Widows

Given the traditional assumption that a
Hindu woman’s central role is as a wife
and mother, becoming a widow is
deemed the worst fate that can befall a
woman and is seen as the karmic
fruition of some ghastly former deed.
Because the underlying assumption of
the marriage ceremony is that the
bride’s identity becomes assimilated to
the groom’s, a woman without a
husband was seen as having lost her
identity. Furthermore, because she had
already taken on her dead husband’s
identity, remarriage was not an option
for her. Immediately after her husband’s
death a woman was supposed to remove
all the symbols of a married woman—
rubbing the red vermilion from the part
in her hair, breaking her glass bangles,
and in southern India, cutting the
thread on her mangal sutra. For the rest
of her life, she was forbidden to wear
jewelry, colored clothing, or other bodily
adornments, was supposed to keep her
hair cropped short, and was supposed
to devote herself to religious acts for the
benefit of her dead husband. Because
she had been widowed, she was also
considered an unlucky and inauspicious
person, banned from any and all auspicious events, living out her life doing the
drudge work in the household. In certain parts of India, it was common practice to burn a widow on her husband’s
funeral pyre, a rite known as sati,
although there were many other regions
in which this practice was unheard of.
In real life, there was considerable
variation on this grim picture. The most
significant factors were a woman’s age at
the time she was widowed, whether she
had children, and the social status of her
husband’s family. A woman widowed in
old age would likely continue as matriarch of the family, a young widow with
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Widows
Women carry water from the lake in a wedding procession in the town of Udaipur.
sons would retain family status through
her children, while even a child widow
in a wealthy family could have a fairly
comfortable life, although subject to
numerous restrictions. Where one or
another of these factors was lacking,
then a widow’s position would be much
more precarious, and there is no doubt
that in earlier times many widows led
very difficult lives. Even in modern
times a woman whose husband dies at a
young age is often considered to be
inauspicious, and thus a source of bad
fortune. Ameliorating the condition of
widows was one of the major goals of
nineteenth-century Hindu reformers,
and it has become more common for
widows to remarry, although some of
the most traditionally minded people do
not accept this.