Hindu Widows Research Articles

ROLE OF INDIAN CONSTITUTION IN WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

The Indian Constitution is a beautiful blend of both federal and unitary systems. The Indian Constitution is called a federal constitution on the basis that it is a written constitution. It provides for a supreme and independent judiciary. The preamble of the Indian Constitution declares the goal of making India a democratic republic. Its head of state will be elected democratically. Being a republic means that any common person of India, whether a man or a woman, can reach the highest position in the country on the basis of his qualifications. India is a union of states. It is an independent sovereign socialist democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government. This republic is governed according to the Constitution of India which was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949 and which came into force on 26 January 1950. The Constitution of India is the supreme legal authority that links together the legislative, executive and judicial organs of the government. The Constitution provides fundamental rights to all citizens and gives the independent judiciary the right to declare invalid the laws or government actions that violate the Constitution. In the Vedic period, women had a very respectable position in India. But later in the medieval period, the status of women deteriorated a lot due to the arrival of foreigners. Due to illiteracy, bad customs and conservatism in the society, the status of women was greatly affected. But gradually in the first half of the nineteenth century, some social workers of India like Raja Ram Mahen Rai, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Ishwarchand Vidyasagar and Keshavchand Sen raised their voice against the oppressive social system. They raised their voice before the then British rulers for gender equality, women education, ban on Sati Pratha and ban on polygamy, as a result of which Sati Pratha Prohibition Act, 1829 and Hindu Widow Remarriage Act in 1856, Age of Constancy Bill in 1891 and Vative Marriage Act to stop polygamy were passed. By the twenty-first century, the condition of women started improving and the Indian Constitution implemented provisions to promote women's upliftment and empowerment and to improve their economic, social, educational and political status and to include them in the mainstream of development by running many welfare schemes and developmental works.

Journey Towards a Meaningful Life: Adaptation and Resilience in the Lives of Young Hindu Widows.

Spousal death is a life-altering and traumatic life event in married life, compelling the surviving partner to transition and make substantial adjustments to their new life situation. Losing a spouse can affect individuals differently based on gender, impacting their psychological, social, and economic well-being. This article describes adaptation to a new life condition as widows strive to reconcile their roles, status, and identity while binding their resilience to direct their lives. This study explored the lives of 17 young Hindu widows in rural and semi-urban areas of Haryana, India. Using personal face-to-face interviews and purposive sampling, it captured their unique life stories. After losing their spouses, participants showed impressive resilience, reshaping their lives and identities. They navigated challenges firmly, emphasising personal commitment over social support for effective adaptation. It highlights a need for better support systems for widows, offering potential pathways to enhance their post-loss well-being.

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

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.

Without Spouse: Phenomenology of Widowhood among Hindu Young Widows.

When a woman is widowed, it is a traumatic moment in her life. The pain would aggravate a widowed woman whose husband died at a younger age. This paper attempts to depict the lived experience of widowhood from the perspective of young Hindu widows by using a descriptive phenomenological approach guided by Husserlian philosophy. The selected widows for this study were under 45years old when they had lost their husbands. This paper excerpts from the author's empirical study for his doctoral thesis. The article will focus on four major themes that emerged from analysing the transcribed data collected from seventieth widows through personal face-to-face interviews. These themes are grief, restrictiveness, suspiciousness, and loneliness, which will discuss elaborately throughout this article. The article advocates that researching the lived experience through a phenomenological approach can enhance understanding of any traumatic phenomenon humans encounter. This way, specific initiatives can be taken by the community, non-governmental organisations, etc., for better counselling and redressing widows' mental issues.

Exploring the Subject of Hindu Widowhood in Koirala and Shah’s Short Stories

Nepali Hindu widows have been discriminated in social, cultural and religious activities that have affected the psyche of the widows. People debilitate widows and consider them vulnerable and insecure. The research paper has explored the portrayal of Nepali Hindu widows’ conditions in B. P. Koirala’s “To the Lowlands” and Prem Shah’s “A Husband” from the viewpoint of new criticism. The conflicts, tensions, symbols and meanings of the lives of the Hindu widows portrayed in the selected texts are analysed from a new critic’s perspective. The study has exploited exploratory qualitative method. Koirala has portrayed a Hindu widow who left the house because of abuses by her brother-in-law and tortured by in-laws. She moved to the plain (tarai) with four men including Gore for happy life. But Gore stole the widow’s gold and money despite her marriage proposal. Shah portrayed a widow Nirmala who was teased and abused by a driver and her sister’s probable husband. She wants to make up her face, but she was frightened with her elder brother, sister and mother because of restrictions imposed upon Hindu widows. Koirala and Shah have depicted miserable widowhood in the Nepali Hindu society. Although sati tradition has been abolished and remarriage of widows are encouraged in the present time, widows are psychologically shattered because of Hindu socio-cultural viewpoints on them, and Hindu widows still sacrifice their lives through psychological sati in Nepali society. The analysis of widowhood in the stories contributes to understanding the condition of widows in Hindu society.

