Two villages in Maharashtra ban rituals of widowhood
The Hindu
Resolution passed by the two villages is set to become State policy
A resolution passed by two villages in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district banning age-old regressive rituals that ostracise widows is set to become part of the State’s policy for women.
Herwad village in Shirol tehsil and historic Mangaon in Hatkanangle tehsil in Kolhapur district passed the resolution at gram sabhas on the occasion of Maharashtra Day (May 1). Mangaon already holds a special place in the history of social reform movement. Babasaheb Ambedkar and Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj held the first joint conference against untouchability in this village on March 21, 1920.
The resolution said that, henceforth, no woman in the village would undergo the painful rituals of widowhood.
“When the husband dies, a woman is subjected to rituals such as wiping her sindoor, removing her mangalsutra, breaking her bangles and removing toe ring. Similarly, she is barred from any religious or social gathering and her social status as a married woman is snatched. Such rituals deprive her of her rights and violate human rights. Our village bans any such rituals in order to ensure that widows too should be able to live like any other woman,” said the resolution.
Muktabai Sanjay Pujari, who proposed the resolution in Herwad gram panchayat, told The Hindu that being a woman she used to interact with widows and knew how much it hurt them when they were barred from family functions or religious programs. “We felt the intensity of it after the Covid wave. We wanted to do something about it,” she said.
Pramod Zinjade from Pothre village Solapur district’s Karmala tehsil runs an organisation called Mahatma Phule Samaj Seva Mandal and had initiated the work to stop the ostracising of women prior to the pandemic.
“When one of my colleagues died and his wife became invisible in the social sphere, I started thinking that this needed to be changed,” he told The Hindu. As he started propagating the message, many men told him that their wife too would suffer the same when they died.
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