The verandah of the Bihari temple, in Radhakund, a few kilometers away from the Hindu temple town of Vrindaban, comes alive with chants and grateful ululatons at 11 o’clock every morning as widows in white saris eat free meals of lentils and rice. “If not for this meal, I would go hungry most days,” says Shakti Dasi, a 66-year-old widow from the northeastern Indian state of Tripura.
Dasi is among the five hundred women who eat at the temple kitchen, run by Delhi-based nonprofit, Maitri. Vrindaban and Radhakund are home to around 15,000 widows, most of whom were driven from their homes by family members. “In our country, when women become widows they cease to exist,” says Winnie Singh, executive director and co-founder of Maitri. “It is a failure not only of the government but of society at large.”
Consider Dasi. The 66-year-old has been on her own for three decades, forced out years ago, she says, by her own sons. “If I asked for money, they would beat me,” she said. She eventually signed away her rights to the small grocery store she ran and set out on a one-way pilgrimage to Vrindaban. Illiterate and unskilled, Dasi, like most widows in Vrindaban and Radhakund, sings religious songs for many hours a day, earning less than a dollar, or sometimes some food. Her ankles are bruised purple-black from standing for hours during the hymns and chants.
It is striking that in the 30 years since Dasi fled, not much has changed for India’s widows. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal examined the harsh life awaiting Punita Devi, the wife of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the man who has been sentenced to death for raping and murdering a 23-year-old paramedic intern in Delhi last December. Singh hasn’t been hung yet, but Devi’s in-laws have already refused to look after her. Her own parents say they are too poor to take her back. Full story...
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Dasi is among the five hundred women who eat at the temple kitchen, run by Delhi-based nonprofit, Maitri. Vrindaban and Radhakund are home to around 15,000 widows, most of whom were driven from their homes by family members. “In our country, when women become widows they cease to exist,” says Winnie Singh, executive director and co-founder of Maitri. “It is a failure not only of the government but of society at large.”
Consider Dasi. The 66-year-old has been on her own for three decades, forced out years ago, she says, by her own sons. “If I asked for money, they would beat me,” she said. She eventually signed away her rights to the small grocery store she ran and set out on a one-way pilgrimage to Vrindaban. Illiterate and unskilled, Dasi, like most widows in Vrindaban and Radhakund, sings religious songs for many hours a day, earning less than a dollar, or sometimes some food. Her ankles are bruised purple-black from standing for hours during the hymns and chants.
It is striking that in the 30 years since Dasi fled, not much has changed for India’s widows. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal examined the harsh life awaiting Punita Devi, the wife of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the man who has been sentenced to death for raping and murdering a 23-year-old paramedic intern in Delhi last December. Singh hasn’t been hung yet, but Devi’s in-laws have already refused to look after her. Her own parents say they are too poor to take her back. Full story...
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