India, No Place for Widows
Bangalore: The world is in a constant flux of change yet certain belief hardly changes with time in India. One such stereotype is the stigma of being a Hindu widow. Even today many widows are living a life of social confinement and have been cut off from the normalcy of a day to day life.
The transformation is well seen when a women is widowed, as per the Hindu tradition she is made to shave her head and don a course white sari with no ornaments. They are allowed to eat just one meal a day and live a complete spiritual life.
The remarriage act of Hindu widows exists since 1856; even then the widows are living a life of solitude, or in the company of other widows, with little or no aid for proper health care. They are not accepted at social functions or religious rituals. Even their sight or shadow is considered bad omen. Even after the abolishment of sati (where the widow was made to burn alive on the husband’s funeral pyre) they can’t stop feeling like a living dead.
Most of them are abandoned by their family as a burden or some have escaped from the abuse of mother in-laws or daughter-in-laws and found ashrams to settle in, like the one in Vrindavan, where they live among many widows who are seen as the social outcasts. They live a spiritually austere life, some making their living by chanting prayers at the temple and living in miserable conditions.
