Grindlay, A Suttee: preparing for the immolation of a Hindoo widow

The marketing of India as a travel destination through word images and photographs that create a world of fantasy and yearning has a respectably long lineage. The history of travel writing can be traced back to the early accounts of those who survived hard treks across the Himalaya or braved the seas to arrive at the enchanted land of spices. Those in the military, administration, law, the clergy and, of course, itinerant tourists (several were women), wrote accounts of varying quality, and these were often accompanied by illustrations.

Perhaps one of the most detailed 19th-century accounts is that of Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta. If one is able to stomach (if not studiously ignore) his pejorative accounts of the average “native”, Heber’s descriptions of the countryside are worth reading for their information. These were the years before the Grand Trunk Road and most of his journeys were on horseback and by carriage and boats of various kinds. Not unexpectedly, he wrote approvingly of “Rhadacant Deb ... whose carriage, silver sticks, and attendants were altogether the smartest I have yet seen in India”. He was of course referring to Radha Kanta Deb who wanted Lord Hastings thanked particularly for his “protection and encouragement” of sati. Though his Christian soul recoiled from the “heathen” practice, Heber could not but be impressed by Deb’s pomp and splendour. Sati greatly exercised the colonial imagination and this highly stylized engraving by Captain Robert Melville Grindlay (now better known as the founder of Grindlays Bank) must surely have had many takers. The discordant assemblage of buildings, elaborate drapes and folds of the clothing and an overall sense of urgency no doubt satisfied the thirst for the macabre of many back home.

Heber’s Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-1825 in two volumes is a detailed rendering of the time spent in touring and inspecting his vast see all the way from Calcutta to the Deccan. The second volume deals with the southern tours. Heber’s widow, Amelia, adds in the Preface that the diary-like narrative, with entries arranged datewise, was mainly re-cast from letters to her; she adds modestly “a fact which she hopes will be borne in mind, should some consider that he has dwelt less upon the professional objects of his journey than might be anticipated”.

In August 1824, Heber visited Ghazeepoor (Ghazipur) and it is not insignificant that he chooses not to mention the poppy fields or the Ghazeepoor Carcanna — the Sudder Opium Factory — sombre in its evocation in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies. Instead, he writes, “Ghazeepoor is celebrated throughout India for the wholesomeness of its air and the beauty and extent of its rose-gardens” that occupied several hundred acres in the area. The blooms were cultivated for distillation into rose-water and attar and, as the bishop goes on to talk about the “English warehouse” where pure attar was available, clearly this was also an economic activity of the Company — like the cultivation of poppies for opium. One would hardly expect the venerable bishop to mention the seamier and more oppressive side of British commercial activity; roses were one thing — but poppies were quite another.

What Bishop Heber does mention in some detail however is the fact that “suttees are more abundant here than even in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, but chiefly confined to the lower ranks”. Again, one is reminded of Ghosh’s description of the powerful Kalua’s rescue of Deeti from husband Hukam Singh’s pyre where “[R]acing to the ground, Kalua placed the platform against the fire, scrambled to the top and snatched Deeti from the flames”. Earlier, in a series of superbly crafted sentences that subtly release the tension of the moment, Amitav Ghosh describes how the platform had been used as a projectile to disperse a crowd of relatives and voyeurs alike. Though Heber was not witness to any such heroics, he was nevertheless greatly distressed by “how little a female death is cared for” and resolved to have a “conversation with such of my friends as have influence”; we don’t know whether he ever met Lord Bentinck but certainly the Sati Regulation XVII of 1829 came about within a few years. Its main architect was of course Rammohan Roy — but perhaps the governor general had conferred with the bishop as well?

In September of that year, Heber visited Benares, staying on its outskirts with friends as “Europeans did not live in town nor were the streets wide enough for a carriage”. He spent a number of days wandering through the streets and ghats, marvelling at the “lofty” houses, some of them even five or six storeys high — “a sight which I now for the first time saw in India”. Revered as the “Sirdar Padre” of the “Sahib log”, he visited the “Hindoostanee place of worship, a small but neat chapel” and “to the natives gave the communion, with the words in their own language”. While on visits into the city he found many “bulls and beggars”, the bishop was deeply impressed by the “evident hum of business which was going on in the midst of all this wretchedness and fanaticism”: shawls from the north, diamonds from the south and fine muslin from Dacca — as well as “those European accompanying luxuries and elegancies which are daily becoming more popular in India”. Heber found time for engaged sight-seeing and he climbed the ancient observatory, visited temples and the “Vidyalaya or Hindoo College”.

And most importantly, he observed how Benares functioned administratively: he felt that it was the best governed Indian town, as the inhabitants chose “a sort of national guard, the chuprassies” who were merely approved of by the magistrates. While they were only about five hundred in number, as the guards were elected and paid by “respectable householders”, they obviously had “an interest in being civil, well-behaved, and attentive”.

Bishop Heber goes on to report in detail the citizenry’s opposition to the imposition of a very unpopular house-tax. Though not a witness, he had obviously been told of the incident in some detail. Land tax was justified, “but the houses were their own” and though the house-owners represented, the government in Calcutta remained unmoved. The decision then was to sit in the open in “‘dhurna’ or mourning” or to remain motionless without food “till the person against whom it is employed agrees to the request”. All of three thousand persons (we can presume that they were mainly men) “deserted their houses, shut up their shops, suspended the labour of their farms, forbore to light fires, dress victuals, many of them even to eat, and sate [sic] down with folded arms and drooping heads, like so many sheep, on the plain which surrounds Benares”. A perplexed local government decided to reason with a few of the “ringleaders” — but to no avail. The neighbouring cantonment was empowered by a “strong body of Europeans from Dinapoor and Ghazeepoor” — and of course it does not require much skill to decode Heber’s euphemistic language and guess who these men were. Though there was no confrontation, the power of attrition set in soon and numbers dwindled. But not before a delegation from ten to twenty thousand started their march to Calcutta, through hills and jungles. In a few days, most melted away and the much whittled-down number was “ashamed to proceed”.

Heber approvingly noted that the government, impressed by the determination and success of the protesters, decided to repeal the “obnoxious tax”. And so ended the saga of the earliest peaceful dharnas of colonial India, recorded meticulously by the diligent Reginald Heber.