Sunderbans study: For widows of tiger victims, scars and
stigma linger, study finds
The
research was funded by the World Bank through the West Bengal government's
State Health System Development Project.
Forced into a life of
unending social stigma, frequently the victims of physical and sexual abuse and
living a life of abject penury, nearly half of Sunderban’s “tiger widows” were found
suffering from a designated mental illness in a recent study.
In a study of 65 women
whose husbands had been killed by tigers — government estimates put the total
number at 1,000 both sides of the border — the study, funded by the World Bank,
found 44% of the 65 women suffering “from a designated mental illnesses, of
which most were major depressive disorders (MDD) including recurrent MDD
(14.8%), dysthymic disorder (11.1%), and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
(5.5%)”.
And there is the stigma.
“I took so much hardship to
raise my only son… starved, earn by hard toll of meen (tiger prawn seed)
collection from river under sun, rain and storm, cattle grazing in fields… But
when he got a job in the town and married a girl there, he said that they
couldn’t take me with them because I am the evil person who devoured her
husband (pause and profuse crying) and may caste evil on his family too. So he
disconnected from me completely,” the study quoted one of the widows as saying.
The study, titled
‘Ecopsychosocial Aspects of Human–Tiger Conflict: An Ethnographic Study of
Tiger Widows of Sundarban Delta, India’ was published in the journal Environ
Health Insights last month and was authored by A N Chowdhury of the
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust in the UK and Ranajit
Mondal Arabinda Brahma and Mrinal K Biswas of the Institute of Psychiatry in
Kolkata.
The research was funded by
the World Bank through the West Bengal government’s State Health System
Development Project.
Human-tiger conflict
remains a major public health issue in the Sunderban Reserve in Bengal and this
study investigates a hitherto unexplored aspect of the conflict — the aftermath
of the incident and the lives of the widows who have to not only deal with the
bereavement of the sudden and violent loss, but also the cultural stigma
associated with being killed by a tiger and social rejection.
At the heart of this
cultural stigma lies the belief of the population in the area that the mangrove
forest is a sacred entity — the abode of Goddess Bonobibi — and the tiger is
the guardian deity of the forest, under the name of Dakkhin Ray (Lord of the
South). Tiger attacks, consequently, are perceived as a “divine curse” or “sign
that the goddess is displeased, even enraged with the victim and denies
protection from the tigers”. Widows suffer from a sense of “guilt and
sinfulness” that impacts their “post-trauma psychology” while the community’s
rejection of the widows as a “cursed family” further “acts as a magnifier for
the compounded stigma burden when added to their already precarious status as
widows”.
Further, the study adds,
tiger widows are blamed for their husbands’ death by the family and community
and that “90% of the widows had been accused of causing their husband’s death
by their family in-laws, especially by the mothers-in-law” while being branded
as “swami-khego or husband-eater”. Physical abuse by the in-laws is common,
particularly by their mothers-in-law (17%–31.5%) and by neighbours (6%–11.1%),
said the study. This abuse often enters the realm of sexual abuse and the study
notes that a young widow, who participated in the study, said that she “was
regularly sexually harassed by her brother-in-law, probably at the instigation
of her mother in-law”.
For 86% of the widows,
in-laws “denied any financial responsibility for the widow or their children”.
“This so-called ‘human-wildlife conflict’ (HWC) needs to be addressed to ensure
that local people do not unfairly bear the negative side-effects of
conservation, becoming more opposed to it and further jeopardising the survival
of high conservation value species,” adds the study.
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/sunderbans-study-for-widows-of-tiger-victims-scars-and-stigma-linger-study-finds/
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