000			02589nam a22001817a 4500
008			231212b2016 |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9788173055522
082			_a393.930954 JAI-M
100			_aJain, Meenakshi
245			_aSati : evangelicals, Baptist missionaries, and the changing colonial discourse / _cMeenakshi Jain
260			_aIndia _bAryan Books _c2016
300			_a464 p.
365			_aINR _b995.00
500			_a“Sati: Evangelical, Baptists Missionaries, and the Changing Colonial Discourse” is a history of the practice of Sati written by Meenakshi Jain, a professor of history in Delhi, and published by Aryan Books International. Next to the caste system, the practice of Sati has been used by groups such as Christians, Communists, and Indian Secularists, as evidence for why Hinduism is bad. Jain makes a convincing case that this obsession with Sati exaggerates what is a very rare occurrence. She also argues that widows who committed suicide as Sati did not do so with religion sanction. They were not forced by priests or family members. What the Christians, the Communists, and the Social Reformers say about Sati is thus wrong. This then raises the question of why Sati has been ubiquitously discussed since the eighteenth century, even by Hindus themselves. Here Jain puts forwarded a very interesting connection between the changes that took place in English society as a result of the French Revolution, the concomitant change of policy enforced on British India by two English groups known as Evangelicals and Utilitarians, and the resultant effect of this on how Hindus themselves began to view Sati. Jain writes in a sober and clear language that is a joy to read. There are a lot of interesting tidbits in the book such as that the first foreign reference to Sati is by Diodorus in 316 BC, and that the oldest example of Sati in Indian literature might be Madri’s suicide in the Mahabharata. We learn of the respect that eighteenth-century British people in India had for Hindu traditions, and how this later changed thanks to the Evangelicals and Utilitarians. An interesting villain in the story is William Wilberforce, who is celebrated in today’s England as the politician who abolished slavery in the British Empire. While many Indians know about the role of Ram Mohun Roy in the abolishment of Sati, not many people know of the contemporary progressive Indian opponents of the abolition, such as Radhakant Deb and Bhawanicharan Banerji.
650			_aMissionaries
650			_aBaptists--Missions
650			_aEvangelicalism
999			_c91336 _d91336