Widow - Widows in Indian Culture

Widows in Indian Culture

In India, there is often an elaborate ceremony during the funeral of a widow's husband, including smashing the bangles, removing the bindi as well as any colorful attire, and requiring the woman to wear white clothes, the color of mourning. Earlier it was compulsory to wear all white after the husband was dead, and even a tradition known as sati was practiced, where the newly widowed woman would throw her body onto her husband's burning funeral pyre and immolate herself.

However, in modern-day culture the norms for clothing have gradually given way to colored clothing. Sati practice has been banned in India for more than a century. The ban began under British rule and is much owed to the persistence of the social reformer Ram Mohan Roy, who asserted that sati was a means of showing status rather than a universal ritual in India, and said, "there are other ways of doing it than by burning wives."

Certain matrilinear communities, the most notable being the Nairs from Kerala, not only allow, but encourage widow remarriage. In these societies, children retain the family name of the mother, and women were permitted to divorce and remarry if they wished.