For my money, the U.S. media’s coverage of South Asia has improved a lot in recent years. I often hear complaints about the New York Times’ Somini Sengupta (and on occasion I’ve had my criticisms too), but overall the quality of South Asia coverage at the Times has been consistently high in my estimation.
Periodically, however, major American media sources seem to lose their focus a little. First up, witness today’s article on Widows at Cnn.com. How is this a “fresh” story? Why is it the lede at CNN, exactly? (For several hours on Thursday afternoon, this was the leading story on Cnn.com’s website.) While Indian widows face real problems — and we’ve talked about them at SM before — the superficial style of coverage in this particular CNN story smacks of sensationalism. There is so much happening in the world — the siege of the Red Mosque in Pakistan, and the derailment of the commuter train in London might be two examples. I’m not sure why or how this is judged “leading news.”
And then there’s the unusual New York Times story about the woman in Karnataka who’s started a blog to raise awareness of her husband’s whistle-blowing activities. By getting public attention she’s trying to avoid having his fate resemble that of other government workers engaged in fighting corruption in the past few years — two of whom were assasinated.
I do wish M. N. Vijayakumar and J. N. Jayashree well, and there is something rather smart about this approach: the best way to fight lack of information transparency is to aim for hyper-transparency (“wiki-giri”, perhaps). But a visit to the “Fighting Corruption” blog is a little less than inspiring; from my attempted navigation, it was actually a bit difficult to pin down the specific cases where Vijayakumar has attempted to make interventions. And my bigger concern is the danger that this strategy might only work in exceptional instances. It’s fine if 1 or 5 or 10 whistle-blowers are keeping blogs; people will pay attention. But what about 1000, or 10,000? Since a single blog can hardly clean up corruption single-handedly, to me this story falls under “novelty,” not so much “news.” What’s your view?
Widow Power, I am probably inviting a hammering from all the religion wonks on the site by making this statement, but Hinduism is such an amorphous and diverse branch of practices (assimilation is the devilish cunning of its growth strategy, every religion needs one after all!) that for every quote you cite from one book, there will be somebody who will be able to produce an equal and opposite quote from another book that claims disciples for it.
I agree!
So then you look at the customs, beliefs and practical, day-to-day examples of the individuals. There is a thread through all of the various Hindus in India that I have met regarding the behaviour of widows, as well as the behaviour expected of them. An over-whelming majority of them do not remarry. The reasons given are rarely, if ever, “I had the chance but opted out”. The reasons given are an over-whelming majority, “it is not our custom/culture/religion”.
It is just not done. Point blank.
Can we address that?
I’ve got mixed feelings about the CNN piece on widows.
It’s bad journalism. The piece isn’t balanced, when you show the bad, you must also show the good–or at least show that there are certain areas of India where this does not take place. If you don’t do that, people assume that Hindu’s in general feel that all widows worthless, and we are all testament of that not being true.
However, it does highlight a very important part of Indian society that needs attention. Perhaps this piece will bring in money where it’s needed to help the organizations which are fighting to house and feed these women. Yes the publicity makes India look bad, but this is a bad part of India.
It is prevelant in West Bengal. Most of the widows in Vrindavan are bengalis.
Since the people on SM come from a wide variety of states in India, maybe they could share what are the customs in their states regarding widows, widow remarriage (or lack thereof), etc.
I’ve seen many, many Bengali widows dawn the white sari and shaved head, they also give up certain types of food, like if they were fish eaters before, they become full vegetarian after the death of the husband, things like that. In other parts of India I have not seen the shaved head, but sometimes the white sari. However, I’ve known only one Indian widow to remarry.
What are some of the experiences of the people on this site? The widows in your family? Amongst your friends’ families? Amongst the neighborhoods you vist in India?
Widow Power/all, Very poor journalistic piece by CNN.
That aside, I think there are two issues getting mixed up here. One is the negligence of older widowed women and the other is the cultural pressure placed on young windows.
