Breaking down the question
The command word is comment, which invites a reasoned judgement — you must weigh the claim rather than simply endorse it. The statement asserts that the 1829 ban abolished a major social evil, and the examiner wants you to assess how far the legal prohibition of Sati actually annihilated the practice and the patriarchal order behind it.
The quotation marks around annihilation signal that you should interrogate the word. Did a law end an evil, or did it merely criminalise a visible act while leaving underlying structures of widowhood and patriarchy intact?
How to approach it
Begin by acknowledging the genuine significance of the 1829 Regulation as a landmark humanitarian and legal reform. Then complicate it — draw on the reform-versus-tradition debate, the role of colonial power and indigenous reformers, and feminist rereadings that question whose voices were heard.
Balance is essential. Present the achievement, then the limits, and conclude with a measured verdict. You may cite social reforms in colonial India for wider context on the reform movements.
Model answer
The abolition of Sati by Lord William Bentinck's Regulation of 1829, secured after the sustained campaigning of Raja Rammohan Roy, was undeniably a milestone. It marked one of the first uses of colonial legislation to outlaw a practice that took women's lives, and it established the principle that the state could intervene against custom in the name of humanity. To this extent the claim carries weight — a visible and horrifying practice was made a crime.
Yet the language of annihilation invites caution. Sociologically, a ban addresses an act, not the structure that produces it. Sati was embedded in a patriarchal order that devalued the widow, denied her remarriage, property and dignity, and glorified self-immolation as virtue. Prohibiting the pyre did not dismantle enforced widowhood, child marriage or the ideology of the pativrata; these persisted and required further reform such as the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856.
Lata Mani's analysis shows that the colonial debate was conducted largely between British officials and male indigenous elites over the authority of scripture, with the widow herself rendered voiceless — neither victim nor agent in her own right. Ashis Nandy situated Sati within the disruptions of colonial political economy rather than as pure tradition. The reform thus also served the colonial state's civilising self-image.
Therefore the ban was a necessary and courageous beginning, but to call it the annihilation of a major social evil overstates the reach of law. It curtailed an act while the deeper patriarchy endured, showing that legislation opens social change but cannot, by itself, complete it.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner is testing whether you can hold two truths together — that the reform was genuinely important and that its transformative reach was limited. Weak answers narrate the 1829 event; strong ones interrogate annihilation, bring in feminist scholarship such as Lata Mani, and distinguish between banning an act and altering a structure. A crisp, qualified verdict rather than blanket praise earns the higher marks.