This publication of Ram Mohan Roy’s two conversations and other appendices is by way of a reminder to the contemporary intelligentsia that, in spite of the law forbidding Sari, the barbarous rite is still being practised, overtly or covertly, and being glorified by some of the ignorant folk in the name of tradition, backed by the chauvinist Hindu fundamentalist, thus degrading the lofty cosmic idealism of India’s ‘perennial philosophy”.

Ours is still dominantly a man’s world, where a woman is enslaved, behind cover of Vedic rites, often sold in marriage with dowry, unable to remarry if widowed, despised for bringing forth female children, victim of paternal pride, a part of humanity’s oppressed half, in a country in which the constitution has adopted universal human rights for men and women.

Ram Mohan Roy, the first precursor of India’s resurgence from the ‘filth of Hindusm’ to some purity of feeling and thought in early 19th century, is said to have written his two dialogues, between a protagonist and an antagonist Sati, from the compulsion of the shrieking out from the pyre of his sister-in-law when the flames touched her, but who was forced down by the devout with bamboo poles.

He had researched in the Shastras and found no sanction in Manu, Yaganvalkya, or in the Vedas, for the heinous practice of burning of widows alive.

His impassioned writings inspired a co-thinker, Lord William Bentinck, himself a radical follower of Jeremy Bentham the utilitarian philosopher, believer in the greatest good of the greatest number, to abolish the odious rite by law, in spite of the worldly wise counsels of even his most knowledgeable countrymen.

Orthodox Hindu protested against Bentinck’s ban on Sati and appealed to the King in Council in Britain to repeal the law.

The appeal was lost. The law prevailed only for some time. It has been flouted frequently for over a century, until Government of India was compelled to pass a bill against the practice of Sari penalising the widow if she agrees to be burnt alive, and all those who either presuade the widow or coerce her. This book should be in the hands of the Intelligentsia. Perchance, some of them may re-adopt the mission of Ram Mohan Roy.