Top 5 Problems Faced by Widows in India (2024)

Some of the major problems faced by widow in India are as follows:

Indian family as a social institution is well known for the emotional and physical support that it providers, for its extended members, many a time but it fails to respond the needs of women, especially for women in difficult circ*mstances e.g. for widows. The “in auspiciousness” of Hindu Widow is well known. She is stigmatized as women who have failed to safeguard her husband’s life.

Under ancient law, her husband is God and when he dies, she is expected to manifest inconsolable grief for the rest of her life. The extreme consequences of this belief is the practice of “SATI” – where a wife is forced to immolates herself on the burning pyre of her deceased husband.

Broadly speaking, the widows in the North suffer greater discrimination and marginalization than widows in the south A widow from a relatively well-up family may be subject to greater cruelty and abuse by her in-laws than a lower caste widow who free enough to work outside in the public space and to remarry.

Widow neither gets socio-economic support nor do they get counselling and emotional support in distress from family and society. Indian widows are often invisible, not least in relation to their economic contribution and unpaid family work in household. In our country widows are deprived of getting pension schemes benefits due to corruption. They are facing numbers of problems in their life.

The manifold problems that the widow faces may be enumerated under the following heads.

1. Inheritance Rights:

Majority of Indian Windows are deprived of their inheritance rights. If a widow has adult sons, she may enjoy it but if she is child less or has only daughters she actually faces problems. Although the ” Hindu succession Act’ 1969 made women eligible to inherits equally with men and some individual states have legislated equality provisions into inheritance law, widows are mostly deprived of their legal rights.

Patrilocal residence and patrilineal inheritance is fundamental source of the poverty and marginalization of Indian widows, when the husband dies, a widow has no freedom to “return” to the parental home or to her brothers. She remains in her husband’s village whether or not her owned land or property.

Conflicts overland and property are often so bad that brother-in-law force the widow to leave the village. To gain control of land and property, the brother-in-law may harass, prosecute, beat, and torture and even murder the widow. To exercise full ownership rights by inheritance a widow has to be literate, courageous and mobile.

She would need to be able to assert her claim dealing with official Land Registries and with lawyers. For a rural widow this is impossible. She is completely unequipped to all rights deal with the bureaucracy, confront strangers and in seeking outside assistance, she lays herself open to more gossip verbal abuse and violence.

2. Prohibition of Remarriage:

Some castes prohibit remarriage of widow. Others allow it provided that it is within the family. If a widow marries away, she loses to her children as well as property. The higher the caste, the more likely it is that widows remarriage is’ forbidden.

If the widow is very poor and cannot able to afford dowry, the second marriage creates many problems to get a suitable partner, hi such cases, the second husband may be an elderly widower or a divorcee or sick or handicapped. Majority of widows, those have children at the time of death of her husband, do not want to remarry. They fear the ill treatment in a new family specially abuse of their children.

3. Observation of Mourning Rites:

Windows are bound to observe some mourning rites in the family and society. They have to wear white sarees, foregoing all cosmetics, no bangles, no nose rings, flowers, Kukum and jewellery. Besides, they have to live on vegetarian diet. They remain in seclusion avoiding social gatherings such as wedding ceremony and temple worship.

Some widows are forced to remarry to a brother-in-law or levirate or live the remainder of their life as an ascetic in the harsh conditions of ashrams or a temple. Many of these mourning rites, if complied with in extreme, are responsible for the high morbidity and mortality of Indian widows. They eat badly, they become malnourished and ill. Besides, they are often treated in the homes and by the relatives.

4. Victim of violence:

Widows are commonly accused of having caused her husband’s death. In addition in many parts of India, Particularly in tribal communities, widows are sometimes killed as witches. The underlying motivation is economic, the accusers tend to be the male relatives, and brother-in-law or step sons who want to control the land. Rape Forced marriage and sexual abuse are common problems in case of widows. Widows who have been raped and pregnant infected by STD are too ashamed to seek any professional help.

5. Economic Problem:

Many widows come across economic hardship during their life. They are bound to send their children out to work to earn income instead of sending them to school for education. Some widows are forced to adopt prostitution as sources of income and get infected by STD easily.

Employment opportunities for windows are very low especially because of the limitations on mobility and gender division of labour. So the widows have to adjust with in-law’s family remaining engaged with-domestic chores and child rearing activities or to live with and adult son.

Thus widows face different types of problems in their life. So it is suggested that if the widows is very young, it is wise to get marry with brother-in-law or cousin in the family or to return to her parental home. They may apply for the pension or may take loan from financial institution to purchase a sewing machine or other goods to start a shop to earn income or she may migrate to the nearest town to engage herself in domestic service, widows can approach to NGO Branch to get any help. The eventual step is to seek refuge in an ashram to survive; chanting with temple hymns leading austere impoverished lives sharing rented rooms with other widows.