This is what happens when you are stuck with thesis-writing!
Articles that have been pending for ages write themselves.. 
RECENTLY, I PARTICIPATED in the launch function of a documentary film Pottu about the hardships and social humiliation faced by widows and deserted women in Tamil Nadu. Produced by the Kalangarai Trust which works among the widows in the southern district of Nagappattinam (particularly in Vedaranyam, Sirkaali and Poompuhaar), the 50-minute documentary attempts to describe the torture that widows are forced to undergo in the name of tradition. The documentary started off with a young girl’s story: the gaudy ceremony surrounding puberty, her early marriage (to prevent the chance of the family name getting “spoiled” if she were to be left “free”), the dowry that her parents are forced to pay, the hard work that she is forced to do in her husband’s home, his alcoholism and domestic violence, his death and finally, her enforced widowhood. Although Pottu seemed to make of every cinematic cliché, some issues highlighted by the documentary deserve to be taken up for debate.
Bangle-breaking ceremonies (where all the symbols of marriage: the red kumkum mark (pottu), the thaali (mangalsutra) are removed) are notoriously common in Tamil Nadu’s southern villages. In fact, these ceremonies are conducted before dawn, when even the gods are supposedly sleeping, because such a merciless sight is capable of disturbing even them.
Not only is a woman forced to undergo emotional agony because of her husband’s absence, but she is also forced to face social humiliation. The things that society puts forward as symbols of femininity and desirability are snatched away overnight. Widows are systematically kept out of social functions (celebration of menarche or marriage), they are stigmatized and heaped with abuse and they are denied all decision making at the family level. They are also denied civil rights–commonly-held beliefs discriminate widows by virtue of their being considered “inauspicious”. Tamil proverbs say that to see a widow early in the morning effectively ruins a day, and so on.
Yesterday, the women who were the driving force behind the documentary Pottu, got together and announced that soon they would be hosting the first international conference of widows, destitute and deserted women. They have two demands: laws to prosecute people who abuse widows in degrading terms and social, economic, legal rehabilitation for the widows.
There are several reasons why such a project has emerged from Tamil Nadu. According to a statistics by the Kalangarai Trust approximately 10% of the households in the state are headed by widows, and that 24% of the widows live alone. Majority of the widows are mothers of the head of the household. Their study also shows that the highest concentration of widows (8.06% of the general population) in Tamil Nadu arises from two categories of widows particular to the southern-coastal districts of the state: Tsunami widows and widows of men who have succumbed to HIV/AIDS. A large number of them work as daily wage labourers.
Tamil widows face a particular problem because of the manner in which their language subjugates them. The English word widow has an equivalent masculine form widower (which might carry fewer negative connotations may be, but at least a word exists). There’s no equivalent masculine form for the word vidhavai (widow) in Tamil. On the other hand, in popular practice, a just-widowed man is humorously referred to as the pudhu maapillai (new bridegroom)–perhaps enshrining the fact that he would soon be married to someone.
Widowhood is also becoming a problem that cuts across cultures. No longer are Hindu widows alone subjected to such torment. Even a religion like Islam, where there’s no bar on widow remarriage, is being influenced by local practices. At the documentary release function, a Muslim woman lamented how her own community was now following these meaningless practices which has historically plagued the Hindu religion.
The efforts of William Benetick and Raja Rammohun Roy put an end to the Sati system in 1829. The Widow Remarriage Act was passed in 1856. Another hundred years later, the Child Marriage Restraint Act came into place. Every reformer and every revolutionary on the Indian soil has voiced about the condition of widows: Phule opened a home for widows and abandoned children, Dr. Ambedkar traced the roots of the sati system in the necessity to maintain/preserve the endogamous caste structure, Periyar argued for widow remarriage. Even a middle-of-the-road traditionalist reformer like Gandhi condemned the practice of widowhood in no uncertain terms. Pandita Ramabai became an icon by speaking out against the heinous nature of imposed widowhood.
Today, as women fight against gender injustice and social indignity, they are forced to confront several challenges: how to oppose cultural facets that alienate widows, how to create alternative cultural symbols that don’t differentiate between women, how to develop a policy framework not only for widows but also for single women in India and especially how to fight against a hypocritical system where the oppressor is not someone from the outside, but one’s own blood, one’s own family? Perhaps this is one area where there is no dearth of Hindi/Tamil films that describe the plight, but there is a paucity of public debate and discussion.
