Widows In India

Widows in India
Over the centuries, a glaring gender discrimination among Hindus, exists
in India. Whereas a widower can remarry as many times as he likes, a widow cannot remarry irrespective ofher age. Since marriage between young girls and old men was allowed, younger widows started increasing in India. There was a tradition known as “Sati”, in which newly widowed women were burned in thefuneral of their husband. This practice was fundamented in the belief that a woman doesn’t worth without her husband. In Hindu mythology, sati is the name of the patriarch Dakasha, who was burned infire by herself when her father insulted to her husband, the god Shivá.

A Widow with her child

Sati means “pious”. There were cases where women were obliged to burn theirself and they werepersecuted until being reached. Sati has been mentioned in the novel “La vuelta al mundo en 80 dias” by Julio Verne, where the main characters kept safe the Aouda’s princess from being incinerated.Additionally, in 1899, the English poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem headed “El ultimo Sati”, where the queen threw herself to the fire to be the first wife of the deceased in the next life.

In 1829, thispractice was forbidden by a colonial Britannic mayor called Lord William Bentinck, but there are still women who spray gas on theirself to burn in fire. Recently, in 2006 a widow threw to the pyra whereher husband was cremated, it happened in Sagar dristict in India. Furthermore, widow’s homicides are more common than you believe.
Sati tradition

There was a special ceremony for thewidow’shusbands, and widows had to wear white clothes, color of mourning. This tradition has been preserved through the years. Nowadays widows continue being stigmatized, after they are widowed, they have to wearsaris (large dress) completely white and shave their heads. Govin Dasi, an Hindu woman got married when she was 12 years old and suddenly, she was widowed when her husband, a man older than her...