Prejudices That Led to Witch- Hunts Still Affect Women Today, Says Historian
https://democraticunderground.com/1016322934
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or validated by too many even now and in the west. Here's more from the NYT article on widows abandoned by their families in India. It's an appalling 'custom' that persists despite more recent measures to improve the situation.
-The Guardian. *Lucy Worsley Investigates: The Witch-Hunts is on BBC Two on Tuesday 24 May at 9pm.
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.. NYT. The widows’ conditions became so dire that India’s Supreme Court took notice of their plight in 2012, ruling that the government must provide them food, medical care and a sanitary place to live. Since then, a number of govt. projects have been introduced, including building Krishna Kutir- Krishna’s House, which cost $8M and opened last August.
Many of the 129 widows living there arrived alone, by train, from villages hundreds of miles away, with dirty, torn clothing, and some came with serious injuries.
At the ashram’s inauguration, Maneka Gandhi, India’s minister for women at the time, said there was still far to go in improving widows’ treatment, but that she hoped Krishna Kutir’s model could be replicated elsewhere in India. “We want all women to feel safe,” she said. Vinita Verma, a social worker from Sulabh Internatl., an organization that works with widows, said she had seen a slow erosion of the conditioning that taught the women — who number at least 3,000 in Vrindavan — to view themselves as unworthy of love. Widows who once refused to wear color are opting for garments dyed blue, burnt orange & pink. “They used to think only in white, nothing else,”
Kali Dasi, a frail woman around 75, said that last year, she tried to reconcile with her family in West Bengal, leaving Vrindavan to journey to her village. When she got there, relatives drained her life savings, about $230. Someone bought her a train ticket back to Vrindavan after seeing her begging on the street. “I want to go again,” Ms. Dasi said...
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- 'Widows in India: My children threw me out of the house,' Aljazeera. Many communities in India still shun widows and they are abandoned by their families due to superstition.
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2016/3/7/widows-in-india-my-children-threw-me-out-of-the-house