Goa Forum: Cultural question about widows

Thanks Kolkata very interesting read and I never knew any of that

See ya never to old to learn ;-)

Thanks Brave1 for today's history lesson. I did know that years ago women used to throw themselves on the fire, but is this just unique to Hindu's ?

Hi Kal,

Yes it was a hindu tradition right from the ancient times. The Rajput ladies of Rajasthan used to take pride in it, those who did were considered martyrs and people used to sing songs in their honour.

Thanks to Kal for not pointing out I am losing my marbles and got Brave's name wrong (was up very early trying to get everything ready to pack) even though I am old lol ;0)

Apologies Brave for referring to you as an area and not your user name.

No problems, dwyall. :-)

True what they say you learn something new everyday,Thanks for that Brave1.

Thanks all for the replies, very interesting but also very sad for the poor widows. As if it wasn't bad enough to lose a loved one, they are treated so badly. I struggle to understand how other family members, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters etc can treat their mothers and sisters in this way.

Is the stigma still present in modern day India?

Is it Hindu - or does it occur in all religions in India?

Are modern empowered women doing anything to change attitudes?

Very interesting article brave1.

With my very limited knowledge, yes in many rural parts of India widows are still treated badly and often forced to leave their homes From what I understand in those sorts of environments when a daughter marries she goes to live with her new husbands family and in the same way when a son marries his new wife comes to live with his parents. Therefore it can be that the son, not the daughter, puts his mother out into the street.

There are now a few wonderful organisations who assist widows, give them shelter and teach them skills to enable them to support themselves in a simple way. I had read about this before this trip and we were fortunate to come across a group of these ladies on one of our journeys who were on an outing and the lady who was the tour leader explained it all to us. Each of them had a different coloured beautiful sari and, although very shy, were happy to be photographed with me. I think you could possibly google "widows in India and perhaps some of these organisation will pop up. Thank goodness these organisations exist even though they are still very small.