After serving in Flanders and Italy, he was posted to India as governor of Madras (1803–07). He was recalled to Britain after a mutiny at Velore for which, by his prohibition of sepoy beards and turbans, he was held responsible. After serving in the Peninsular War he returned to India as governor-general of Bengal (1827–33) and effectively was the first governor-general of all India (1833–35). His administration substituted English for Persian and Sanskrit in the courts, brought about educational reforms, suppressed the practice of ritual strangling (see thug), and abolished suttee, in which a widow was burned on her dead husband’s pyre.