Two Distant Feminist Standpoints in Nineteenth-Century India: Case Studies of Savitribai Phule and Pandita Ramabai

Modern feminist theory endeavours to explain gender inequality in terms of gender politics, power hierarchies and sexuality. In this endeavour, it has come to the crossroads with a variety of theoretical and philosophical domains. It dynamically deals with multiple domains such as sociology, history, anthropology, economics, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literary criticism. Standpoint epistemology has been applied by gender scholars to highlight the intersectional issues in feminist theory. In the present article, two different feminist standpoints in the nineteenth-century India have been discussed. Feminist ideologies of Savitribai Phule, a low-caste Hindu woman, and Pandita Ramabai, a high-caste Hindu widow, have been compared. Their thoughts and writings on diverse gender issues such as education, self-reliance, child marriage, widow remarriage and choice marriage have been examined. Since both the leaders are from different backgrounds at the individual, interactional and macro levels, efforts have been made to understand their standpoints. By tackling two different standpoints, it has been embarked upon to contribute to a critical gender scholarship leading to a better social understanding.

Pangs of Widowhood in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Novel Water

Since the dawn of time, gender inequity and sex discrimination have been the result of the human mentality. Internationally acclaimed author Bapsi Sidhwa has contributed significantly to the field of feminist fiction. Her magnificent novels are a mix of conflict and beliefs, sensibility and dignity, all of which are rooted in the Indian Subcontinent's historical, political, and socio-cultural context. Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Water, set against the backdrop of Indian Freedom Movement, questions the orthodox religious traditions and the repressive restraints imposed on Hindu widows, pushing the bounds of India's male-dominated cultural narratives beyond patriarchal predicaments. She exposes the centuries-old practices that oppress women though her internationally acclaimed novels. The novel Water’s theme is contentious and complicated. It is about the plight of widows in India in 1930s. Water exposes traditional intrinsic indifference, fatalism, and orthodox conventions and injustice to women.

Maintenance of Hindu Widow under Personal Law in India

The law of maintenance for widow at India under the Indian law .The personal law of India do recognized the of the widow form the period of British rule. The article demonstrate the right of the Hindu female under personal law.

An Experiential Study of ‘Conditional Agency’ of Bengali Widows with Reference to the Autobiographies of Saradasundari Devi and Rassundari Devi

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Bengal emerged a new batch of educated widows who were distinguishable from the traditional Bengali Hindu widows because of their remarkable self-consciousness about their peripherality within the social order. The intention of my article is that of disputing the prevalent assumption of the homogeneity of the widowed experience in Bengal society by drawing attention to the heterogeneous individualities resulting from stratifications within these emergent widow populations, owing to different lifestyles, varying degree of access to education, diverse social standings, and various forms of suppression. Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jibon (1876) and Saradasundari Devi’s Atmakatha (1913) are accounts of the experience of widows who were marginalized by society, handed the bare minimum necessities for their existence, and deprived of the pleasures of the traditional experiences of motherhood. I propose the term ‘New Widows’ to highlight how the effects of education modified their individuality in unconventional directions, as reflected in the fictional narratives by Rabindranath Tagore and others. Close attention to the texts shows that the disparity between the aspirations of the New Widow, and her limited reach and frustration results in an acute self-awareness.

An Intersectional Feminist Reading of Bapsi Sidhwa's Water

Intersectionality has been recognized and widely taken by interdisciplinary fields that include Cultural studies, American studies, and Media studies to demonstrate a range of social issues. It focuses on the experiences of people in a different social and political context. The intersectional framework confronts significant social division axes that include race, class, gender, and disability that function together and influence each other. These social axes operate the power structures of a particular society that can cause inequality and discrimination. In literary studies, women's representation is no more confined to European and American academic writings. Within the feminist framework, the South Asian fiction writers also demonstrate a feminist approach in their works. Pakistani authors have indicated religion's exploitation as one of the central intersectional tropes in their literary work. Bapsi Sidhwa is one of the prominent feminist voices from Pakistan in diasporic English Literature. One of her novels, Water (2006), is based on Deepa Mehta's award-winning film, explores the life of the marginal and subaltern Hindu widows in India. The novel provides an insight into the intersectional nature of the Indian Hindu widows in a patriarchal society of a subcontinent where different power domains hold and impose dominant hierarchies. The paper's objective is to highlight the intersection of religion, gender, caste and politics against the backdrop of the Indian anti-colonial movement. It shows how power relations can manipulate cultural norms and use religion as a powerful tool to establish its hegemonic control over these marginalized widows who suffer as silent victims.

