Losing a partner is a painful experience. For many Indian
widows, young and old, it is like having a glimpse of emptiness
and
desperation.
Being a widow is the start of putting on your shoulders a
bigger responsibility of taking care of the children by yourself.
Statistics showed that in India there are around 33 million widows.
Because of this growing number, Renuka Chowdhury, India’s Minister for Women
and Child Development thought of giving widows a second chance of having
fruitful endeavor by providing a set of initiatives to help them recover from
losing their husbands.
Chowdhury aimed at giving the country’s widows opportunities
to work through proper training and skills development; sufficient motivation
to live positively and whenever possible to
remarry.
She believed that being a widow is not the end of the world.
There are still many ways of being productive and spending a good life. However, Hinduism, a predominant Indian belief, opposes
widows getting another marriage and society has a negative impression on this
aspect.The minister said surely there are a lot of pushing that
needs to be done in improving the lives of millions of widows in India, especially that most of them are
young and poor.
Citing the prevailing customary conditions of Indian widows,
a woman can lose her dignity as well as her basic rights as she becomes a
widow. Many widows are usually secluded in towns like Vrindavan located in
northern part of India. Based on reports, there were more
than 3,000 Indian widows abandoned in the area.
Other hundreds of widows were living in Hindu’s holy towns
such as Brajbhumi, Goverdhan and Mathura. Most of these widows, according to
reports, were surviving through charity or begging alms on the streets.
Chowdhury said many are talking about helping these women,
but only a few steps were being done. These women can still work; they only
need proper training.
She added that it is necessary to conduct forums to help
some women find matches and have a chance to remarry. But some surveys showed
that Indian widows preferred not to remarry so as not to violate the Hindu
traditions. However, the Indian government remains firm to make initiatives to
uplift the conditions of these widows to have a better life.
Maynard Joseph Delfin finished AB
Journalism (cum laude) at the University of Santo Tomas. He has worked as
book editor, deskman, copy editor and research and publications officer in
leading publishing and research companies in the Philippines. Read more of his blogs at http://maynard_delfin.instablogs.com
and http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maynard_Joseph_Delfin