Widow Power (Padesi Gori ?)…thanks, we would not be aware of this without your efforts. I do see some progress in the South, where an increasing number of young widows are refusing to wear the white sari with the support of the families of their birth. The only “Hindu” community I know of that encourages widow remarriage is the Kodavas (i.e. people of the Coorg). As in the case of other landed S. Indian communities, “Vedicization” came late and is more of a pretension than a major influence on daily life
Pardesi Gori, is that you?
Anyway, a scholar named Martha Alter Chen has written a lot about widows in India. According to Chen, the colonial census taken in the thirties showed that only about 14% of Hindu castes had prohibitions on remarriage, and many communities actively encouraged remarriage. However, widow remarriage wasn’t an unqualified blessing for women; a lot of the communities that practiced it used it as a way to keep control of women and their property (usually, a woman would be expected to marry her late husband’s brother, and she didn’t get a chance to opt out). Chen interviewed many rural widows, and a lot of them genuinely didn’t want to marry again, even if their community sanctioned it. Much of the time, ‘my culture doesn’t allow widow remarriage’ may be shorthand for ‘I don’t want to lose my property rights/I’m worried about a stepfather abusing my kids/I don’t want to cook and clean for a man again’, etc.
They are both tied together. As is dowry and the death of that baby in the other post.
An apple does not fall from an orange tree.
The state of widows, young or old, wealthy or poor, respected or not, as well as the state of female babies, inside the womb or out, as well as dowry receivers – killing for it or not, is all tied into a cultural mileu, a particular mindset, philosophy about women in India and what they have taken birth for.
Both the wealthy, healthy, working, independent widow having clandestine affairs and the poor, neglected, unemployed begger one both spring from a river that flows with the “no remarriage” current.
The view that a woman should have only one “pati deva” (godlike husband) her whole life, and consider herself joined to him forever, even after his body has been burned and his soul already incarnated in the next life as a fetus in someone’s womb, is at the root of this.
The view that she should somehow not have a stake in the claim to his property or money after death in the event that she does remarry, that she is somehow not a good “pati-vrata-dharmik-patni” or “sati-savitri” type if she does remarry, is at the root of this.
Widow Power, I’m from Chennai (Madras) and have seen young widows remarry (including a relative of mine). I do see that there is undue/unfair pressure placed on the young widows and can imagine that it gets worse as you go down the economic strata. But having seen elderly windows treated with reverence and respect at all economic levels, I felt that the CNN article smacked of gross generalization – especially with the “Hindu” prefix for given to the windows.
I completely agree that, as a community, we need a lot of introspection about the way our society treats our widowed women – where there is a lot of progress to be made. What you will find a majority of people saying here is that, it is has been sensationalized in this CNN article and the actual premise is lost.
That’s because the Abrahamic faiths have never discouraged widow remarriage. Jains and Buddhists I don’t know about.
That being said, what are the statistics on desi muslim widow remarriages?
Why would the rights to property be lost in the event of a remarriage?
Again, the cultural mindset.
“That’s because the Abrahamic faiths have never discouraged widow remarriage”. That comparison cuts both ways – the Abrahamic faiths have a gender bias regarding divinity. As mentioned in another comment earlier, American problems cannot be construed to be Judeo-Christian problems. Which will be the text book definition of gross generalization. That is what I believe most people have taken offense to.
Agreed, that culturally, Indians/Hindus have denounced widow re-marriage and that needs to be addressed.
Why would the rights to property be lost in the event of a remarriage?
Because in agrarian societies, the land (or any property, be it a small hut or cows or cowshed), is kept within the family, especially if the resources are limited. One does not want that go outside the family. This is almost universal.
In fact, Ms. Widow Power, there have been some studies that the land owner laws enacted in British India, made dowry, etc. more pronounced. Some excerpts from Oldenberg’s book:
writing about a blogger is easier than finding real news. pray, how will blogging help if those goons are determined to get him. it’s not as if they are afraid of generating bad publicity. interesting, though, for its exotic eastern problems meet western technology concept.
journo – I think I’m missing your point. I got “writing about a blogger is easier than finding real news”. But missed the rest – who are the goons?
