Hindus threaten cinemas over film exposing plight of India's 'City of Widows'
Sunday Telegraph, 01 October 06


When Paro Sharma's husband died in a rickshaw accident 28 years ago, she became not just a grieving widow but a social outcast. Blamed by her Hindu relatives for the bad "karma" that brought about his demise, she was banished from home as an omen of bad luck and told to fend for herself.

"After my husband died, my two sons and daughters-in-law threw me out of my own house," said Mrs Sharma, 50, from west Bengal. "They said I didn't earn, so why should they feed me."

On the dusty streets of Vrindavan, a Hindu holy town in northern India, known as the City of Widows, countless sad-eyed women tell similar stories after fleeing the harsh social stigma that comes with the death of a husband.
Forced to shave their heads and dress in white, an estimated 10,000 widows have sought sanctuary in Vrindavan, from newly-weds and mothers in their prime to elderly women who can barely walk, all living on handouts after being deemed socially untouchable.

It is one of the cruellest Hindu traditions to have survived into the 21st century, and is an image that modern India would rather the outside world did not see.

But to the fury of Hindu conservatives, that is about to change. Water, a film by the Indian-born director Deepa Mehta, has been nominated for an Oscar after she turned her lens on her country's inhumane treatment of widows.

Her entry for the coveted award, however, will come not from India – where protesting mobs attacked the film set and where no cinema dare show it – but her adopted homeland of Canada, which has put it forward for best foreign language film.

The irony that the film's only acclaim so far has come from audiences thousands of miles from India has not been lost on Miss Mehta, 56, who had to finish making the film abroad after receiving death threats for "insulting" Hindu culture.

"A film about the widows of India in Hindi, which I had to shoot in Sri Lanka because I wasn't allowed to shoot in my home country, is now going to the Oscars as Canada's official entry," she said.

Hindu nationalist groups are outraged that the film may now achieve international prominence and accuse Miss Mehta, whose previous films have broached other taboo subjects such as lesbianism, of showing an unpatriotic obsession with her country's shortcomings.

"Every society has weak points," said Omkar Bhabi, of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council. "It's shameful that she always makes films about India's weak points for foreign countries. Why doesn't she show how the West dumps its old people in homes?"

The film is a "conspiracy to tarnish the image of India", said Prakash Sharma, the council's national convenor. "Why is Canada nominating an Indian film?" he asked. "We will not tolerate a screening under any circumstances. We will attack cinemas if necessary."



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...01/widows01.xml

Is this "city" still open? Dammit do people realise this movie took place in the 30s. People watch these movies and go OMG INDIANS ARE BARBARIANS WE ARE SO MUCH BETTER THEN THEM, without realizing that many people in India are trying to change things and people (especially the urban middle class) do send their daughters to college and crap.