ABSTRACT
At the end of the eighteenth century when the East India Company (EIC) domains were fast increasing and the British government was getting officially, though indirectly, involved in the governance of the EIC’s territories in India, there were three major movements in Britain that had potential for international outgrowths. These were the Evangelical Revival; the Enlightenment or Liberalism, as it was called in Britain; and the Industrial Revolution. In 1829, William Bentinck and his council made a Hindu practice, then prevalent among very few families, illegal. This was sati, or suttee, cremation or self-immolation of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. The British had assumed some responsibility for public education in India in 1813 with an allotment of less than 100,000 rupees. The Great Uprising began with the Mutiny at Meerut on May 10, 1857, when the sepoys stormed the British officers’ premises, killed several, and burned their homes.
