India’s Widows Find Refuge When Society Turns Its Back for Life

VRINDAVAN, India — Devotion is the driving force in this river town. The chants of the faithful blend with the chiming of bells from 5,000 temples.

But the prayers rising from a small alley have an especially soulful tone. They are the devotions of widows--some still in their early 20s--who were cast away from their families and shunned by society after their husbands died.

In India’s ritualistic, male-dominated Hindu society, widowhood is a little-noticed dimension of the discrimination that women face.

Among superstitious families, in-laws often blame a widow for her husband’s death. Unless she controls property, she is treated shabbily and even ostracized.

Vrindavan developed into a Hindu pilgrimage center early in this century and soon became a refuge for cast-out widows, who believe that by dying in such a holy town they can break the cycle of birth and rebirth.

At the six shelters for widows in Vrindavan, more than 2,000 widows gather each morning to begin prayers that last until nightfall.

Dressed uniformly in white cotton saris with their heads covered, they sit in a courtyard around an altar with an idol of Lord Krishna surrounded by burning incense sticks. Their heads bob up and down to the monotonous drone of “Hare Rama. Hare Krishna.”

Each widow is given two rupees (7 cents) every evening and a cupful of uncooked rice and lentils, enough for one meal.

“We have no limit here. Anybody who comes here and spends the day singing odes is entitled to the bounty,” says Bipin Sharma of the Bhagwan Bhajan Ashram Trust, which runs two homes for widows in Vrindavan.

Before they begin their prayers, many women work, earning about 350 rupees ($10) a month cleaning temples. Half that goes to rent a room often shared by as many as three widows.

“I am too ill to work, so my 12-year-old daughter earns by stitching and sewing,” says Jashoda Rani, 35. Rani fled to her brother’s house after her husband died four years ago, but came to Vrindavan when he too abandoned her.

There are few options for widows.

Hindus frown on remarriage for women, although there are no social barriers for men. Family members go to the extent of ensuring that widows turn vegetarian, believing that eating meat arouses sexual desire.

Until modern times, widows were expected to jump on the funeral pyre of their husbands in a tradition known as “sati.” The practice was outlawed decades ago, but the last known case was as recent as 1987.

Most women in Vrindavan have little to look forward to. It is the dead-end of their lives, and for some it came early.

“I was married off when I was 5 years old. My husband, whom I never saw, was 13, and he died one month after the wedding,” says Gita Devi, who at age 77 is among the most veteran members of the shelter she helps run.

According to the World Bank, 65% of Indian women older than 60 are widows. That rises to 80% for women older than 70.

“Widowhood reflects the status of women in India,” says Anne Tinker, a World Bank specialist who has studied Indian women for four years.

As India modernizes, attitudes toward women include bizarre contradictions. Indian women fly air force jets, head million-dollar corporations and sit in Parliament--Indira Gandhi was prime minister for 16 years.

But it’s a different story for most women.

Infanticide of newborn girls and abortion of female fetuses has reduced the number of women to 927 for every 1,000 men.

On average, female infants are weaned two months earlier than boys. Girls get less food than their brothers and often are forced to stay home helping their mothers rather than go to school.

In a phenomenon known as “dowry deaths,” young brides who fail to satisfy rapacious in-laws with gifts from their families are murdered in “kitchen accidents” or tormented into suicide.

“In India, where a woman’s identity is determined by her being an appendage to a male, widowhood has a much larger dimension than losing a husband,” says Vrinda Karat of the All India Democratic Women’s Assn.