Abstract
India may be one of the few countries where severe restrictions are still enforced upon women. The situation of widows came to symbolise this, and constitutes for Human Rights activists, a justification for intervention. The focus of this essay is on the importance of religion, and why it is essential in being able to explain the women's status in the past, the present and the future. From a non-Indian point of view, issues such as the stripping of property, the hatred surrounding Indian widows' current position, and the overall destruction of women's independence, constitute a relegation of women to the status of sub-humans, and a breaking of Domestic and International Law. I argue that today, whilst Hinduism is deeply entrenched in the country, any Human Rights approach is distinctively secular and does not have sufficient regard for the importance of Religion in one's way of being.
