As for authority vs power, call it what you will. Having power to stop something evil and refusing to exercise it because that power wasn’t legitimately acquired seems much worse than doing nothing. This is true whether or not the power is being used for profit as well.

Napier could not stop the bad effects of colonialism. He could, however, make a difference here.

See, I believe that the west still has a very long way to go, that we aren’t even close to civilized, that as a society we still tolerate things any reasonable culture would have abolished centuries ago. Yes, we have Christian fundies who do the same evil things that Muslim fundies are doing and they are just as bad. At the same time, I’m not so sure thats an argument to import more evil.

Being in a position of authority and not enforcing the law because the victims are Hindu women and the perpetrators Hindu is worse than that.

Whoa there Silver! I NEVER said leave Hindu women to burn. I happen to think intervening is both legitimate and necessary. I said that capital punishment is offensive, I should hope that many people here agree with me. I think it’s all the more offensive when practiced en masse, by a colonial power with a penchant for mass murder, rape and torture, and then dressed up as moral superiority.

Hanging people is just plain wrong. And cheerleading for hanging people is offensive.

(Extra-judicial? (a) they were the effective authority in that time and place. (b) Defense of others (or self) is a legitimate extra-judicial use of power. I’m all for “vigilantes” to attack criminals while the crime is happening. After the crime is over, of course, the courts are the proper recourse.)

I’m glad you think so. Read the Napier quote again. He’s advocating waiting for the burnings to be over, and then executing, summarily, the men*. If he were in favour of pulling women out of the fire, or stopping them from being burned in the first place, I’d be behind him 100%. But he’s not.

You’re confusing “intervening to help people” with “retaliatory executions”. The former is noble, the latter is evil.

As for proper authority, you’re giving the British presence in India a constitutional and legal legitimacy that I think is non-existant. They may have been in power, but they weren’t in authority. There is a world of difference.

*Obviously, he was using rhetoric, as opposed to drafting detailed legislation, but still, rhetoric is telling.

Illegal only works if the penalty is large enough to scare perps into being law-abiding.

That would be the worst. How likely are you to talk to someone who’s probably related to your dad? These are very tight-knit communities with everyone knowing everyone. Women in the family are just as complicit with the state of affairs as the men.

I’d like to say that as a brown woman, I am sick to death of ‘brown=Muslim’. Because it doesn’t. My family (although it’s fair to say I have pretty considerably lapsed!) is uber-Catholic. I know a lot of people get this, but more people don’t – brown does not equal Muslim. It also does not equal terrorist, asylum seeker, illegal immigrant and in the case of brown women, it does not equal ‘poor downtrodden soul completely under male control at all times and must be rescued’. Nor does it equal ‘exotic mysterious desi I love to serve’.

I’d also like to state that forced marriages do occur outside of brown families, as some commenter have mentioned, and that mostly, it’s to do with family ‘honour’ and male control. And this is where it needs to change. And more men should be speaking up about this.

Under deeply sexist traditional attitudes, women are commodities and symbols of family honour. Generally speaking, a lot of brown families are religious, and most religions do not allow pre-marital sex. So if a woman in the family has pre-marital sex, or acts ‘inappropriately’ (wears short skirts or hangs around with boys, or even just hanging around instead of being a good girl at home helping mother), she is seen as disgracing the family and her behaviour must be stopped.

Sons, especially if they’re first-born, can get away with everything.

This has been true of white women in the past, and is still true for some now, but is seen as old-fashioned. And this is another thing – parents are scared of change, especially if they’re first-generation immigrants, and they partly justify removing their daughters from the UK because they don’t want her to be westernised. Which is ridiculous. I remember my dad not too long ago saying I should remember I am not white… I know I’m not white…but that doesn’t mean I should be subservient. It has nothing to do with me being brown and everything to do with me being not-white and a woman.

Men are just too stupidly horribly protective about women, especially their daughters, and I think there are a hell of a lot of fractured relationships between daughters and fathers. Fathers and sons too, what with equally stupid perceived notions of manliness.

I don’t know about hard and fast laws to stop this, but I do want men, brown men in particular, to stand up and say yes, this bullshit is wrong and it needs to stop.

I haven’t said half of what I wanted to say and everything’s come out a bit garbled – my apologies.

And I wasn’t saying “thank goodness the Brits came in and civilized the savages,” either. But, as long as the patriarchy has decided to charge in and do all sorts of bad things, I can’t get too upset about them doing some small redeeming act that happens to benefit women about to be burned alive. My multiculturalism doesn’t extend to excusing human sacrifice, rape, murder, and other unsavory things that are variously justified by local custom. Western culture is full of unsavory things we justify for different reasons, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t obligated to stop the most egregious ones where we’re able to.

Education, I believe, for both parents and children will help out the most as a preventative measure before any punishment. I’ve read tales of parents, men, in Afghanistan who, after talking with educators about giving their daughters a chance at education, have turned around and even helped in car-pooling several other daughters of other parents to school.

It’s definitely not so easy to work with, but at least we can all agree that this is a stupid, horrible practice that must be stopped. It’s hurting the futures of young women.