WUNRN
Aug 16th 2007 | VRINDAVAN
From The Economist
To
the tinkle of a temple bell, the voices of 1,300 elderly women rise in
prayer. “Hare Radha, Hare Krishna,” they chant, in praise of the blue-skinned
Hindu God and his consort. “Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare.” Crammed cross-legged
into an ashram in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh—where Krishna and Radha are said to
have disported—the devotees look mostly bored out of their minds.
But they
have not come just for devotion. The women, all in white saris and some with
their heads shaved to denote widowhood, are being paid to pray. Before
embarking on three hours of mantras, or bhajan,
each widow receives a red metal token. Afterwards, this is exchanged for three
rupees (seven cents) and a handful of uncooked lentils and rice. By chanting bhajan morning and
evening, for six hours in all, the women make $4.50 a month.
That
is only a little more than a state widow's pension of $3.70 a month. But then
the ashram, funded by rich Hindus in Delhi, always pays up, which is more than
the Uttar Pradesh government can claim. According to a recent survey, only a
quarter of the estimated 3,000 pilgrim widows in Vrindavan get their state
pension, and usually less than the statutory sum. Fewer than half receive the
food ration for which poor Indians are also eligible. As well as chanting bhajan, many of the women
here and in nearby pilgrimage places beg in order to survive.
It is a
state of affairs as old as Hinduism's traditional disdain for widowhood.
Unwanted baggage in a patriarchal society, widows were once encouraged to fling
themselves onto their husband's funeral pyres. The majority who did not were
forbidden to remarry, and often corralled into beggar colonies at pilgrimage
places like Vrindavan.
Though the
law now gives India's 45m-or-so widows better protection, they are still
discouraged from remarrying. Indeed, in Vrindavan nine-tenths of widows
surveyed say they are against the practice. That includes many widowed in their
youth: two-fifths were married before they were 12 years old, while nearly a
third were widowed by the time they were 24.
Most widows
are driven to Vrindavan by poverty and cruel relatives. Madhavi Devi, a
70-year-old from Patna in neighbouring Bihar state, says she came to Vrindavan
18 months ago after falling out with the son and daughter-in-law with whom she
had been living. “So long as I was nurturing my children I was useful, but now
I am old and of no good to anyone,” she says.
Ms Devi, who
lives in a government hostel, says that sitting still and chanting bhajan for hours is
torture, because of a steel pin in her thigh. Yet nearly every widow claims she
would rather be in Vrindavan than go home. Indeed, some appear to have found
some contentment. One charity, the Guild of Service, houses 120 widows in a
crumbling but once-elegant town house. The provisions are basic, yet the stone
courtyards are clean and cool, and filled with elderly women chanting
mantras—or watching Bollywood movies on a wide-screen television.
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