DURGA
Gender Bias and Discrimination Against Widows in India
Durga Series-1
Canon EOS 1000D 62mm F/20 1/250s ISO1600
|| Ya Devi sarva bhuteshu, Shakti rupena sansthita ||
The Omnipresent Goddess is the embodiment of Power.
Sharmishtha Dutta
Photographer
From
times
immemorial,
Indians
have celebrated Goddess Durga as the
embodiment of Stree Shakti (woman
power). According to Hindu Mythology,
when the celestial gods or devas could
not control the menace of the demons or
asuras, they convened with the powerful
trinity of gods, Brahma, Vishnu & Mahesh.
Thus, did Durga the invincible, come into
being. With eyes that drained the strength
of the demons, her ten hands brandishing
ten different weapons, she slaughtered the
infamous Mahishasur demon and restored
balance to the world. This is how she’s
celebrated even today, in India and all over
the world.
But a woman, born of man! That is certainly a man’s
perspective! Indians, the world over, have been celebrating
Goddess Durga as the embodiment of ‘Stree Shakti’. It
becomes crucial to see how a woman in the present world,
finds her place in an increasingly patriarchal society of
India. It is a place where her voice is deliberately muffled
and she has to fight for an equal status - social, economic
& even sexual– which the man so takes for granted.
Perhaps, the biggest case of social injustice till day is
one that is faced by widows. Their plight portrays a fine
picture of neglect and social irresponsibility. Despite our
60
Vol 7
motherland making exponential progress, the matriarch
is target to stigma, superstitions and social dogma.
Widowhood is a curse, still, in our country. She is forced
to give up all worldly pleasures, wear only white and
have her hair cut off. Little do we know of her abject
conditions and a life of endless hardships; not to mention
humiliation?
The Government of India has taken steps to provide them
a nominal pension. Several NGOs have set up shelters,
providing them with a respectable life in their sunset
years.
But not much has changed over the years in terms of their
social acceptability. It must be strange for a society, such
as ours, that idolizes Ma Durga and yet turns a blind eye
to a million destitute mothers and wives, treating them
with so much indifference and hostility. It makes us all
look a tad hypocritical, don’t you think? A society that
propagates respect for women only in relation to her
status with a man!
It is time we realized that there resides a DURGA in every
woman, whether she is the well-educated lady from the
upper echelons of society, the quintessential middle class
working-woman, the village simpleton or the old and
abandoned widow in Vrindavan.