Which Governor-General of British India helped Raja Ram Mohan Roy legally abolish the sati practice?

Correct — B. Lord William Bentinck made sati a criminal offence through the Bengal Sati Regulation (Regulation XVII) of 1829, applied first in the Bengal Presidency and then extended to Madras and Bombay.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy supplied the campaign behind it — petitions, the scriptural argument that widow-burning had no religious warrant, and a public defence of the regulation when orthodox opinion appealed against it in London.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Lord Curzon — Lord Curzon (1899-1905) belongs to a different century. His name attaches to the Partition of Bengal in 1905 and the Indian Universities Act of 1904.
• (c)
  Lord Cornwallis — Lord Cornwallis (1786-1793) means the Permanent Settlement and the police reforms of the 1790s — the right man for revenue and policing items, the wrong period for sati.
• (d)
  Lord Ripon — Lord Ripon (1880-84) is local self-government and the Ilbert Bill. His reforms come half a century after the sati regulation.

The abolition of sati is the standard example of a reform that needed both an Indian campaigner and a colonial administrator, and SSC asks for either half.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha in 1828 and argued from the Hindu texts themselves that the practice had no sanction in them.

Bentinck, satisfied the government could carry the measure without revolt, outlawed it in 1829. His tenure also brought the campaign against thuggee and the English Education Act of 1835 that followed Macaulay's Minute.

Key facts

• The Bengal Sati Regulation of 1829 made the practice a criminal offence in the Bengal Presidency.
• Lord William Bentinck held office from 1828 to 1835 and became the first Governor-General of India under the Charter Act of 1833.
• Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha in 1828.
• The English Education Act of 1835, following Macaulay's Minute, also belongs to Bentinck's tenure.

Common traps

• Crediting Raja Ram Mohan Roy with the law itself when the regulation is the Governor-General's
• Mixing Bentinck with Cornwallis, whose reforms are revenue and police rather than social

No directly related past PYQ was found.