The practice of Sati has only been practiced in regions of India where women were able to inherit. There’s a great deal of material regarding women’s Role and status in Inda, I highly recommend Kali’s Yug and Daughters Of Independence which discuss the effects of violence against women, and the effects of colonialism and the condition of post-colonial India respectively. Basically you’re talking shit out your ass.There’s a good deal of scholarly discourse on the topic, and if you’d bothered to remove your head from your sphincter and research, you’d KNOW this. Hint, try using a database like JSTOR, they keep track of legitimate sources from all over the world. Lexis Nexus or Pro-Quest are not as good, but would have sufficed.
Welcome to the SDMB, and thank thee for posting thy comment.
Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site.
To include a link, it can be as simple as including the web page location in thy post (make sure there is a space before and after the text of the URL).
Cecil’s column can be found on-line at this link:
What’s up with those Indian widows who commit suttee? (05-Apr-2002)
moderator, «Comments on Cecil’s Columns»
speaking as staff member
Starlet Of India, your expressions “talking shit out your ass” and “remove your head from your sphincter” are out of the bounds of what is considered acceptable behaviour in this forum at the Straight Dope Message Board. If you want to insult someone in strong terms like that, you should post in our other forum named The BBQ Pit.
end of staff member speech
My apologies. Please reference material before writing articles.
Is there a reason why I cannot edit my post in order to comply with the general etiquette of this forum?
Yes. It’s General Board Policy not to allow us to edit our posts, always has been, always will be. Welcome to the “dang, I wish I hadn’t said that” club. 
BTW, flaming Cecil for not doing research is totally useless. He is a God, you see, and Gods, being Perfectly Wise, do exactly as much research as they feel is appropriate to the subject at hand. They also do exactly as much research as they can fit into their busy schedules of drinking nectar, gobbling ambrosia, tossing thunderbolts, and chasing beautiful virgins.
If you really think His Eruditeness’s suttee column was lacking in research, then that must have been the column he wrote during Spring Break…
In what way was the column “incorrect”, i.e. “wrong”, specifically?
I’ll post more later, I’ve seen your questions and recognize them, but I am a college student, and I’m doing a massive amount of research right now on Women’s Rights in developing nations. The topic is long an drawn out, and I promise I’ll address them, but this is my first day here, and with my courseload and the normal BB I participate on smoking some strange stuff, I can’t right now. Hopefully by Sunday I will be able to explain.
Yes, Starlet, i’d like to hear your reasons.
Cecil’s answer seemed to fairly correctly match my understanding of the issue.
Probably He left out a lot of details in His answer, but that is understandable, and expected, considering the nature of the topic.
I would be interested to know what part, specifically, of His answer you found incorrect or misleading. Or lacking.
What, you mean the virgins actually run from him?
Of course they run from him; how else could he chase them? (After all, what fun is catching a virgin?)
Bumped, as the column is back on the SD homepage.
I see Wiki has a long article: Sati (practice) - Wikipedia
General Sir Charles James Napier had a good response to sati back in the 1840s: Charles James Napier - Wikipedia
And clearly also had an intuitive understanding of the Stockholm syndrome: “the human mind is never better disposed to gratitude and attachment than when softened by fear”