Some of the most conservative Hindus in India believe that a woman whose husband has died should no longer live because she failed to retain his soul. Rejected by their communities and abandoned by their loved ones, thousands of destitute women make their way to Vrindavan, a pilgrimage city about 100km south of Delhi that is home to more than 20,000 widows.
These women have no choice but to live in a vidhwa ashram (ashrams for widows) run by the government, private enterprises and NGOs. Clad in white, they know they will never return home and that this is where they’ll end their days.
Pascal Mannaerts, “Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide”, BBC Travel, 2016-09-13.
August 11, 2017
QotD: The plight of Hindu widows
Comments Off on QotD: The plight of Hindu widows
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
