Copyright © AFP, Hindustan Times

Dressed like ghosts in pure white, thousands of Hindu widows thrown out by their families have reluctantly found sanctuary in Vrindavan, and the town of the god Krishna's young loves.

More than 30 years ago, Janaki was exiled to this northern Indian town of thousands of temples and monasteries. Now 65, Janaki had been instantly thrown into poverty when her husband died. "My brothers-in-law told me I had to disappear with my husband," says Janaki, her head clean-shaven and her face emaciated.

"They took my house and told me to go to Vrindavan and wait for death to come. I had no other choice." Like other widows living in this pilgrimage centre, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) southeast of the capital New Delhi, Janaki has been reduced to begging to support herself. Janaki and many others here are from the eastern state of West Bengal and come from Hinduism's highest caste, the Brahmins.

Traditionally, Hindu women take vows never to remarry after death parts them from their husbands. Among the higher castes the ritual of sati - in which widows were considered virtuous if they self-immolated on their husbands' funeral pyres - began in the sixth century.

The British colonial rulers banned the ritual suicide in the 19th century, but little enforced until after India's independence in 1947. While sati is now considered an anomaly among some traditionalists, widows are still treated as pariahs.

For three decades Janaki has held out her hand for change from the masses of foreigners who stroll the streets of Vrindavan, the home of the Hare Krishna's, a controversial Hindu movement founded in the 1960s in the United States.

The widows spend eight hours a day in ashrams, or monasteries, reciting prayers to the glory of Krishna, the god of divine love. In exchange, they get one rupee a day - about two US cents - and a serving of rice. But the ashrams do not provide housing, and the widows stay instead in shabby shacks on Vrindavan's outskirts.

"Very often we don't have enough money to rent the shacks we live in, so we're out in the streets," says Janaki. She holds almost jealously a miniature of Krishna, depicted as a young man with blue skin, playing his flute surrounded by shepherd girls. "He is my last hope, my only comfort," she says, her voice breaking. "He is covering me with love."

It is a common refrain for the widows of any age, as if they have directed any remaining feelings of sensuality toward Krishna, who is described in Hinduism's sacred texts as enjoying youthful affairs with hundreds of shepherd girls in the forests around Vrindavan.

"He is all we have left. He is our father, our lover, our god," says Suneti. She lost everything else last year at age 25 when her husband died in a car accident.

"My in-laws took my two children away from me and told me that if I didn't come here I would bring shame on the family," said Suneti, her flowing brown hair covered by a veil. "My father took me to this place and told me we were never to see each other again."

Suneti has since renounced make-up and clothing of any colour except white. She wears the pitchfork symbol of Krishna, who "protects" her. Her sole income comes from begging and the few rupees handed to her by priests in exchange for hours of prayer recitation.

She acknowledges that some of her fellow widows end up living through prostitution, something she says she will never do. "Local men know that we're helpless. Some of them know how to take advantage of us," she says.

Suneti has to cut the conversation short - it is time for prayers in exchange for her daily rice. Surrounded by hundreds of other white silhouettes, she heads to the Bhagwan Bhajan, the city's largest ashram, to chant "Hare Ram, Hare Krishna," the prayer she will recite every day until death delivers her from this life.

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