<\/a><\/div>\nLast year, Sulabh International stepped in to provide medical care. They provided ambulances that are kept on alert round-the-clock. Besides, they gave ashrams certain medical equipment, TV sets and refrigerators. Responding to the court directives, Sulabh initiated measures for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have started giving `1,000 per month to each widow living in five government-run shelters in Vrindavan,\u201d says Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh. Mathura district administration figures show that 2,818 women are enrolled under the old age pension scheme and 892 under the widow pension scheme. \nSunita, 50, has shifted three houses in the last year because she could not afford the rent. \u201cThe officials ask for proof of residence to access these schemes. I don\u2019t have any and the tout asks for `500 to make a false one.\u201d The ones who have been enrolled do not have passbooks even when they were officially distributed. \nJayanta, 48, from Etawah says that since most women are illiterate, they seek help from the officials to complete their bank account documentation. \u201cThere was an inspection last year by people from Delhi and that\u2019s when we found out that all these years it was the officials who not just had our passbooks but were receiving all the money instead of us,\u201d she said..<\/p>\n
V<\/span>rindavan is also a place to study the nuances of Corporate Social Responsibility projects which comfortably twine themselves around religious alternatives. One such cocktail is always at work in Vrindavan. There are posters galore of \u201cDidi Maa\u201d Sadhvi Rithambara in this town.<\/p>\nThe Sadhvi courted fame for her venomous speeches against Muslims in the early 1990s. Know to have attained nirvana at 16, she started as a member of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, the women\u2019s wing of RSS and later joined the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and built its women\u2019s wing, Durga Vahini. She is an accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case.<\/p>\n
In 2002, the Uttar Pradesh government of Ram Prakash Gupta granted 17 hectares on the outskirts of Mathura, valued at `20 crore, to her trust, Paramshaktipeth for 99 years for an annual fee of `1 for this philanthropic cause.<\/p>\n
On this land, Vatsalygram, her idea of utopia, was established in May 2003. A number of international endorsements from Texas, Los Angeles, New Jersey, certificates from the governors and other international associations adorn the reception area.\u201cDidi wanted to combine old age homes, Nari Niketans and orphanages. She wanted to come up with an alternate world for those who have been rejected and provide family support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spread across several acres, Vatsalyagram is a registered NGO with partners like the Adobe Foundation, Surya Electricals, Donear Suitings, Amul Macho among others. The campus has a school, hospital, residential area for occupants, swimming pool, football ground and a guest house. \nVatsalyagram has come up with a model where old women, young women and children are organised in family units, as nani, maa, mausi and the kids. Each family is given a monthly budget to manage their household.<\/p>\n
Impressed by Sadhvi Rithambara\u2019s fiery, volatile speeches in 1990s, Sita ran away from home in Delhi to become a sadhvi. Dressed in green salwar kameez and a brown shawl, 40-year-old Sita offers me coffee in the posh waiting area of Vatsalyagram.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cI wanted to dedicate my life to serve society like her but now I have the privilege of being a mother of 13 children. How many get this unique experience?\u201d asks Sita comfortable in the role assigned to her. \nWhen I ask Uma Shankar, a member of the management about the vocational skills that are provided to the women, he says, \u201cUski kya zaroorat hai? Yahan sabhi parivarik mahilayein hain.\u201d (Why is that required? All of them are domestic women.)The 225 occupants follow all Hindu rituals: from mundan, annaprasan to traditional Hindu weddings. They have been assigned the same gotra, Gurudev, as a mark of respect for Rithambara\u2019s guru, Swami Paramanand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe even ensure that the girls are provided all things of domestic importance as dowry. When they visit us every year they are even given bhaat and milni,\u201d says Sita. Bhaat and milni are money and clothes given to a girl when she visits her parents after she gets married.<\/p>\n
Instead of abstaining from and questioning the transactional nature of the Hindu wedding and practices like dowry, Vatsalyagram treats it like a norm. \u201cWe observe karwa chauth for Didi maa Sadhvi Rithambara because we have dedicated our lives to her,\u201d adds Sita.<\/p>\n