Because someone asked — my family is from all over TN and Karnataka. Widows in our family are extremely well taken care of and still completely revered as an elder. Many family members have gone out of their way to house and care for the widows in our family, particularly on my mother’s side. (All the women in our family are similarly cherished, and we outnumber the males 2:1, easily) I had honestly never heard any of these horror stories re: widows, brides, female children, etc. until I was much older. There are many widows in our local community here in the US, and I’ve also met many widows who are family friends in India. Almost all are taken care of by their eldest child, male or female; that seems to be the norm. There are two recent widows in my family in the last month; one was asked to move in immediately with her closest child, and the other’s son moved to be within a block of her. I have no statistics or scholarly articles to back up my observations, but there you go.
Is that true? Whoa!
And Pardesi Gori, I’ve asked you before and I’ll ask you again…why do OUR cultural mindsets bother you so much? Can’t you worry about your own people and your own culture and let us sort out ours? There are plenty of nudist colonies or swingers clubs where I’m sure you’d find the cultural vibe you seem to be looking for. They might not be ‘vaishnav’ of course.
Is that true? Whoa!
It was a rumor that Indira Gandhi and Dinesh Singh might have had an affair. It was never established, though. Who knows?
I think Salman Rushdie alluded to it in Midnight Children.
“An over-whelming majority of them do not remarry.”
Funny you say so. Almost all the young widows I heard of, remarried. That despite the fact that I come from the conservative Varanasi. Maybe we should avoid making general statements based on only our personal experiences. I have lived in Varanasi for years and I never found any widow ashrams that Deepa Mehta talks about. The last of them closed down 50 years ago. Most of the abandoned widows this article talks about are left due to acute poverty. At least in my experience, it considered more shameful in the society to force a widow to leave the house than her remarrying.
I think someone mentioned earlier that on the same day CNN and Yahoo news carried two different news items on Hindu women’s sorry state – on the same day that (muslim) doctors from Bangalore are implicated in terrorist plots. It’s not a coinkidink – it’s deliberate sloppiness.
Anyway, talking about widows…
Of all you married women out there, who among you does not wish sometimes that your husband was, you know, dead? Not dead as in “You forgot our anniversary – I’ll kill you“, but dead as in “Mrs. Kumar? This is Sgt.Williams from the Turnpike police. I’m afraid I’ve some bad news for you.”
Oh come on now – don’t give me the same old “I’m not that kind of a woman” response. Wishing for a husband’s demise is ingrained into a woman’s DNA. From Neanderthal’s times, man has almost always met his maker first, at the hands of wild animals while hunting, at the hands of other men fighting for land, water or woman etc etc. As a result, for a woman, her husband dying is subtly construed as him dying for her. And that, my friends, is the best compliment a woman can ever get. A widow gets subtly elevated in other women’s eyes. She’s free. She can do whatever she wants. Especially if he had a nice insurance plan…
By no means am I implying that this is wrong or immoral. Indeed, this behaviour is as normal as a man watching porn. This is how nature and circumstances have made women. It’s ok to have such thoughts because at the end of the day, your DNA controls you to a great extent.
M. Nam
Widow power:
You are what we call a needle stuck in the record. Anyway there are a few points to note:
Vrindavan and Bengalis don’t make a case for the whole of India. I guess you saw Water and can’t go beyond its premise which was flawed. In some families in Punjab/Haryana, there used to be a custom of widowed females marrying the brother of the deceased husband. I know many families in the South who make sure that the widowed mother/aunt lives with them and they take care of the needs. Many widows don’t wear white any more. Things are slowly changing. It will evolve including acquiring the worst of the Western practices like sending your parents to retirement communities.
