Too ill to sing
Twelve-year-old girls are treated like dirt, and so are eighty-five-year-old women.
India alone has almost 40 million widows. Traditionally Hinduism frowns on widows remarrying and many have their social and economic power eroded too…Vrindavan is a pilgrimage town now home to thousands of destitute widows. Ashtabala Mundo is one of thousands of widows who have been driven by poverty to the holy town. She was married off when she was still a baby and widowed when she was still a child. “We have to come and sing here morning, noon and night and for all that I only get is $10 a month,” she said. “By the time I’ve paid the rent, I can’t afford to buy cooking oil. So I often go all day without a hot meal,” Mrs Mundo said. The women line up, after singing for several hours, to receive a cup of rice and a few teaspoons of lentils. It isn’t much.
No – a cup of rice and a few teaspoons of lentils is not much for several hours of anything. Making rosaries, singing, anything.
Many of the widows who flock here have nowhere else to go. Hindu widows are not supposed to remarry. With little social or economic status, many become destitute. We met Nirmala Dasi, a frail 85-year-old, begging at the temple gate. When she spoke, she dissolved into tears. “I’ve been too ill to sing at the temple for the last three days so I haven’t had a thing to eat. You don’t get anything unless you go there.” We were soon surrounded by widows with sad stories to tell. “I spend almost everything I get on a room I share with four others. I’ve no relatives, or I wouldn’t be here,” said Mithila. “It’s so cold here, I’m always freezing.”
No further comment.
I highly recommend this film:
Producer: David Hamilton
Director: Deepa Mehta
Starring: Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray, John Abraham, Sarala(introducing), Manorma, Raghuveer Yadav, Khulbhushan Kharbanda, Waheeda Rehman
Music: Mychael Danna, A.R. Rahman-Hindi Songs
Lyrics: —
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Genre: Art-Film Social Drama
Recommended Audience: Adult
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Released on: November, 2005
Approximate Running Time: 114 Minutes
“Ms. Mehta brings us into the world of those girls and women unfortunate enough to have become widows before India´s independence.”
“Throughout Water, Mehta exposes the cruelties of Hinduism against widows.”
Full: http://www.planetbollywood.com/Film/Water/
In Shona society (Zimbabwe) and I believe many African societies, the weak and poor such as widows are brutally and immediately exploited. A woman told me how when her husband died, while she was at his funeral his family came to her house and took everything, leaving not even one pot to cook for the children.
This was not rare, or a crime; this is just how it is.
And in our enlightened modern western society, there are many who volunteer to help a widow and a few who ‘help’ by ripping them off. The ripoff merchants are more persistent. I don’t think they belong to a religion particularly…
And going back a few years, analysis of witch trials shows that many of those accused were old widows trying to make enough money to live by offering advice that was then misconstrued…see Keith Thonas’s ‘Religion and the Decline of Magic’.
“Then the womenfolk – older women, many of them widows themselves – systematically destroyed each symbol of beauty”
Mirax,
The widow women – in all probability did to your mother what was done to them. They knew no better than to act in such an ignorant fashion. Like vulture scavengers they tore away at the carcass, leaving the bones exposed.
You must have sorely missed your Dad at only eight years old?
IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT THOSE WHO WERE ABUSED THEMSELVES BECOME THE ABUSERS.
It is as broad as it is long.
Unfortunately, while we (West) can advocate, enjoy the benefits of, and even enforce, economic growth there, we cannot suggest cultural change, because it would 1) be imperialistic / colonialistic (for relativists), or 2) just upset things and destabilise the region (for conservative neocon investors).
So it goes…
mirax that was really very moving.
Wow – thanks, mirax.
It was a somewhat similar account by a daughter (now an activist for women’s rights and widows) that I heard on the radio (RNL I think…?) a few months ago that alerted me to this subject.
Thanks ChrisPer, too.
What a very depressing tradition. Hey, she’s a widow – let’s take everything she has.
“They knew no better than to act in such an ignorant fashion. Like vulture scavengers they tore away at the carcass, leaving the bones exposed.”
Well, many of them were ignorant(and newly arrivals from India) but a great number of them, including my mother, have changed greatly over the last two decades. Few of these women will do a similar thing to their daughters now and I know for a fact that practically none of their daughters would observe the taboos of widowhood, including the one on remarriage. It’s amazing what can be achieved in a single generation, esp if one cuts herself off from the social pressure of the ‘village’, gets educated and becomes financially independent.
But the residual prejudice against widows lives on in many other hindu rituals – marriage, birth celebrations, housewarmings etc- where they are excluded from participating in the ceremony because they are considered ‘inauspicious’. Few actively fight to redress the unfairness – instead they just ‘secularise’, which is a good thing too.
India may have 40 million hindu widows, but the vast majority of them do live with their families, even if some of them may not be treated well. The poor things that end up in Vrindavan are probably the most wretched of the lot. India is an incredibly callous society and there is no social safety net but still, everyone, including the government, knows where thousands of destitute widows congregate and could at the very least provide shelter and sustenance. It is shameful that they don’t.
