judicious and credits Bentinck merely with doing more than his predecessors. Oxford History of India (3rd ed.; Oxford, 1958), pp. 647–48Google Scholar.

5. The view that the interests of the British Raj lay behind Bentinck's reforms has been advanced as a general proposition, although without a detailed examination of suttee, by Bearce, George, British Attitudes Towards India 1784-1858 (London, 1961)Google Scholar, ch. vi.

6. Quoted from Ellenborough, Lord's “Political Diary,” 11 Dec., 1828, by Philips, C. H., The East India Company 1784-1834 (Manchester, 1961), p. 262Google Scholar.

7. Nottingham U., Bentinck to John Astell, 12 Jan., 1829, Bentinck Papers, PwJf 2612.

8. Woodruff, P., The Men Who Ruled India (Oxford, 1933), I, 257Google Scholar; Thompson, , Suttee, pp. 76–77Google Scholar.

9. 21 Nov., 1823, cited in Boulger, , Bentinck, pp. 106–07Google Scholar.

10. Nottingham U., Confidential Circular addressed to Officers of the Army on the Suttee Question by Capt. R. Benson (hereafter cited as “Army Circular”), 10 Nov., 1828, Bentinek Papers, PwJf 2599.

11. Nottingham U., Lt. Col. H. J. Tapp to Benson, 16 Dec., 1828, ibid., PwJf 2603. Even one of the officers who opposed both prohibition by law and suppression by force agreed that there was “nothing to fear from our Native Army if left to itself.” Brig. General J. W. Adams to Benson, 30 Nov., 1828, ibid.

12. Nottingham U., Army Circular, ibid., PwJf 2599.

13. “They [the priesthood] would sacrifice hundreds of widows on the pile if they dared, whose families possess not a Rupee, in support of their power and popularity, in the hope that the estate of some rich Suttee, would fall into their merciless hands to plunder.” Nottingham U., Lt. Col. C. W. R. Povoleri to Benson, 25 Nov., 1828, ibid., PwJf 2597. Warning against newspaper editors were Maj. R. L. Dickson to Benson, 30 Nov., 1828, ibid., and Capt. J. B. Neufville to Benson, 5 Dec., 1828, ibid.

14. Nottingham U., Army Circular, ibid., PwJf 2599.

15. Nottingham U., Abstract of Replies to Army Circular, undated ibid., PwJf 2603.

16. Nottingham U., Maj. T. Barron to Benson, 10 Feb., 1829, ibid.

17. Nottingham U., Abstract of Replies to Army Circular, ibid.

18. While waiting for the last officers' replies, Bentinck cautioned: “A question of this nature cannot be hurried. Alarm must not be excited by improperly and out of due course giving publicity to the existence even of an intention upon the subject, the known abandonment of it should such be the event could only prove injurious to the cause in future.” Nottingham U., Bentinck to Astell, 12 Jan., 1829, ibid., PwJf 2612.

19. Nottingham U., Lt. Col. S. H. Todd to Benson, 2 Dec., 1828, ibid., PwJf 2597.

20. Nottingham U., Circular on Suttee and Pilgrim Tax, 16 Feb., 1829, ibid., PwJf 2619.

21. Nottingham U., W. Ewer to Benson, 21 Mar., 1829, ibid., PwJf 2617.

22. Nottingham U., Abstract of Replies to Civilian Circular dated 16 Feb., 1829, ibid., PwJf 2619.

23. Nottingham U., Report from Ewer, ibid., PwJf 2617. This came to be cited in the well-known tract by the missionary Peggs, J., The Suttees' Cry to Britain (2nd ed.; London, 1828), p. 15Google Scholar

24. Minute by Bentinck, 8 Nov., 1829, in Boulger, , Bentinck, p. 101Google Scholar.

25. Nottingham U., Bentinck Papers, PwJf 2611.

26. Minute by Bentinck, 8 Nov., 1829, in Boulger, , Bentinck, p. 103Google Scholar.

27. Ibid., p. 100.

28. Ballhatchet, , Social Policy in Western India, pp. 298–305Google Scholar.

29. Nottingham U., Bentinck's Reply to Petition on Suttee, 14 July, 1830, Bentinck Papers, PwJf 2608.

30. Nottingham U., Raja Rammohun Roy to Bentinck, 29 Sept., 1830, ibid., PwJf 1965.

31. Nottingham U., Bentinck to Lord Combermere, 12 Nov., 1828, ibid., PwJf 2607. See also Bentinck to Astell, 12 Jan., 1829, ibid., PwJf 2612.

32. Grant, C., Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals and on the Means of Improving it. Written chiefly in Year 1792 (privately printed, 1797)Google Scholar.

33. Bentham, J., The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, J. (London, 1843), X, 576–78Google Scholar. Cited by Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959), p. 51Google Scholar.

34. Minute by Bentinck, 8 Nov., 1829, in Boulger, , Bentinck, p. 111Google Scholar.

35. Mill, and Wilson, , British India, IIGoogle Scholar, passim. For an apt discussion of evidence that such important evangelical leaders as Charles Grant and William Wilberforce looked upon all aspects of Hindu civilization with contempt, see Stokes, , Utilitarians and India, pp. 28–35Google Scholar.

36. Again Ewer is representative: “Let a native be fully certain that by rising from his bed and stepping over the threshold he would save all his neighbours from death and destruction he would not move unless there was a clear certainty of gain to himself.” Nottingham U., Ewer to H. Shakespear, Secretary to the Governor in the Judicial Department, 15 Aug., 1828, Bentinck Papers, Pwjf 2621. For the suggestion that a European superiority complex was a significant component of the political theory of British imperialism in India, see Iyer, R., “Utilitarianism and All That,” St. Antony's Papers, VIII (1960), 9–71Google Scholar.

37. Nottingham U., Army Circular, Bentinck Papers, PwJf 2599.