Your case about old widows remarrying. Well old widowers also don’t remarry in India. There may be exceptions, but it is not generally not done when you already have grown up children. You are supposed to be beyond the familial stage and are in the spiritual stage. Not all old widows are not sent to Vrindavan. It can’t hold 40 million widows and if it does it should be the largest city in the world. In times past, if the family can’t take care of the elderly parents, they usually were sustained by the food in the temple and by begging. It applied to both men and women, you can see old men begging too. I guess you don’t know enough about to India to know about these little things. Of course abuses do take place, but is exception than the norm.
Younger widows remarrying – As somebody else alluded to in the post, there are two main reasons for this – a) children – what happens to the children if the widow remarries? would the new husband’s family and even the new husband take the same care of the children as his own? Especially in an agrarian society with limited resources? So the deceased husband’s family takes care of the widow and the children, but the widow can’t remarry. Cruel for the widow, yes, but better for the children. You may ask what about the reverse case – a widowed husband remarrying. Yes it happens, and most of the time it ends up in a bad situation for the kids of the deceased wife if the new wife has children. Even though the husband is supposed to protect the kids, it is tough when your new wife as her own interest in making sure her children gets the best of the resources. Can you blame the woman, the new wife, just because she is following the Darwinian/Natural laws of ensuring the survival of her progeny? History is replete with this. b) – Property – As Kush and others pointed out, the main property in an agrarian society (and remember India was an agrarian society as most other countries were until recently and the cultural norms came from that society) was land. Land always went to the sons since the daughters moved in with the in-laws. To compensate the daughters, dowry was given as that was the daughters share of inheritance. So it becomes a little tricky if the daughter has to remarry.
Anyway, I don’t think you really want to understand the issue. You just have the current western frame of reference and want to apply in the Indian context when India is still evolving. Things do change in India, but the result may not fit in with your conception of how things should be, but what is right for the citizens of India and the widows and widowers of India. They will decide what is their comfort zone. The old widows may not want to remarry and maybe want to be taken care of by their children and may find other ways to have companionship and not be lonely. That may not fit your template, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Abuse may fit the criteria of absolute wrong, but remarrying or not doesn’t signify anything when it is an option.
So the plight of hundreds of thousands of people on path of legal immigration being badly hurt by an arbitrary decision taken by the Department of State and USCIS was not covered by the SM, and this news makes news in the SM blogs.
Can someone provide more details on the above?
AMFD in #72
A few days back the USICS made all pending GC applications post the I-485 stage current. What this means is that after you get your labor cert and I-485 for a GC, you wait for 5-6 years (in the case of India) till you can get to the 3rd and final stage of a Green Card and get your EAD (work permit). What used to take 5-6 years was made immediate, people applied and shite – lotsa excitement but recently they pretty much made most of those pending applications non current again and reverted to older dates which means you again wait the 5-6 years as before. I really wish this had been covered by SM. I don’t think it was deliberate on the part of the bloggers but one of those things which means a lot to 1st gens but not much to 2nd gens and just happened to get ignored, quite possibly since the bloggers did not realize the seriousness and absurdity of the situation. Of course there are many people I know who did not bother applying though they could have since doing so means they get a GC and then if they want to get married and add a dependent, it would be a big hassle thanks to absurd rules of the USICS.
LMAO, Moornam at his finest – being Moornam.
1st Time Commentor in #65
I think Journo is alluding to the RTI part of this discussion which I think has got lost in the more controversial and excitable Widow discussion.
Journo – The goons can be deterred if there is too much of a public spotlight on this. Of course, it would only make them think a little more and is no sure fire way of preventing goon attacks. But all this publicity also ensures that Govt. comes under pressure to make sure nothing like that happens, the politics of it all. It has also prompted some of the NGOs I know to start getting in touch with her and trying to figure out how one can help. Public pressure has in fact worked very well time and again to get the Govt. into action and I think this was a great move on the part of Jayashree.
Ardy, while you were writing your comment, I posted something on this.
Amitabh wrote: And Pardesi Gori, I’ve asked you before and I’ll ask you again…why do OUR cultural mindsets bother you so much? Can’t you worry about your own people and your own culture and let us sort out ours?
