Amy Toensing

In many regions of the world widowhood marks social death for a woman, casting her and her children out to the margins of society. In these cultures a woman is usually defined by her relationship to a man: first a daughter, then a wife. When her husband dies she becomes an outcast. Often uneducated and unable to support herself, she is an easy target for abuse. Even if a woman stands to inherit land or money, she does not know her rights, and her husband’s family will chase her away and keep her assets. Sometimes she becomes an object of “inheritance” herself, being passed on as wife to a brother of her dead husband.

In India, stigma associated with widows is deeply rooted in Hinduism. Some Hindus believe that if a woman is pure and faithful she will keep her husband from death, ostensibly blaming the wife for her husband’s death. In the most extreme cases, widows throw themselves on the husband’s funeral pyre. While this practice, known as Sati, was outlawed in the early 1800s, some communities still expect widows to spend the remainder of their lives in mourning. Today, thousands of India’s 40 million widows seek refuge in holy cities such as Vrindavan and Varanasi where they serve a life sentence: shaving their heads, wearing white, and never remarrying. However, younger generations are now rejecting these expectations and the situation is changing. One ashram recently threw a party for the Holi festival, as The Times of India reported: “They sang and danced, laughed and shed tears. They threw flowers at each other and played with gulal. The widows of Vrindavan celebrated Holi with a riot of colours - defying tradition that bids them to stay away from festivities of all kinds.”