"Truly a widow is as a withered faggot. Let her then burn on her lord's funeral pyre."
With such proverbs as these, Indians have for centuries coldly praised the suttee: "a good woman" who allows herself to be burned to death at her husband's funeral. The British have, of course, largely stamped out this rite, but only after the most appalling struggle.
Occasionally, however, ^ there comes news that awakening Indians are slowly getting behind the new morality. The great reformer "Mahatma" Gandhi published last week a proposed code of conduct for women which...