Amitabh, see here.
Kush Tandon
OK. I still don’t get it. If the widow of the house remarries and her new husband comes to live on that ancestral property, then how has anything gone outside of the family? Or even if she does not continue to live on that land or in that house, how does her share of it not remain with her? Maybe the laws need to be rewritten in order to facilitate falling in love and marrying the second time around.
Power Window;
Water only confirmed for me what I saw for years in front of my eyes firsthand. The only premise that was flawed was my own — thinking these women were spiritually happy/fulfilled and thus detached from their suffering.
I’d like to introduce you to some of them Power Window. They can speak for themselves way better than I can speak for them.
Amitabh wrote:
It’s a girl thing. There is a thread that binds us women, and our issues/concerns together — all over the world. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.
If the widow of the house remarries and her new husband comes to live on that ancestral property, then how has anything gone outside of the family?
Well, part of the family’s resources is going to go to feeding and clothing a dude who’s a complete stranger to them.
Or even if she does not continue to live on that land or in that house, how does her share of it not remain with her?
Houses and land aren’t like moveable property; it’s hard to maintain authority over them if you aren’t physically present. A lot of the women than Chen interviewed were wary of second marriages because they would necessitate moving away, and they would thus see their property fall into the hands of their in-laws.
Maybe the laws need to be rewritten in order to facilitate falling in love and marrying the second time around.
Er, you do realize that in rural India, people don’t generally get married because they fell in love the first time around, don’t you?
It does not necessitate moving away unless you think it does. This whole woman moving into in-laws house instead of the reverse is also something that needs to be examined.
Feeding and clothing a grown man? This is assuming he can’t feel and clothe himself and I don’t know why you would assume that. And it’s also assuming that the family members would not know the man. Why assume that? If their mother or whoever has been seeing him for a while, naturally they will know him. So what it really comes down to is a lack of dating culture within India? (back to views on sexuality which is being touched upon in the infantocide thread). Strange. Just a short while ago I was corrected by an Indian on here who said that I was stuck in a rural village time warp and ignorant of the rapidly growing dating culture that India has. So which is it? HI-FI Techno India Shining and completely on par with the West or the opposite scenario? I guess it’s many shades of grey in between, which is fine. But what I’m getting at is you won’t see changes in attitudes towards widow remarriage until some fundamental assumptions are no longer assumed — such as wife going to man’s family house to live, etc. And those assumptions are created on a foundation of some very old but long-standing ideas about women, their roles in Indian culture and their sexuality.
Well in that widow story they were all about Hindu treatment of widows on the front page. After all these terrorist bombings I am yet to see the CNN front page article which talks about Islam and its hand in terrorism.
CNN suits are scared of ISlam, they know that one article like that and many CNN reporters in Middle East will be history. You can write 1000 articles criticizing Hindus and nothing is going to happen!
Moornam, you might have something here. The desi woman’s weapon of choice is ghee which is used to clog our narrow arteries. You see in some old movies where women stare intently at their SOs while they eat? I always thought they were trying to convey “I am your bounteous Rani any you will thrive on my ladoo and parantha”. Maybe the look is really mean to convey “Choke on my hate filled ladoo, you destroyer of my dreams”
louiecypher, you surpass yourself yet again! Although your comment raises an important point about cultural mores. Indian women are far more passive than in the west.
Thanks Rahul, though I think you give me too much credit. I’m not naturally suspicious, but it is now two times that I have come back from a dandiya event with concussions. No one is that clumsy without trying. Thanks for the Roald Dahl story, I’ve always thought his writing was too dark for children.
Maybe it was a Scythian conspiracy against Dravido-Lemurians?
Most of the women in my family have been widowed and remarried. My grandfather died in his 30s and my grandmother remarried within a year after his death. Her second husband also died some 10 years later and she again married a 3rd man. Similarly, my own father passed away in his 50s, and my mother remarried. Several aunts have done the same, men dying in their middle-age seems to be the norm in my family.
