Originally posted by: ibnbattuta
I'm going to copy here what I wrote in CC.
I've read that this practice was most prevalent in Bengal, and surrounding areas like Bihar and Up somewhat. Completely nonexistent in North East.. punjab. Rajasthan..kashmir..gujarat and south India.
Even today data shows maximum widows in Vrindavan are Bengali left there by greedy relatives to usurp their property wealth etc.
There is a special way widows were treated in Bengal with all the certified rituals if they weren't shipped off to Vrindavan. Even today once can spot some old bent women wearing a single white cloth draped loosely around their bodies...doing all the cooking of the house...while themselves surviving on niramish....treated no better than as a glorified slave.
And hush hush...but the prettiest and youngestablished widows were sent to Sonagachi and other areas to service the white troops and officers. No wonder Bengal had literally the biggest brothels...and still does today....even Bangladesh brothels are famous today...n
Guess everyone is clueless about real history. This is how you collate and triangulate things, not rely on one cooked up incident from fake history of Alexander times written by East India Company clerks.
In Punjab, HP, Haryana...there was practice of chaddar chadhauna....where the younger brother would marry the widow. In Kashmir, there was no such practice. Neither in south India or north east. And nor in Rajasthan where women keep ghoonghat from elders even at home today. Ask why maximum widows in Vrindavan are Bengali? And why biggest wh o rehouses used to be near Company headquarters near Kolkata/Bengal?
And why all these Brahmo Samajis were Company officials kith and kin.
I have heard about this "chaddar chadhana" custom too. In fact, it was pretty common back in the day, my mom told me, women rarely went for Sati unless they loved their husband so much that they would die with them. Rarely pressure from family to commit Sati. Most would be wedded to the brother or another relative. My own greatgrandmother on the maternal side was very young when she got widowed and refused to be married to another relative and raised her kids on her own. I live in Delhi. Don't know about the other places.
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