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William Carey and fellow missionary John Thomas were riding near Malda, India, in 1794 when they saw “a basket hung in a tree, in which an infant had been exposed; the skull remained, the rest having been devoured by ants.” This “holy” act of infanticide had been committed with religious fervor by a Hindu mother.

Infanticide was not uncommon in India in Carey’s day. But the British government in India ignored such sacrifice of infants—it didn’t want to interfere in religious matters of the people. The Indian masses were ready to sacrifice their lives (and their infants’) for the sake of salvation and to escape the karma-samsara cycle. The people were intensely religious and were following (though sometimes misinterpreting) written religious laws.

William Carey strongly protested these crimes against humanity. He was one of many who prodded the apparently passive government to halt or regulate a variety of harmful social practices.

In 1802 Carey’s colleague William Ward studied infanticide on the river island of Saugor. Many women made vows to the Holy Ganges River “that if blessed with two children, one would be presented to the River.” As many as 100 children, he estimated (though probably more), were being sacrificed every year.

William Carey, Jr., reported one such sacrifice to his father: A boatman pulled a drowning child into his boat. He presented the infant to its mother. She took the child, broke its neck, and cast it into the river again!

After joining Fort William College as a professor, Carey protested infanticide to Governor-General Wellesley. Wellesley called for a study of the frequency, nature, and causes of infanticide in Bengal. So Carey prepared an exhaustive report; other people were at work as well. Since the attention of the government was now drawn, and Lord Wellesley was convinced, infanticide was abolished in 1802 before Carey even presented his report.

In a letter to John Ryland six years later, Carey explained his contribution: “I have, since I have been here … presented three petitions or representations to Government for the purpose of having the burning of women and other modes of murder abolished, and … in the case of infanticide and voluntary drowning in the river … laws were made to prevent these, which have been successful.”

This marked the first time the British government interfered so directly with religious practice in India. It set the stage for abolition of other practices.

As scholar E. Daniel Potts explains, widow burning was “based on the religious belief that only by burning could the widow win eternal happiness and bring blessings on her family.” (Sati, or suttee, refers to the act of burning alive a widow on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband; it also names the woman who performs the act.) Voices had been raised against sati for centuries, but no one before Carey had the ability to drown out the voices that encouraged sati.

Carey first witnessed the rite, to his horror, in 1799. (See Burning a Woman to Death in this issue.) The next year, when he saw a group of people assembled for sati, he tried to stop them by (falsely) saying the governor-general had threatened to hang the first man who kindled the funeral pyre!

Carey and other missionaries soon launched a strong protest against sati, saying it was not voluntary but forced. Carey was then asked to submit full information on sati to the governor-general’s council.

In 1803, Carey arranged for a debate of sati at Fort William College. Two years later the governor-general asked the Indian Supreme Court to study how much the practice was based on Hindu law. The report said that sati had a religious sanction, and therefore, any reform would be unwise.

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