ADVOCACY OF RESISTANCE AND REBELLION AGAINST SHACKLES OF WIDOWHOOD IN BAPSI SIDHWA'S NOVEL WATER

This article aims to discuss how Bapsi Sidhwa depicts plight of widows, and how she advocates resistance and rebellion against restraints of widowhood. Sidhwa’s novel Water (2006) deals with lives of Indian widows. The novel describes subjugation and oppression women undergo after death of their husbands. The story is set in pre-independence era when the freedom struggle was at its peak. This is a story of Chuhiya, the protagonist, who gets married at a very young age, and who becomes a widow soon after the marriage. The novel portrays, in the course of the plot, few other women who are widows too, and who also suffer disastrous fate only because of widowhood. They are Kalyani, Madhumati and Shakuntala. The novel puts on record the social and religious restrains that are responsible for women’s inferior status in the society.  It also makes an account of discriminatory attitudes and customs cultivated and practiced by the then ‘male’ dominated patriarchal society towards women. The condition of widows was even more pathetic and worse. The author attempts to expose the falsehood and impracticality of social and religious sanctions. The novel rejects those wrong practices that throw women in the ocean of agonies; and promoter resistance and rebellion against fetters of widowhood as well as patriarchy. Though the novel is set in 1940s, it still works as an eye opener regarding our treatment towards widows (women in general) around us. It makes us aware that we must give equal status to women. Sidhwa tries to bring home to all women that only rebellion and resistance against all discriminatory customs and practices will fetch equal status for them.