Socio-Economic Structure of Widowhood in India: Past and Present

Abstract

This paper is a historiographical review of selected significant scholarship on widowhood in India. Most important conclusion is that the difference in widowhood experiences in India is premised upon the fact that the high-caste customs and cultural codes has created a disadvantageous gender equation for women. Nineteenth century legal-reformist debates around sati, widow remarriage and the age of consent were templates on which deep anxieties over the Hindu female body were expressed. Widow remarriage was a way of bringing this body back into the arena of reproduction and motherhood. While the actual practice of sati (widow self - immolation) was declared unlawful, the cultural codes upholding a widow’s imagined renunciatory powers were also being rewritten throughout the anti-colonial movement. A strong notion of a possible ‘living’ sati was created. The attributes of self-discipline and perfect control over one’s sexual desires and impulses became the highest preferable form of Hindu womanhood (irrespective of the caste and class of women). Besides nation building, the patriarchal perceptions of the ‘self-controlled’ body of a Hindu widow also facilitated the ease with which modernity could be fused with ideas of honour and self-abnegation amongst Hindu women. These ideas coexisted with the Indian reformist demand for enhanced property rights for women (widows in particular) and women’s growing role in the anti-colonial movement as well as in the post-1947 Indian society and economy.