I<\/span>n Vrindavan, people say \u201cRadhe-Radhe\u201d instead of honking. According to some legends Radha, Krishna\u2019s beloved was older than him and also married. There is a singular irony about the fact that the women are abandoned in a town whose entire existence is rooted in the radical love of Radha and Krishna, who defied the traditions of their time to a fate worse than death.<\/p>\n\u201cI want Radha rani to grant me moksha,\u201d says Vasudev Dasi. Vasudev, 45, is a child widow from a small town called Lahan in Nepal. Her swollen feet hardly fit into her blue rubber chappals. A big nose pin adorns the small face The Bhajan Kutti ashram, near R. K. mission hospital, mostly houses widows from Nepal. \nThe problem of child widows is rampant in Nepal. Child widows are known as bekalayas in Nepal and ostracized since they are assumed to create bad karma. Both Vasudev and her sister were married off in the same ceremony. She was 14 and her sister 12. Her husband, who was 20, died in an accident three years later. Eight months pregnant Vasudev had a miscarriage.\u201cThey threw me out that very day.”She returned to her parents\u2019 house but they had already started giving in to the social pressures. She had to walk barefoot and wear a cotton sari, her head was shaved.<\/p>\n
She smiles as she says, \u201cI didn\u2019t like it one bit. One day, I was tempted to eat fish that my friend had secretly got for me.\u201d The smile suddenly changes into a smirk. \u201cSome neighbours saw it and that was the end of my stay in Nepal. My father got me here, asked me to wait near the Banke Bihari mandir and never returned in the last 28 years. Neither did I try to go back. I knew there was no point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orthodox Hindus believe that onions, garlic, pickles and meat stimulate sexual desires. However, these prohibited food items are also necessary to avoid the malnutrition that leads to death. In India, mortality rates are 85 per cent higher among widows than married women according to a nationwide study conducted by the Guild of Service NGO.<\/p>\n
A<\/span>\u00a0tour near Panighat, once a popular cremation spot, next to the Yamuna and now full of industrial waste from Mathura refinery and untreated sewage, throws open a world that stays shielded behind the stereotypes of Vrindavan. Manipur House is a multi-coloured building in a narrow alley, built in 1926.<\/p>\nGeeta Debbarma, 40, came to Manipur House from Agartala, Tripura in 2008. She is among the many \u201cmarried widows\u201d living in Manipur House. Her husband, Ranjeet, a daily wage labourer, was abducted by the banned militant group All Tripura Tigers Force in October, 2000. In abject poverty, she still paid a ransom of 15,000 but did not get to see her husband. In the six years between January 1997 and December 2002, some 1,790 abductions were reported throughout Tripura, according to the National Crime Record Bureau.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nNearly half of them ended in tragedy\u2014196 hostages are confirmed dead and the police are clueless about 450 victims. The Tiger Force and National Liberation Front of Tripura, led by tribal leaders, resent the overwhelming presence of Bengalis and other non-tribal groups in the state.<\/p>\n
After the disappearance of her husband, Basanti could neither inherit her husband\u2019s property nor operate his bank account due to a provision of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. A clause under this law stipulates that the death certificate of a missing person can be issued only after seven years of his\/her disappearance. \nWhile Muslims, Christians, SCs and STs have a comparatively higher rate of widow remarriage, a landless Bengali with no source of income to fend for herself and her two children, could find no better place for herself than Vrindavan. As she assembles clothes from the clothes line, she says, \u201cMy husband is dead. I know it. Here, I have a shelter over my head. My daughter, 10, works at an ashram and my son, 8, works at a tea stall. One day, we might return.\u201d<\/p>\n
A National Commission for Women report suggests that 86 per cent of the women in Vrindavan are from West Bengal. \u201cI hopped from one bus to the other over a week to reach here,\u201d says 75-year-old Basanti Rani Dutta in broken Hindi. Her short, frizzy hair reaches just under her ears.<\/p>\n
Basanti is from Bardhaman, West Bengal. Legend has it that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a saint of the Bhakti movement from Nadia district in West Bengal came to Vrindavan and established many places of worship. Basanti narrates another story. According to her, there were two Bengali brothers who worked as cashiers in a king\u2019s palace. Once a servant mixed salt instead of sugar in their drinking water by mistake. The brothers, too caught up with their work, drank it without noticing.<\/p>\n
Later when the servant apologised for his mistake, the brothers were shocked. They thought to themselves that had they dedicated themselves with the same passion in the quest for God, they would have found him. They gave up their lives and came to Vrindavan and started meditating on the ghats of the Yamuna. Their fame drove the king to them and he was so impressed with their devotion that he donated all the land within eye view. Vrindavan, then a jungle was thus established. \u201cBecause it was set up by Bengalis, we came here,\u201d says Basanti.<\/p>\n