Plight of Widows in Hindu Religion (A Feminist Critique of Deepa Mehata’s Film Water)

This research paper is focused in Deepa Mehta's Film Water to study the plight of Hindu widows. As the tradition of Hindu society, widows are compelled to adopt the widow system. Chuyia, the eight year old protagonist is sent to a Bidhuwa Ashram in Benaras because of her widowhood. The exploitation of child-marriage in the grip of patriarchal culture of widowhood, and the rejection of Chuyia to accept her widowhood is presented in the film. Kalyani, the second young widow in the ashram, revolts against such inhuman culture and decides to get married. She is forced to act as a 'prostitute' in the house of bourgeois. Chuyia is also sexually exploited by bourgeois. As a qualitative research, the researcher analyzed the film from the perspective of Hindu evil traditions. Patriarchies, widow tradition, social stereotypes of Hindu traditions are observed in this paper to analyze the film.

The Litigious Widow in South Asia: A Study in Paradoxes

While widowhood in India is synonymous to destitution – economically and symbolically – the right of widows as primary heirs with equal property rights as men owes its advent to both colonial and postcolonial lawmaking. Feminist discourses have since found these laws lacking both in gender neutral conceptualisations, as well as fruitful implementation. Within the present market-driven economy where land is a primary productive resource, the idea of a widow as a legal actor to claim property is an anathema, especially in a rural, agrarian setting. Rarely, she becomes the individual who must address the law, given her identity is subsumed under the rubric of family and work, and imbued with the circumstance of ‘have-nots’ facing difficulty in ‘coming out ahead in litigation’ against their superiors. Even as ‘a field of one’s own’ promises sustainable livelihood, status and increased bargaining power for women, can the widow successfully activate the legal system and gain land as property? I will engage with this paradox from the viewpoint of the Bengali Hindu widow; taking into account parallel developments in the fate of widows in other South Asian countries, where widowhood acquires similar social meanings due to shared gendered norms. The aim is to compare, contrast and analyse the specificity that post-colonial law making in India, especially Bengal, has brought about in the widows’ position in the society.

He Has Gone to a Better Place, but She Has Not: Health Status of Hindu Widows in India

Using detailed individual and household-level data from the first two rounds of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) conducted in 2004–05 and 2011–12, this paper estimates the health gap that exists between married and widowed women from Hindu households. We use the most commonly used anthropometric indicators of nutritional status in adults – body mass index and incidence of underweight – to estimate and decompose the gap in health outcomes that exists between these two groups of women. The overall results presented in this paper suggest that widows from Hindu households have significantly lower body mass index and higher incidence of underweight compared to their married counterparts and also experience high levels of discrimination. Access to various government welfare schemes and increased autonomy, however, is found to offset the detrimental health effects of widowhood to a large extent.

The Challenge of Chronotopicity: Female Co-Cremation in India Revisited in the Light of Time–Space Sensitive Ritual Criticism

Rituals are embedded in a particular time and space, and so are their objects and meanings. The ‘chronotope’ we focus on here is the occasional—partly self-chosen, partly societally forced—ritual death of Hindu widows along with their deceased husbands. Although never widely practiced, widow-burning caught the imagination of Europeans as illustrating both Hinduism’s ‘barbarity’ and its ‘high conjugal ideals’. Although satī had been outlawed since 1829, in 1987 a new case inflamed opposing sentiments. In 2002, in a passage called ‘Ritual Criticism and Widow Burning’, Ronald Grimes drew attention to it as a rite of passage that calls for normative comments and ritual criticism. Since then, in circles of ritual studies Hindu, widow-burning has occasionally been repeated as one of the ritual practices in need of condemnation. In order to put this rare practice, banned since almost 200 years ago, back into a proper time–place perspective, both its ritual details and its sociocultural contexts are revisited. Finally, we propose some case-specific factors that could serve as retrospective ritual criticism. We conclude with a plea for time–space sensitivity.

