Essay on condition of indian widows in ancient india in hindi
Answers
Majority of Indian Windows are deprived of their inheritance rights. If a widow has adult sons, she may enjoy it but if she is child less or has only daughters she actually faces problems. Although the ” Hindu succession Act’ 1969 made women eligible to inherits equally with men and some individual states have legislated equality provisions into inheritance law, widows are mostly deprived of their legal rights.
Patrilocal residence and patrilineal inheritance is fundamental source of the poverty and marginalization of Indian widows, when the husband dies, a widow has no freedom to “return” to the parental home or to her brothers. She remains in her husband’s village whether or not her owned land or property.
Conflicts overland and property are often so bad that brother-in-law force the widow to leave the village. To gain control of land and property, the brother-in-law may harass, prosecute, beat, and torture and even murder the widow. To exercise full ownership rights by inheritance a widow has to be literate, courageous and mobile.
She would need to be able to assert her claim dealing with official Land Registries and with lawyers. For a rural widow this is impossible. She is completely unequipped to all rights deal with the bureaucracy, confront strangers and in seeking outside assistance, she lays herself open to more gossip verbal abuse and violence.