Renuka has plan for remarriage of widows starting with the ones abandoned in UP

The ministry plans to start from Vrindavan and then move to Varanasi, both considered “dumping grounds” for such “unwanted women.”

According to a Vrindavan Municipal Corporation study of 2006, there are over 3,105 widows in Vrindavan town itself. And there are 2,000-2,500 of them across Brajbhumi—Radhakund, Goverdhan, Barsana, Mathura. The government will soon start a fresh survey to know their age and if they have been abandoned.

“The proposal is that they should be given training so that they can earn their livelihood. The first thing, however, will be to get them re-married,” Chowdhury told The Indian Express.

“There was a time when their lives ended with that of their husbands. Across India, widows were considered inauspicious, and many of them from upper castes were forced to leave their homes and spend their lives in prayer in Varanasi and Vrindavan,” said a ministry official.

The task is, however, not so easy as a recent survey shows “that 90 per cent of the 255 widows interviewed are against remarriage,” said the official. Seventy per cent said there were social and religious taboos to remarrying, 13% said they did not believe in remarriage. Yet there are 30 per cent of them who had become widows by the age of 24.