REFUGE RESTORES DIGNITY TO DESTITUTE WIDOWS

Poverty-stricken widows line the streets of India's holy city of Vrindavan,where they wait to die because they have become a burden to their families.Tradition in the predominantly Hindu country forbids them from remarrying or even wearing jewelry.They shave their heads,don white clothing and travel to Vrindavan,where they wait to die.Tradition holds that dying there will free them from the cycle of reincarnation.Seventy-year-old Rada Rani Biswas was reduced to begging for scraps of food in a temple when her husband of 50 years died. "My son tells me: 'You have grown old.Now who is going to feed you?Go away,' she told a reporter for CNN."What do I do?My pain had no limit."The estimated 40 million widows in India have few social rights,Ranjana Kumari of the Center for Social Research told CNN.Many lose everything they have.Even their shadows are considered bad luck."Generally all widows are ostracized,"said Mohini Giri,a widow who formed the Guild of Service,an organization that helps destitute women and children."An educated woman may have money and independence,but even that is snatched away when she becomes a widow,"she told CNN.Her organization established a house in Vrindavan where about 120 of the city's estimated 15,000 widows have taken refuge. At Amar Bari, or "My Home," widows can lay aside the traditional white outfits, re-grow their hair and live with some vestige of dignity.
http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=26123
PS:The Bible declares:
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this,To visit the fatherlesss and widows in their affliction,and to keep himself unspotted from the world"
(James 1:27)
As in the days of Noah...