Absolutely awful, but part of their culture and legal system. Question for the historians: what precedents are set regarding changing a culture? What worked and what did not?
> After the ban, Balochi priests in the Sindh region complained to the British Governor, Charles Napier about what they claimed was a meddlement in a sacred custom of their nation. Napier replied:
>>Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs!
>Thereafter, the account goes, no suttee took place.
Imperialism gets a bad rap—and it can be bad—but it wasn't black and white as the rash and motivated slogans in the street would have you believe. Empires can have a beneficial and civilizing effect on peoples who are unable or unwilling to address certain issues themselves. The British Empire was a huge force in halting the slave trade. The Spanish—allied with surrounding tribes—put an end to the murderous and psychotic Aztec elite; the Mayans experienced a similar fate. Sati in the Indian subcontinent is another example. Rome's civilizing influence on Europe's barbarians is also well-known.
I am sympathetic to the idea that contemporary views on imperialism are overly-focused on its downsides and blind to its upsides. "What did the Romans ever do for us?" etc.
But I find these arguments a bit tired. I'm not familiar with Sati but I know the Indian subcontinent has been civilized, if not united, for thousands of years. The British brought different values and culture, for sure, and a plethora of benefits. But I can't agree that they had a "civilizing effect" on a people who already lived in a civilization.
> Empires can have a beneficial and civilizing effect on peoples
You can't trot out Kipling's "white man's burden" without at least acknowledging the historical and racial context around it. And in my opinion, justifying imperialism because it's civilizing a lesser people is a sure route to the cruelest forms of domination via chauvinism and white supremacism.
I think it would be better justified as a sort of corporate merger: Your company organization sucks and we think we can get better outcomes for both companies if we put your company under our management.
> The British Empire was a huge force in halting the slave trade.
This is true. At the dawn of the industrial age, those pioneers of industry outlawed their chief competition in the most noble, high-minded, and selfless act of compassion in human memory.
> The Spanish—allied with surrounding tribes—put an end to the murderous and psychotic Aztec elite
Also true. Of course, they then proceeded immediately to set about extorting and exploiting the locals.
Probably pushing the idea that doing stuff like that is something criminal trash class families do.
Helps when religious leaders are against it. The Catholic church was against forced marriage which is why that mostly died out in Europe during the middle ages.
The conversion of hearts, ultimately. A culture is sustained by people. Missionaries are powerful in this regard, but they must be prepared for martyrdom as they will be contradicting established evil practices.
Film and media are very powerful for shaping attitudes. Of course, can you expect them to be made or viewed or released in a country with a problem like that?
Severe laws and a regime willing to enforce them. The law is a teacher. Murder by itself deserves death—this falls out of the definition of justice in a straightforward manner—so at the very least, such a regime would have the murderers executed. Accessories would be punished in due proportion of their complicity. But how to have such a regime in such a country? Democratic processes only amplify existing pathologies.
>>Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs!
>Thereafter, the account goes, no suttee took place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)#Opposition_to_...