(p.s.: Women members of this organization demanded (rightfully of course) that they should be allowed to wear bangles, wear flowers, and above all, wear the pottu. However, every ‘invited’ speaker pointed out that all women should unite to throw away the markers of marriage and/or femininity such as the bangles/flowers/pottu/thaali and so on? All of us might agree that these are decisions which women should take as individuals, and not just as a category, but then, what’s your take on this?)
Meenaji,
Your writings are excellent. As a member of wordpress.com (kgjawarlal.wordpress.com) I have two requests.
1. Write articles in Tamil too
2. Writers have no gender, no caste, no religeon. Hence the dalith identity is unnecessary
Regards,
K.G.Jawarlal
I am a big fan for all your poems and writings. I absolutely love the fire in your words and as a women who share the same thought about markers of marraige, If I lived in chennai my take would be join this women group and throw away the markers of marriage.
Keep writing. World needs people like you.
Take care
Dear Meena,
I remember the time, when as young girls, barely wise to the ways of the world, my sister and I used to get chided by our scandalized mother for going around empty-wristed, bare-foreheaded or even letting our hair free from the knot of a rubber band. Extremely conservative, she viewed our innocent ways of staying ‘modern’ (by leaving the hair open, not piling our wrists with plastic bangles that we so hated and other such traditional methods of dressing up girls) as irreligious and signs of a social anathema that was only referred to in slant manner. She merely mentioned them as ‘un-do-able’ things. But as we grew and our tastes and choices asserted themselves, she began to give in, surrendering to the new times, although she did her bit to remind us of the un-doability of it in more direct terms. She accepted, much against her inherent belief system, that a pottu wasn’t in keeping with western clothes, bangles on both wrists meant scratches on watches and such.
She hasn’t changed from within even now, but she realizes that an irreversible change has come over the world and she is resigned to it. As for us, we have now taken to dressing in a way that we are comfortable with in our new settings. We wear traditional symbols like the pottu, bangles and flowers because we like them and not because they have to be worn by married women.
But certainly there is a whiff of change in the air. More women are now relegating the marks of marriage to an archaic chest and are openly airing their view that the pottu and thaali are mere symbols that they are not touchy about. Young, unmarried girls are finding fashion credos in the metti and sindhoor. And the lines are blurring between what was strictly a traditional code and what now is a style statement.
If tradition and culture has to give way to a new reality that gives the unfortunate women already in woe, a fresh chance at life, then it will, sooner or later. What once was a social anathema (a widow wearing a pottu or draping a colourful saree) is now becoming a common occurrence. The old guards of certain insufferable custom have either passed away or they are becoming wise to a new order.
Finally, I feel it is not so much the fear of breaking tradition or religious norms that makes people tread the old, obdurate ways. Rather, it is the fear of social response that forces them to do things that their heart acknowledges as cruel and inhuman. It is the fear of what the other person would say. It is the fear of how the society would regard a deviation from tradition. It is the anxiety of being further marginalized by a society that now I believe is ready to sympathize, or even better, empathize with them.
The call for a better social context is certainly getting high pitched. If there is someone who has half a chance of breaking the build up, it will be the new breed of cultural and moral shenanigans. It’s they we have to be wary of. The rest of the society is just waiting for a final push to enter new times that will find its own feet. Let there be no force, either to stick or to do away with customs, whether it be markers of marriage or something else. Let a new social order evolve within the demands of time.
At least we muslim women do not have this problem.
We wear an empowering costume called the Burqa which brings us such protection and freedom. You folks should try it out once. Kamala das tried it and she went into sublime levels of women’s liberation.
Let one be what she wants to be. There is no need to wear an ornament or bindi or get drawn into a burqa out of compulsion. Certain do’s and donot’s became necessary for the smooth functioning of the society but they had not kept up with the changes and the fear of the unknown lurking in our minds would not allow us adopt a change. But if one should get an idea that we could all take to living as we please, deterioration will overtake us and we would not even know we are perishing.
Have you ever watched Deepa Mehta’s Water? You should. Brilliant movie on this painfully touching topic. Every woman should have the right to choose. Whether they want a pottu. Red bangles or blue. Whether they want flowers in their hair. Or a Burqa to hide it in. And this freedom to choose has to go beyond communities, religions, castes and such. Every being should have the freedom to choose… or maybe this is just too idealistic.