And it’s not very impressive of the ashrams, either. One of the articles I read yesterday said that a rights group was working on pressuring the ashrams to do better, because they are accumulating a lot of wealth and sharing very little of it with the widows.
It’s not quite clear to me to what extent the singing is a kind of forced labour, and to what extent it’s some sort of religious or devotional offering, and whether that’s even a meaningful distinction. Apparently the widows have to perform it in order to collect the measly rations and 7 cents, but perhaps the ashram sees the performance as religious duty rather than forced labour. I suppose the criterion I’m wondering about is whether or not the ashram actually profits from what the widows do. Do visitors give them money because the widows are there, singing? If so, they certainly ought to share more of it, in fact all of it.
In fact, come to think of it, it’s very like ‘Mother’ Teresa. Her outfit collected vast sums of money because of her reputation as in some way charitable, but she didn’t spend the money on the people she supposedly took care of; in fact when people gave her gang a furnished building with many comforts, they systematically got rid of everything. Money was given to her for the sake of the people who needed help, but she didn’t spend it for that. That is reprehensible, to put it mildly. And I’m not clear on whether that’s what the ashrams are up to – but it sounds as if it is.
There exists the misconception by many westerners that an ‘ashram’ is some kind of benign, charitable institution. Nope. Any charlatan can start an ashram and the newspapers in India daily feature stories of abuse – sexual, financial, lots of criminal goings on- at some ashram or the other. I looked up the bhajana(hymns) ashrams where these women sing for their living. Apparently, these women do not live at these ashrams, but at some other ‘ashrams’, the sort with LANDLADIES. Their landladies pack them off to the ashrams to sing for both their board and food and it is all a scam! Tourists/pilgrims visit the bhajan ashrams where they (as well as politicians) can pay for hymns to be sung for their well-being by these poor women. There must be tons of money made by the despicables who live off the widows’.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070411/asp/nation/story_7632511.asp
PS, I went to Brindavan in 1992, it was such a depressing place that i got out after only an afternoon there and thus remained unaware of the true extent of human misery there. But then again, 3 months in India had already exacted a toll on my psyche and I doubt i could have handled any more.
As to why there exists such callousness towards the widows, indeed any other unfortunate – the low caste, the disabled – is the belief that a “pious and austere life presently earns an auspicious existence in the next birth.” I got this quote off a hindu discussion board!
Some of widows themselves believe this nonsense and remain stoic in the face of such maltreatment.
Ophelia, fantastic article on these women: http://www.humanscape.org/Humanscape/2000/May/hs5002t.htm
Ah, visitors pay for the hymns; that makes sense of the whole thing. Thanks mirax! Also for the link. And the ‘auspicious existence in the next birth’ item – I think we talked about much the same idea a few months ago in a discussion of Buddhism and how it reconciles the idea of egolessness with the idea of reincarnation; I think we also pondered the misery-accepting consequences of the whole idea of reincarnation and karma.
It is truly amazing that girls and women are told in a million different ways every day all over the globe that whatever value they have lies in their connection to some man — whether it be father, brother, husband or deity.
Thanks for your sad story about your mother, mirax.
The discussion of Buddhism was last August – August 8 – and of course you were there, mirax. It was interesting.
Amazing and depressing, the connection to a man=value thing. I think a lot of people really do think women are like table legs or pot handles: just completely pointless and non-functional unless attached to something.
“Thanks for your sad story about your mother, mirax.”
I only told it because it seemed relevant and for me, it is not a sad story but an angry one. My mother still does not,or pretends, not to understand my anger and further infuriates me by making donations to temples/fortune tellers in MY NAME!
” For your atheist soul and your constant blasphemy; you are too much your father’s daughter!” she tells me…I am pretty sure that my name has been intoned in more temples than any of my siblings’.
Mothers! You can never get the better of them.
I remember the discussion, I don’t really participate in many discussions on B&W, though it is my favourite blog. This is such a sensible blog that my contributions seem redundant really.
Definitely not redundant — rather valued, mirax.
Indeed. I’m always pleased when I spot your name in the comments, I know it will be something of interest.
The feminists proclaim the Sati system as a cruel institution established by men against the womankind, while the lower-caste in India have felt it as another means of torture taxed on them by the upper-caste Brahmins.
Rosaries? Are they Hindu Catholics? Are Hindus Catholics? Do Hindus use rosaries? Or are Hindus employed to make rosaries in the way Nike employs people to make shoes?
No no, the rosaries were a reference to Marie-Therese’s articles on Goldenbridge and to the whole subject of unpaid rosary-making in Irish industrial schools. It has a lot in common with the barely-paid singing in temples. Both religious, both generate money which does not go to the people who do the work; both thus very squalid; both reflect badly on the supposedly holy people who do such things.
Hinduism, unsurprisingly, has some insane traditions. Funny how the weirdest shit in most religions seems to be misogynistic.
Paramahansa Yogananda parles vous…
Thank you for clearing that up, OB.
“Funny how the weirdest shit in most religions seems to be misogynistic.”
Hence the book Jerry and I are writing!
I trust you’ll let us know when the book becomes available, OB. Looking forward to it.