Sati: Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries, and the Changing Colonial Discourse

Lord Bentinck’s Regulation XVII of 1829, which declared sati a criminal offence, marked the culmination of a sustained campaign against Hinduism by British Evangelicals and missionaries anxious to Anglicize and Christianize India. The attack on Hinduism was initiated by the Evangelist, Charles Grant, an employee of the East India Company and subsequently member of the Court of Directors in 1792, he presented his famous treatise, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain. A harsh evaluation of Hindu Society, it challenged the then current Orientalist policy of respecting Indian laws, religion and customs.