Reading modernity in India: the practice of widow-burning in the light of nineteenth and twentieth century debates

Abstract

This study examines the practice of burning-wives in colonial India during the nineteenth century, when the debate over abolishing it was at its peak. Based on secondary sources, it tries to understand how the British rule perceived this cultural crime and developed strategies for dealing with it. Putting forward that British authorities paid less attention to common forms of gender violence such as ‘rape’ and ‘prostitution’, the study attempts to show how they focused instead on culturally specific crimes, such as ‘burning-wives’, ‘female infanticide’ and ‘dowry death’. Here, one should call attention to the process of codification of these issues in India. On the one hand, witness narratives show how the colonial power uses ‘law’ in order to constitute a ‘rule of difference’. On the other, however, once the colonial and 'post-colonial' cases of suttee are compared, one clearly sees that the colonial approach to the issue of suttee is part of a grand discourse, which contemporary suttee debates must take into account. Based on historical documentation and a contemporary suttee case called Roop Kanwar, the study aims at showing how examining debates over women’s body can be useful in understanding the experience of modernity in India. An interpretation of colonial and post-colonial suttee debates clearly reveals how modernity shaped colonial practices in India.