Anyway, I recently was recently discussing this with a fellow Indian co-worker at lunch last week and she expressed shock that my grandmother married 3 times, as well as shock at how many of the widows in my family remarried. She spoke with pride about how in her culture the women sacrifice and remain single after being widowed, while thinking of themselves as still married to their husbands, even after death.
Is this common? The reason I’m concerned is that I was actually interested in this young lady and wanted to ask her out for more than lunch. Now I’m thinking she might not be open to that since she seemed to express such disapproval of my family before even meeting them.
I tend to be shy around women I’m attracted to and a bit apprehensive about asking them out. I’m sure some you guys can relate to that fear of rejection we men are often forced to confront. This just makes it all the more difficult.
Widow Power :- Why the implicit assumption that widows must necessarily remarry in order to assimilate in to society?
so i hope you’re not going to marry moornam, or might you be suicidal? or perhaps you swing another way altogether? whatever the answer to that question is – it must be great to have these independent insights into human nature and biology. you can cleverly dodge the bullets nature has in store for the rest of us, constrained as we are by our stupidity and obliviousness. in fact, i estimate your intelligence so highly that i think you might be a fine contender for the darwin awards.
PS: i will be glad to send you some of the ghee saturated ladoos i am learning to make for my beloved (and well-insured+pre-nup free) future husband (just in case you don’t have a loving SO at home, killing you softly with puris and samosas).
Where did he/she state such a thing?
I think the point was more along the lines that they should not be discouraged from doing so if they independently wish to.
In India we wish never to be widows. In fact we even observe a vrat for that! And I can’t figure out why a woman would ever wish her husband truly dead, unless she hated him or something. Never heard this was a genetic tendency.
After doing some reading on various religions and how they traditionally dealt with widowhood, I came to the conclusion that Hinduism dealt/deals with them much harsher than any other, and this is the reason why the subject of widowhood in India is deemed newsworthy worldwide. The plight of widows in India draws attention, due to it’s cultual institutionalization and religious sanction. When I say “plight” that does not neccessarily mean forced poverty, ill-health, etc. But the very forbiddance of widow remarriage at worst, or the mere “frown” upon it by society in general (the neighborhood) at best, can easily be described as a “plight” if only of the psychological nature. Being that human beings live in their minds, a mental plight can often be far heavier to bear than a physical one.
Excerpt from The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred Kolatch
Question: Why must a widow wait for three months after the death of her husband before she can remarry?
Answer: After 3 months it can be definitely determined whether or not the widowed woman is pregnant. Should she remarry earlier, the paternity of the child might be in doubt. However, under exceptional circumstances, where it can be ascertained that the woman is not preganant, the woman may be granted permission to remarry immediately after the Shiva (mourning) period.
Question: Why must a widower (man) wait for the passing of the 3 major festivals (Pesach, Sukkot, and Shavuot) before he can remarry?
Answer: This tradition took rot because it was felt that if the widower had to wait for a cycle of 3 separate hilidays to pass, he would not hastily enter into a second marriage, which he might later regret. However, according to law a widower may marry immediately after the 30 day mourning period (Sheloshim) has passed.
A widow was permitted to remarry much sooner than a widower because, in the opinion of the Rabbis, the unmarried lifestlye is much more difficult for a woman than for a man.
These laws make alot more sense and are alot more in tune with human nature and psychology than the lifelong forced celibacy of widows in the Hindu culture, which has been the general trend since at least the medieval era, whether or not it was an ancient custom, and whether or not pockets of communities here or there did not observe this.
I think this is the main reason why the subject of widowhood in India draws such attention and negative criticism. Poverty stricken widows of any region and religion may have it rough or even rougher than Indian Hindu widows. But they are not expected by their religions/cultures to remain single and celibate for the rest of their lives. The institutionalization and widely accepted cultural componant of this practice is what “de-humanizes” the Hindu widow.
I think this subject is worthy of being addressed.