NEW DELHI, Feb 1 (2002): Guerrillas barged into Fazi’s home in India’s northern state of Jammu and Kashmir last September and sprayed her husband and eldest son with bullets.
The killings mean the 55-year-old widow and her five remaining children today live in two dingy rooms struggling to survive in a state racked by revolt for the past dozen years.
Fazi is one of tens of thousands of women in Kashmir and other strife-torn parts of Asia such as Sri Lanka and Afghanistan widowed by conflict and then marginalised both socially and economically.
“In India, women are only revered as mothers, daughters and wives. Beyond that, they’re the objects of social stigma and discrimination,” Mohini Giri, chairwoman of a group working to improve the lives of women, told Reuters.
Giri was attending a conference on the marginalisation of South Asian widows held on Friday in the Indian capital.
Activists say widows are particularly vulnerable because they are often treated as social pariahs, excluded from celebrations such as weddings because they are believed to bring bad luck.
They are also sometimes subjected to rigid dress codes that forbid them from wearing bright colours and jewellery and sometimes they are obliged to shave their heads.
“In the context of conflict, widows are so neglected and never counted,” Margaret Owen, chairperson of Widows for Peace and Reconstruction who was at the conference.
“During peace time, many of these women, already traumatised by the death of their husbands and rape in war, are ostracised by their families,” she added.
The revolt against New Delhi’s rule in India’s northern state of Kashmir has created more than 20,000 widows in the Himalayan region who live at the “mercy of fate” because there are few avenues to make a living, Hamida Nayeem, an associate professor at the University of Kashmir, said.
Nayeem told Reuters that Kashmir also had about 1,100 “half widows” or wives of men missing in the revolt who were living in a constant state of uncertainty about whether their husbands were alive or dead.