Abortion in South Asia, 1860–1947: A medico-legal history

AbstractIn the progression of stages toward unintended lives, the two stops on either side of abortion—contraception and infanticide—have been studied extensively by historians of South Asia. We know much less about abortion, particularly during the colonial period. Drawing upon published judgments, unpublished case records, forensic toxicology reports, and treatises on Indian medical jurisprudence, this article suggests that anti-abortion law was generally enforced in colonial India only when women died as a result of illegal abortions. This approach was contrary to the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which criminalized most abortions even when the women survived. The pattern was a continuation of the pre-IPC approach in India. This article explores possible explanations for the lax enforcement of anti-abortion law in South Asia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, considering abortion as experienced by South Asian and British women alike. It proposes as contributing factors: challenges in detection, the social movement for the protection of Hindu widows, colonial anxieties about false allegations of abortion among South Asians, the common phenomenon of imperial (British) husbands and wives living apart, and physicians’ desire to protect doctor–patient confidentiality. The article focuses on two key cases involving abortion: the Whittaker-Templeton case from Hyderabad (1896–1902) in which a British woman died following an abortion; and the Parsi matrimonial case of T. v. T. from Bombay (1927), in which a Zoroastrian woman alleged that her pharmacist husband had forced her to terminate three pregnancies by ingesting drugs.

The Pain of the Others: Sati in British Colonial Narratives

The article deals with another’s physical pain as a crucial element of sati, ritual of a Hindu widow’s immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre, as it is treated in the official colonial texts. Based on the idea of E. Scarry about verbal inexpressibility of physical pain and therefore its non-representation in political discourse, the author demonstrates how the British authorities actualized the cruel tradition as an unusual, incomprehensible phenomenon of unknown and barbaric world. In this context another’s pain was perceived mainly as others’ pain, and it was these others who became the main focus of the British interest and attention. So sati appeared to be not so much an atrocious method to pass away as ethnographic material which had to be examined. In the issue the British activity directed to abolition of this rite was in essence the practice of getting knowledge of the strange world rather than elimination of stranger’s pain. This led to the postponement of abolition for years to come and made the process extremely bureaucratic.

Religion in the lives of Hindu widows: Narratives from Vrindavan, India.

Religion in the lives of Hindu widows: Narratives from Vrindavan, India.

Chatterjee, S.C. and Sengupta, S.Death and Dying in India: Ageing and End‐of‐Life Care of the Elderly, London and New York: Routledge. 2017. 162 pp. £105.00 (hbk) ISBN: 9780415403177 £20 (eBook) ISBN: 9781315228884

Chatterjee, S.C. and Sengupta, S.Death and Dying in India: Ageing and End‐of‐Life Care of the Elderly, London and New York: Routledge. 2017. 162 pp. £105.00 (hbk) ISBN: 9780415403177 £20 (eBook) ISBN: 9781315228884

From Divine Judgement to Colonial Courts: Missionary ‘Justice’ in British India, c. 1840–1914

‘Justice’ is a word scattered through missionary writings. Throughout the nineteenth century, missionaries connected themselves with like-minded communities of opinion with labels such as ‘friends of justice and humanity’, the protectors of ‘kindness and justice’, or ‘friends of justice, humanity and religion’. In their published writings, missionaries wrote of the ‘justice [and] beneficence’ of British rule in India and of missionary work as effecting the inculcation of ‘justice, mercy and charity’. As such, missionaries locked themselves in battle with numerous forces of real and perceived injustice in British India. They railed against the ‘injustice’ inflicted upon Hindu widows, child brides and would-be converts by ‘traditional’ indigenous practices. But they also wrote of ‘the imperfect administration of justice’ conducted by the colonial state. At the same time, missionaries interpreted the famines, floods, plagues and rebellions they encountered in India through a theological framework that also hinged on particular readings of justice, punishment and retribution. At a more mundane level, the everyday practice of missionary stations (including the arbitration of disputes between colleagues) also required a working understanding of what was ‘fair’. This article explores the ways in which missionaries used concepts of ‘justice’ to signify a social identity; a moral need; a legal ideal; a theological explanation; and an administrative tool.

Hindu Widows as Religious Subjects: The Politics of Christian Conversion and Revival in Colonial India

This article examines how the Maharashtrian Hindu widow and convert to Christianity, Ramabai Dongre Medhavi (1858–1922), and the students at her widows’ school, Mukti Mission, contributed to early twentieth-century social reform in colonial India. This article specifically examines the 1905–1907 religious revival at Mukti Mission and poses two main arguments. First, the revival constituted a rejection of the constraints prescribed to Hindu widows under an oppressive orthodox Brahmin patriarchy. Second, despite its contestation of patriarchy, the revival narrative adopted by the Mukti women was fraught with imperial and racial hierarchies, limiting the gains wrought by the revival’s resistance of patriarchal constraints. These limitations are evident in Ramabai’s critique of the US and British missionary discourses that questioned the legitimacy of the Mukti revival in imperial and sexist terms. These two arguments provide deeper insight into the role of the religious practices and identities of Hindu widows who converted to Christianity in the emergence of Indian feminism.