Forbidden Red: Widowhood in Urban Nepal

by Kathey-Lee Galvin

For centuries, Hindus in Nepal required a widow to surrender to burning on their husband's funeral pyre. Now illegal and rare, social remnants of the practice persist. By the time the funeral fire is extinguished, the woman as wife no longer exists. Her separation from family and society, along with rites that change her social status, begin. Often, she is stripped of jewelry and other outward accoutrements of married life. Her red clothing--a symbol of life, vibrancy, and passion--is taken. Expected to mourn for the rest of her life, her behavior is carefully monitored. Nepal is one of the few places worldwide where a male's life expectancy is greater than a female's. In a country where nearly half of the 25 million residents are unemployed and 42 percent live in poverty, widowhood is especially fraught with economic and social difficulties. No longer able to produce paternal line descendants and with no spouses to protect them, widows are particularly vulnerable to entitlement intrusions on their land, living space, business involvements, food portions, or personal property. Some face gossip and slander. Others are expected to live in seclusion. The author traveled to urban Nepal to interview widows of various ages, castes, religions, and circumstances, and the compelling stories of Sodha, Anju, and others vividly portray their plight. Applying kinship modeling and practice theory to an examination of widow rituals, residence choices, and religion, Galvin analyzes--with some surprising results--how widows are rejected, choices they have available, and their survival strategies. Contrary to traditional assumptions, not just sons but daughters, too, are important to widowed mothers in ways previously unexplored. Her study also demonstrates that a shift from extended to nuclear residences is occurring, with profound impacts for widows. Forbidden Red is a noteworthy complement to the few contemporary studies of South Asian widowhood.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Subin]

Forbidden Red: Widowhood in Urban Nepal is a book based on ground research by the author Kathey-Lee Galvin about the lives of widows in Nepal. Although, the title say Urban Nepal, the finding of the book is rather general. I'm glad she researched and wrote a book on this important topic which affects lives of millions of women in Nepal.
For her research, Ms. Galvin interviewed 58 widow women from various regions of Nepal. The book includes statistical analysis and individual stories; I was more interested in the later though -- the sample size is rather small given the population and diversity of Nepal.
It is indeed sad that a woman is treated as a second-class citizen in Nepalese society. It gets worse when she becomes a widow so much so that some women prefer death over widowhood. With improving education and modernization the situation of women in Nepal is in fact improving, but the pace of change is frustratingly slow. There is a lot of resistance against empowerment women, and biases against women are common even among the educated population. In Nepal, the reputation of a family is often tied to submissiveness and so-called 'character' of their women and thus, women are actually more suppressed in the upper class of society. As mentioned in the book women usually blame other women for their misery -- the consequence social norm that perpetuates the endless cycle of oppression.
The experiences of widows mentioned in this book are sad and depressing. They have no voice in the family, are economically dependent on other and subject to physical and psychological torture; even the law of the country is biased against them. Especially in the early days of widowhood, they are often treated as 'impure and inauspicious' and forbidden from religious celebrations. I can tell from my own personal observation that sometimes widows face even worse treatment from the society than written in the book. The book mentions that widows are sometimes accused of witchcraft, but there are horror stories of public lynching and humiliation. Actually, I felt that the book could have been much longer and given more space to the stories of the widows she interviewed.

The book only gives a hint, but many times the life of a woman who had an abusive or alcoholic husband is better after becoming a widow. In many families, widows are treated with compassion and given financial and social support. However, until women are empowered their fate will be in the hands of others.
Toward the end of the book, the book discusses how converting to Christianity made life better for some widow women. While this might be true, I'm afraid a Nepalese reader, most of whom are religious Hindus, will dismiss the whole book as a Christian propaganda.