Some 25 per cent of the families in Bardhaman, an important industrial town and Basanti\u2019s home, are below the poverty line, far less than the national average of 56 per cent. Even the literacy rate in the district is 75 per cent. However, religious dogma marked by age-old customs still drive the status of such women. \n\u201cOne of my sons is a police constable and the other two are street vendors. Once my husband passed, my daughters-in-law did not allow me to even touch my grandchildren. Skanda purana describes a widow as more inauspicious than that all other inauspicious things. I decided to leave the house after a year and came here to live the life of a widow with dignity and respect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Official data suggest that 50 per cent of widows in Vrindavan have families at their places of origin. The figures are a reminder of the misogynistic customs that ostracise widows.<\/p>\n
The six government-run and NGO shelters in Vrindavan serve a total of 800 women. The other 20,000 are left to fend for themselves. Laxmi Goswami was thrown out of a government shelter four years back after she was declared mad.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nShe initially refused to narrate what happened. \u201cPeople come to research us, treat us as objects and go back. Nothing changes.\u201d After a few hours of persuasion, she takes me to Kala Bari, a haveli in Gopinath bazaar, where she lives. The building is over 100 years old and falling apart, with no toilets. There are eight more widows like her who live on a rent of `350 a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day, the officials started brutally started beating a 25-year-old widow after they discovered a bottle of perfume in her room. They called her immoral. I defended her. She was expelled for bad character and I was declared mad and thrown out a month later.\u201d Laxmi now survives on alms and the four-hour- long kirtans that fetch her `5 per shift to pay her rent.<\/p>\n
With no government aid and no income, there are often incidents of surrogacy and sex work. Seema (name changed), 30, is from Supaul district in Bihar. In August 2008, the Kosi floods killed 250 people and forced nearly three million people from their homes in Bihar. \u201cWe were eating raw wheat flour and rice. There was polluted water all over and my husband died of stomach infection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seema arrived in Vrindavan with 13 others of her age, all victims of the natural calamity. They did not have adequate papers to be absorbed by a government shelter. They started begging outside the temples and came in touch with a kinnar (transgender) called Chachi who advised them to rent their wombs for surrogacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were a young English-speaking Indian couple from Ahmedabad, Gujarat. They decided to pay me `45, 000 and bear all the medical costs. Chachi was paid a commission of `20,000 . The girl was delivered in a Mathura hospital last year and since them I have had no contact with them.\u201d \nSeema sells tea outside the newly constructed Prem Mandir, a popular tourist site in Vrindavan. She confirms that due to absence of government aid, six of the 13 girls from Bihar followed suit and are now committed street vendors.<\/p>\n
According to data with the Mathura district administration 22 per cent of the widows are in the reproductive age, and 30 per cent of the destitute women, some 6,300, have come to Vrindavan in the last five years. \nThe alley that leads to the Radha Madan Mohan temple has a huge wall painting that announces, \u201cJab tak Bharat mein go hatya ka kalank nahin mitega, tab tak hum Hindu kehlaane ke adhikari nahin\u201d (until the blot of cow killings is not washed off in India, we are not fit to be called Hindus). It is another reminder of aggressive nationalist sentiment driven by religion that falls flat when looked through the prisms of practices like sevadasis.<\/p>\n
Sevadasis are widows who are comparatively young and \u201cpresentable.\u201d Rupa (name changed), a sevadasi at the Radha Madan Mohan temple, was left here by her uncle at the age of 17. When I meet her, she is neatly dressed in a sparkling white saree. The hem of her green blouse was repaired by a pink thread. For the last two years, she is being trained in \u201ctastefully\u201d performing the kirtans.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cI perform with two other girls whenever there are potential donors,\u201d says Rupa. Initially hesitant about disclosing the other services expected of her, she finally says in one breath, \u201cAre you asking about sexual services? As a sevadasi, dependent on the ashram for staying alive, we do it, for the priest, for the donors. It is better than selling your body every single day in Gaura nagar (Vrindavan\u2019s red-light area) and contracting AIDS! And then, don\u2019t we have desires,\u201d she sighs when she finishes.<\/p>\n
