Yeah, but the fact is you were still doing it.
en.wikipedia.org
You were still doing it after independence too. The 1987 Act also describes 'forced burning'.
Nobody would describe it as a good progressive entity, but yet it did institute some progress, which emphasises the dire state of India when it arrived.
Let's focus on the practice of witch huntings of some of the most civilised nations in the west , notably the UK - the epitome of western civilization & prime mover of the idea - white man's burden of civilising the natives .
en.wikipedia.org
It was, however, not until the second half of the 16th century that a widescale witch hunt took place in England. The cases became more common in the end of the 16th century and the early 17th century, particularly since the succession of
James VI and I to the throne. King James had shown a great interest in witch trials since the
Copenhagen witch trials in 1589, which had inspired the
North Berwick witch trials in Scotland in 1590. When he succeeded to the English throne in 1603, he sharpened the English Witchcraft Act the following year.
The end
After the many witch trials of the mid 17th century, the cases became fewer during the second half of the 17th century. Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth Hicks have been referred to as the last people executed for witchcraft in England in 1716.
Witch trials formally ended in England after the introduction of the
Witchcraft Act of 1735.
As one may note this was less than a century before the sati act was enacted in India , which incidentally was another crowning achievement of propaganda of the British imperial colonial project for if sati were the norm & average life expectancy being what it was then ( > 40 ) compounded by the massive famines , India would certainly not be among the most massively populated lands either then or before or since till date .
Every nation & it's people are known for certain traits which in turn also become it's defining characteristics & end up being stereotypes , justifiably so or not .
There are 6-7 such defining characteristics of the British & which have acquired the status of an institution in the UK today having been shaped thus since the past half a millenium .
The class system
Capitalism
Colonialism / white man's burden
The love of :
Buggery
Cuckoldry
Afternoon tea
Cricket.
It's the love of afternoon tea which saw it's demand shoot up thousands of times such that the UK started leaking silver paying for it thru their nose to the Chinese that they hit upon the diabolical scheme of exporting opium to offset their losses in bullion to pay up for their hopeless addiction to tea. Since India was already their colony , cultivating opium wasn't a big problem nor was forcing the Chinese into seeing things their way after the opium wars.
Let's come to another famous or rather infamous but beloved British institution - the love of buggery .
Apparently Henry VIII enacted the law outlawing buggery to escape persistent rumours that he preferred buggering his wives & when they couldn't bear him a male heir , he got rid of them .
Henry VIII also despised buggery between males which apparently was widely prevalent among the aristocracy & was increasingly gaining popularity with the plebeians.
The last thing the aristocracy wanted was growing familiarity between the ruling class & the ruled. Hence the passage of such a law . In fact the law followed the British where ever they went across the world . Be it in Ireland or India where the law was enacted in 1861. The horror of an English civil servant or an army officer get his behind serviced by a page boy or a sepoy at night & who had to rise up to salute the former in day time who if he refused to do so on account of the intimacy they shared was so galling to the entire edifice of colonialism that such laws had to be enacted & prosecution initiated to maintain the charade.