By Fr Chryso Pieris SJ –

Fr Chryso Pieris SJ

Hon. Minister Saroja Savithri Paulraj,

There is a category of women and children who do not receive the attention they justly deserve. It is strange but true that there is no mention of this category anywhere in the ministry’s website. But they have a right to be specially considered for help as they are the most vulnerable and poor of our society. They are the widows with children who lived on the daily wages of the late father of the family.

Generally speaking, the sociological problems of widowhood are very old, as old as the beginnings of civilization. It is incredible to see how much negativity is attached to widowhood; she is looked down upon as inauspicious, unlucky, unwanted, burdensome, guilty, unclean, sinful and even evil. She loses the basic rights of human beings. The inhuman, atrocious treatment of widows is a blot on humanity. The Bible insists again and again on justice for the widow and the orphan. This goes to show how much it was lacking and how horribly they were treated by that society in the ancient Semitic world. The barbaric practice of Sati, forcing the widow to commit suicide on the funeral pyre of the husband, existed even outside India and up to the last century. Deepa Mehta’s lovely film ‘Water’ depicts graphically the sad and tragic plight of widows in India during the British Raj. Prohibited to shoot in India the film had to be shot in Sri Lanka. Child widows, little girls not yet come of age becoming widows, are still extant in India. What a ludicrous and hopelessly unjust situation. We can never call ourselves civilized as long as we ill-treat our unfortunate and helpless widows. We will be civilized only when our society protects and cares for the widow and the orphan as one of its primary duties and considers it not just a duty but a privilege. Human society always swept the sociological problems of widowhood under the carpet and sanctimoniously forgot about them. With the declaration of June 23^rd as the International Widows’ Day in 2011 by the United Nations, human society has, finally, accepted that there is a problem and decided to face it squarely.

It must be made clear that we are dealing with the bottom stratum of society not the rich, powerful and influential widows. After all, the first woman Prime Minister of the world was a widow from Sri Lanka and the first woman president of Sri Lanka too was a widow. But the situation of the widows at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder of our country is not that beautiful. We are dealing with people whose bread winner was a casual laborer, a daily wage earner.   

In our society the head of the family is the father. He feeds and protects the family. At the unexpected demise of the father, the family loses the two pillars that sustained the family; financial stability and security from evil social influences. The result is a terrible loneliness and a deep sense of fear and insecurity. The full impact of this blow is almost always taken fully by the mother while the children are not aware of it. Often their houses are half finished with no doors and windows making them spend sleepless nights in suspense. They get into a peculiar mental state of fear that leads sometimes to a helpless, hopeless situation of depression and defeatism. At the loss of the husband who was a daily wage earner or was self-employed the widow experiences a total financial collapse. It is worse when she has an infant to look after and cannot go to work. For her it is a humiliation to be dependent on all and sundry for the daily sustenance of the family. This is a sarcastic comment made by a young widow. “I borrowed five hundred rupees from a neighbor to buy rice and the pig comes asking for the return of the loan late at night.” She becomes a vulnerable sexual prey for the men folk of the village and sometimes even of the family circle who show great concern after the funeral of the husband but often with base ulterior motives. When they go to government or private institutions for various services, which are rightfully theirs, some officers who are cads expect sexual favors as bribes. When they resist these advances or pressures the frustrated men folk, in vindictive retaliation, spread dirty wild canards about them in the village. The widows become helpless and find no way of defending their good name. When everything fails and no help is to be found anywhere some widows, for sheer survival, turn to the oldest profession in the world.

Sometimes the elder child stops schooling to look after the baby and cook while the mother goes to work. Strictly speaking it is child labor. The child is exploited and deprived of its right to education. The fault is not in the poor mother but in our uncaring, insensitive society. When it becomes impossible to feed the children the widow, going against the grain of her maternal heart, will part with the children handing them over to others or to the Probation and sent to a children’s home. The children then live in a limbo of heartless, loveless world of loneliness and violence; no wonder they turn out to be misfits and anti-social elements. This is a tragedy and a loss to humanity that can never be recovered.

When it comes to property rights the widows are always at a disadvantage. It was blatantly so in ancient times but even now there are difficulties. In one case an acre of forest land that her husband and she had with great devotion brought under tea was taken over and robbed by a thug of the village after the death of the husband. She had three children the youngest a newly born infant so she went to live with her parents for three years. When she returned only the half an acre with her little cottage was left to her. Often the relatives of the husband are reluctant to give his share to the widow. Sometimes they even hound them out of the village.

Hence, we propose to the government that these unfortunate mothers and their orphans be considered a special category who need to be helped substantially. This is the proposal we made to the government in Sinhala; please find below its translation in English.

The protection of orphan children of poor widow-mothers.

The proposal we made to the previous government on the UN International Widows’ Day (June 23) was fruitless. The Civil Organization, Jesuit Social Centre, and widows have worked hard for the election of the new NPP government. We present the proposal again to the new government with much hope.

1. Some statistics in 2016: In the Galle District 69,000 (25%) families are below the poverty line.

2. Their income is below Rs 15,000/-.

3. The majority of these families are daily wage earners.

4. From among them, after the demise of the bread winner, the widow headed families with children are about 1,500.

5. These families are extremely vulnerable and helpless. The late father of the family did not have a pension, EPF or any other social safety guarantee. Their houses were half built, they had no property or cattle or vehicles, neither did they have any fixed deposits. They had, many of them, only debts.

6. The widow mother is forced to go to work.

7. Consequently, the children are left at home alone and unprotected.

8. Therefore, it is the duty of the State to keep these widow-mothers at home for the protection of their schooling and non-schooling children. Also, the children have a right to have their mothers with them.

9. Their proposal is that the government grant them a monthly allowance of Rs 20,000/- for the mother and Rs 5,000/- per each child up to 3.

10. Thus, the mother can redeem her self-respect without having to depend on others; engage in a cottage industry (self-employment) while remaining at home looking after her children and specially creating the loving ambient necessary for growing children.

11. When the eldest child reaches the age 18 his/her allowance of Rs 5,000/- ceases. When the youngest child reaches the age 18, the allowances of both the child and the mother cease. Now the mother can go out to work or even go abroad to work.

This proposal is made with much hope to our dear President, Prime Minister, Hon Minister Saroja Savithri Paulraj and the whole NPP government. We know it will not be a deaf elephant to our fiddling as the Sinhala saying goes.