Everyone Deserves a Colourful Life

In a recent report, it was stated that widows in Vrindavan will play holi with colours. Really, now? I mean, more than 100 years after the practice of sati was banned? Surely this change could've come about at least 50 years ago. Why is our attitude towards widows still regressive? Why is that the life of a widow is still pitiful in modern India?

Why even today in urban societies, some families do not include widowed women in celebrations. There are communities living metros who still don't allow a widow to be a part of her own son/daughter's wedding. How unfair is that? And they aren't invited for certain functions though they might be educated, employed and financially independent just because her husband passed on before she did. Isn't that attitude just pathetic? Doesn't the society who inflicts such humiliation on them realise that anyone could be fated to lose a spouse and they shouldn't be punishing the woman for it? That their own daughter or daughter-in-law could face the same situation.

Ok, agreed there are scientific reasons to almost every ritual and tradition we follow. But what scientific reason can be given for a discrimination of this kind? Doesn't it make the person following these beliefs blindly inhuman? Did you know, that in our so called 'modern' state, there are places where widows are called de-sexed objects? And that a lot of them are often forced into prostitution? And that a lot of them are driven to isolation and loneliness because she happens to be a 'husband- eater'. They are also prevented from inheriting property or money, making them penniless. Isn't that plain shameful? Shouldn't the nation who treats a large section of its woman population hang it's head in shame?

Death in a family, is surely a big loss. One never feels whole again. But in no way blaming or punishing another person for it a way of 'repairing the loss'. The person being punished probably requires more or as much as support as the immediate family itself. And it is no just to separate a mother from it's child for the same reason too. It won't make it easy for the child to cope with the loss, once its only remaining parent is taken away from it because she is supposedly a bad omen. What is required is some tender love and care towards the bereaved woman and her child. And if she is willing, some support to remarry and build her life again. Because Holi or not, everyone deserves a colourful life.

What do you think?

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