In many conservative Indian Hindu families, widows are turned away from the house because they’re considered as bringing bad luck. They are even blamed for their husband’s death by the superstitious relatives. The widows are regarded as a liability with no social standing, an unwanted mouth to feed. Often they’re thrown out of the family.
Vrindavan, a holy city of Hindus is regarded as the city of widows. One destination where these grief-stricken women would find solace... Dharmashastra, the sacred legal text of the Hindus, states that one the husband dies the wife will have to spend the rest of her life in memory of her husband sacrificing every desire of well being. She will have to renounce life’s luxuries and withdraw herself from the society. There was once the practice of “sati” where the widow was burnt alive on the dead husband’s funeral pyre. The practice is now outlawed.
A large group of related gather to smash the bangles, wipe off the vermillion and shave the hair of the little girl who just lost her old husband. The child does not even feel the grief. She would then be forced to wear white saris and eat once in a day. The Hindu widows are often removed from their families and children – abandoned in a widow ashram in Vrindavan.
The loss of a husband for these women becomes an upheaval beyond belief. It’s a way to isolation, poverty and despair. For thousands of women it is a journey towards the eternal truth - to a town considered divine in India called Vrindavan.
The widows in Vrindavan today are found on the streets, in ashrams and other centers of the city. Vrindavan has over 4,000 temples today and many ashrams. The approximate number of widows living in the holy city today numbers over 20,000.
The latest national census counts widows living in locations across India reach millions. The largest number of widows is currently found in Vrindavan.
Conditions in most of these ashrams of Vrindavan are dreadful. From sexual use to trafficking of younger widows occur here regularly. At Mathura ashram in Vrindavan conditions are grave. The widows, dumped by their family on the death of their husbands, have no resources of their own.
There appear no chance for education, no protection from possible rape and no hope for a better life. They face situations of hunger, starvation and negligence as they try to survive with only one small plate of food a day. Some of the ashrams today are also scattered with diseases like tuberculosis, dysentery and STDs. Most often, in the poorest ashrams medical help is virtually non-existent.
“I came here with nothing. Even on the train, I had to sit on the floor and not on a bench,” said widow, who came to Vrindavan as a widow at the age of 33. “I had to sit by the toilet and slept under the bench on the floor. Since I came, I have never returned home. This is my only home now.”
Very little, which is close to no-help, has so far arrived from the government. Few of the NGOs work independently for the betterment of the conditions of the widows in Vrindavan. Women activists like Dr. Giri and the Guild of Service have brought forward the need of proper health care for these mistreated women.
