6 This simply ends any personal opportunities for the women, as from a young age they are to look after and support there husbands by all means. It was a changing mindset that led to such atrocities; as having a girl became a burden, more work than it was worth.7 The inhumane experience of Sati best personifies the injustice, where the wife burns herself alive in the funeral pyre of her husband. The deed itself was believed to merit wives as faithful and dispel the most 'virtuous type. This was a glorified myth through the eyes of innocuous men. The first hand story of Roop Kanwar shows this. 'On September 4, 1987 in the northern village of Deorala, Roop Kanwar learned that her husband had passed away. Upon seeing her in-laws preparing for an elaborate funeral, she, an eighteen year old, escaped and hid in a barn at her in laws house. After being found by her husband's family, she was dragged to the funeral pyre, where her husband's body was being cremated, she was thrown onto the fire to die'.8 This is the pinnacle of male expectations for women at the time. To expect basic suicide as a means of virtue is a simple denoting of pure worthless for women. The contrasts between sexes were so extreme throughout the period that a unified National Independent Movement was a blessing in disguise, a formal chance to fight. .
Medieval India was responsible for widening the gap between man and women, as each of these customs diminished women in some form. India's gender relations had worsened and British control of India seemed to exacerbate the issues, on a national level. The British Empire took over the Eastern Indian company in 1858 and with it seized control of the nation. Western ideals fused with Indian resentment, made Gender and Imperialism very important notions. The British used the particular form that gender divisions took in India as a vehicle for proving their liberality, as a demonstration of their superiority, and as a legitimization of their rule.