# Sati abolished, English adopted
**सती प्रथा का अंत, अंग्रेज़ी शिक्षा का आरंभ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bentinck-reforms-1829/
- Chapter: [Company rule](https://indianepics.online/chapter/company.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1829 CE – 1835 CE
- Where: Government House, Calcutta (22.5697, 88.3487)
- Tags: colonial, religion, language

## Summary

Bentinck outlaws sati in Bengal in December 1829; in 1835, after Macaulay's Minute, the Company's education funds go to English-medium teaching.

दिसंबर 1829 में बेंटिंक ने बंगाल में सती प्रथा को अवैध घोषित किया; 1835 में मैकॉले के शिक्षा संबंधी 'मिनट' के बाद कंपनी का शिक्षा-धन अंग्रेज़ी माध्यम की पढ़ाई को मिला।

## Account

Regulation XVII of 4 December 1829 declared the burning or burying alive of widows illegal and punishable in the Bengal Presidency; Madras and Bombay followed in 1830. Rammohun Roy had argued against the practice in print for more than a decade. Orthodox Calcutta appealed to the Privy Council against the ban, which dismissed the appeal in 1832.

On 2 February 1835 Thomas Babington Macaulay, law member of the Governor-General's council, wrote his Minute on Education, dismissing Sanskrit and Arabic learning and proposing to form a class "Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste". Bentinck's resolution of 7 March 1835 directed the Company's education funds to teaching in English, and Act XXIX of 1837 began replacing Persian in the courts and revenue offices with English and the local languages.

Both measures are read in two ways: as reforms Indian reformers had asked for, and as a colonial state's claim to remake Indian society. Lata Mani has argued that the sati debate was conducted over the heads of the women it concerned.

## Sources

- Sharp (ed.), Selections from Educational Records, Part I, 1781-1839 (1920) — https://archive.org/details/apwm_selections-from-educational-records-part-1-by-h.-sharp-1920-calcutta-superintend (Macaulay's Minute of 2 February 1835 and the resolution of 7 March 1835)
- The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy (Ghose ed., 1901) — https://archive.org/details/theenglishworks01rammuoft
- Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (1998)

## Image

Portrait of Raja Ram Mohan Roylabel QS:Len,"Portrait of Raja Ram Mohan Roy". anonymous, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABust_portrait_of_the_Hindu_reformer_Ram_Mohan_Roy..jpg

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