The Status of Widows in Bangladesh

Abstract

Marriage and widowhood have been the two major turning points in women’s life in the Indian subcontinent throughout the ages. Early marriage with an older man was a common phenomenon in pre-Colonial Indian society, and so was widowhood at a minor age. The non-existence of the custom of widow remarriage and the absence of the right of inheritance to a father’s or husband’s property added to the plight of the widows who had to spend the rest of their lives as unwelcome dependants of their in-laws or parental families. The practice of sahamarana (the burning of a widow with her husband’s corpse) and anumarana (the burning of a widow after the cremation of her husband) might have had their origin as a remedial measure against the burden of maintaining the female members, widowed at an early age. However Islam, Christianity and, above all, the long British rule, impacted on this traditional usage in the country. Hence, it is noticeable that in Colonial India, the number of child marriages below the age of ten declined. In 1911, more than 70 per cent of all girls were married or widowed before they reached 15 but by 1931 the number had fallen to fewer than 50 per cent.1 The Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 was to a certain degree responsible for the change of a long standing custom. An attempt had even been made previously during the 1850s to introduce remarriage among the Hindu widows. The Widow Remarriage Act of 1856, however, failed to achieve the desired goal because the concept was opposed to the traditional attitude of the then conservative society. The position of the Muslim widows, though far from ideal, was better because of canonic sanctions of remarriage and inheritance of paternal and husbands’ properties. Thus in 1931, the number of women who were widows was one in four among the Hindus while one in eight among the Muslims.2