If anything can cast a ray of comfort into the wretched life of a
Hindoo maiden or wife it is the thought that, after all, she is much
better off than if she were a widow--though, to be sure, she runs
every risk of becoming one ere she is old enough to be considered
marriageable in any country where women are regarded as human beings.
In considering the treatment of Hindoo widows we reach the climax of
inhuman cruelty--a cruelty far exceeding that practised by American
Indians toward female prisoners, because more prolonged and involving
mental as well as physical agonies.
In 1881 there were in British India alone 20,930,000 widows, 669,000
of whom were under nineteen, and 78,976 _under nine_ years of
age.[269] Now a widow's life is naturally apt to be one of hardship
because she has lost her protector and bread-winner; but in India the
tragedy of her fate is deepened a thousandfold by the diabolical
ill-treatment of which she is made the innocent victim. A widow who
has borne sons or who is aged is somewhat less despised than the child
widow; on her falls the worst abuse and hatred of the community,
though she be as innocent of any crime as an angel. In the eyes of a
Hindoo the mere fact of being a widow is a crime--the crime of
surviving her husband, though he may have been seventy and the wife
seven.
All women love their soft glossy hair; and a Hindoo woman, says
Ramabai Sarasvati (82), "thinks it worse than death to lose her hair";
yet "among the Brahmans of Deccan the heads of all widows must be
shaved regularly every fortnight." "Shaved head" is a term of derision
everywhere applied to the widows. All their ornaments are taken from
them and they are excluded from every ceremony of joy. The name "rand"
given to a widow "is the same that is borne by a Nautch girl or a
harlot." One poor woman wrote to a missionary:
"O great Lord, our name is written with drunkards, with
lunatics, with imbeciles, with the very animals; as
they are not responsible, we are not. Criminals
confined in jails for life are happier than we."
Another of these widows wrote:[270] "While our husbands live we are
their slaves, when they die we are still worse off." The husband's
funeral, she says, may last all day in a broiling sun, and while the
others are refreshed, she alone is denied food and water. After
returning she is reviled by her own relatives. Her mother says:
"Unhappy creature! I can't bear the thought of anyone so vile. I wish
she had never been born." Her mother-in-law says: "The horned viper!
She has bitten my son and killed him, and now he is dead, and she,
useless creature, is left behind." It is impossible for her to escape
this fate by marrying again. The bare mention of remarriage by a
widow, though she be only eight or nine years old, would be regarded,
says Dubois (I., 191), "as the greatest of insults." Should she marry
again "she would be hunted out of society, and no decent person would
venture at any time to have the slightest intercourse with her."
Attempts have been made in recent times by liberal-minded men to marry
widows; but they were subjected to so much odium and persecution
therefor that they were driven to suicide.
When a widow dies her corpse is disposed of with hardly any ceremony.
Should a widow try to escape her fate the only alternatives are
suicide or a life of shame. To a Hindoo widow, says Ramabai Sarasvati,
death is "a thousand times more welcome than her miserable existence."
It is for this reason that the suttee or "voluntary" burning of widows
on the husband's funeral pyre--the climax of inhuman atrocity--lost
some of its horrors to the victims until the moment of agony arrived.
I have already (p. 317) refuted the absurd whim that this voluntary
death of Hindoo widows was a proof of their conjugal devotion. It was
proof, on the contrary, of the unutterably cruel selfishness of the
male Hindoos, who actually forged a text to make the suttee seem a
religious duty--a forgery which during two thousand years caused the
death of countless innocent women. Best was told that the real cause
of widow-burning was a desire on the part of the men to put an end to
the frequent murders of husbands by their cruelly treated wives
(Reich, _212_). However that may be, the suttee in all probability was
due to the shrewd calculation that the fear of being burned alive, or
being more despised and abused than the lowest outcasts, would make
women more eager to follow obediently the code which makes of them
abject slaves of their husbands, living only for them and never having
a thought or a care for themselves.