A<\/span>s the nation demanded amendments in the rape laws in December last year, what is not mentioned is the sexual harassment of women in the city who live as dependents. Rape in ashrams by priests is not unheard of but it is not easy to stand up to the \u2018providers\u2019 of food and shelter. In such a scenario, registering an official complaint is a distant option.<\/p>\nMohini Giri, a noted women\u2019s rights activist and a former NCW member, over the years put on track several such cases. She says, \u201cTo help widows who have been raped, I would go and beg the judges for their time on Saturdays and Sundays. Every room in a school was changed into a courtroom and we settled 400 cases at once.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also highlights the importance of socio-economic independence for women to fight misogyny. Only then will the amendments in laws like rape will be meaningful. However, economic independence is not on anyone\u2019s agenda in Vrindavan.<\/p>\n
Ritu, 42, a widow trained in sewing and embroidery, says, \u201cThe training is useless beyond a point because there is no capital to buy raw material and then sustain one\u2019s start-up over a period of time.\u201d Agarbatti-making, candle-making, bari-and-papad-making similarly require money for raw material. Dearth of innovative, enterprising methods is a major obstacle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did they throw me out even when my parents gave them the dowry they wanted? Was it my fault if my husband was a drunkard and fell into a ditch and died?\u201d asks Ajanta. Her rebellion and her uncomfortable question was a breather. Her in-laws, well to do zamindaars, threw her out after taking a thumb print on a paper in 1996. Parents refused to take her back.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said go die in Kashi, I came to Vrindavan instead.\u201d Under the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), 1956, the property of a Hindu male dying intestate (without a will) devolves, in the first instance, equally on his sons, daughters, widow and mother (plus specified heirs of predeceased sons or daughters). The HSA allows the widow to inherit equally with sons and daughters.<\/p>\n
But it also has a questionable provision, under section 30, whereby the husband, if he wishes, can will away all his property, leaving the widow with no support. In most cases, the husbands die without a will and relatives ostracise the widows, forcing them to flee and nipping all possibilities of them staking claim to the property.<\/p>\n
India has the dubious distinction of having the highest widowhood rate in the world. According to the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, the rate is eight per cent. Indian widows collectively outnumber the Canadian population of 32.4 million, but the tribe suffers the ignominy of its rights being observed more in the breach. Also, they are neither counted in the poverty statistics nor seen as a prospective vote bank so their problems are put on the back burner.<\/p>\n
Mamta Sharma, chairperson of the National Commission for Women, when asked about the lack of implementation of Supreme Court guidelines issued last year, says, \u201cWe have mentioned in our affidavit to the court following our research that in spite of the flow of the money for these widows, their condition is still pitiable and a lot of improvement needs to be made. Hence, it is necessary that there should be strict auditing of the above finances to see whether they are being used for the improvement of living conditions of these women and there should be some regulation or monitoring mechanism to keep check on it.\u201d \nWhile political leaders like Sushma Swaraj celebrate the misogyny of widowhood by threatening to tonsure their hair and wear white as a form of protest, Vrindavan is full of women who have been forced to follow the same practices for the sin of being \u201chusband eaters.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the women get ready in their translucent, white cotton saris and tattered shawls to walk to the bhajanashrams, Chandrabala asks me, \u201cWhy did you come to write about this? Everyone knows that\u2019s how we live.\u201d<\/p>\n
(The story was published in the Fountain Ink Magazine on April 4, 2013)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Thousands of widows in Vrindavan lead a life of deprivation. Often forced out of their homes, the women here are at the mercy of a few shelter homes, private charitable institutions, and some government schemes that are nothing more than tokenism. BY NEHA DIXIT ILLUSTRATION BY S G The puddle on that January morning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,103],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"yoast_head":"\n
City of Closures - Neha Dixit<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n