Delhi's Widow Colony with Dr Kamal Arora

Hi everyone, I'm your host, Socrudzing, and I would like to welcome you all to the first episode in our brand new series of podcasts. This is because we are in the process of revamping all of our old episodes so that they have a better quality in production and that they can be available on most platforms. We hope to be releasing two episodes a month on topics related to sick, open-jubbi history with respected authors, academics, historians, and activists dedicated to such topics. In this week's episode, our guest is Dr. Kamal Ulora, an anthropologist whose research area explores the religious practices of sick women and in particular, our focus today is on sick women of New Delhi's Widow colony. In our conversation, we discuss her most recent article, Tiled Eye Get Peace, Gender and Religious Life in a Delhi Goddwara. We also talk about her fieldwork in Delhi, what it means to be a widow in North India and the role of the Shaheed Ganj Godwara among many other talking points. But before we start, a quick message about our sponsor of this episode from Sick Student Learning, which is an educational resource that is developing a comprehensive sick studies modular program for sick children aged between four to sixteen years with the option to take exams for modules and obtain certificates of achievement. Right now, they've published a new series of good and wonky learning workbooks for those looking to learn how to read and write Punjabi. They are an excellent resource for new parents wanting to teach their children to culturally rich mother tongue that is Punjabi. You can find them at www.sickstudentlearning.co.uk, but now back to the podcast to learn more about the Widow colony in Delhi with Dr. Kamal Ulora. Can I ask who is Kamal Ulora? Yes, you can. So I am an anthropologist and academic or scholar that lives in the Vancouver BC area. I hold a PhD in anthropology with a focus on cultural anthropology, gender and religion. And I have a graduate degree in gender and development from the Institute of Development Studies. And I also have an undergraduate degree in communication. So I have a pretty interdisciplinary background. For the past few years, I've been teaching as a session instructor at a variety of different institutions here in BC Canada, including the University of British Columbia, the University of Fraser Valley and Quantlin Polytechnic University. Recently, I was co-director of the South Asian Studies Institute from 2017 to 2018 at the University of Fraser Valley. And I'm actually currently transitioning out of academia into a non-academic role in public health. And so as a part of my PhD research, I've been focusing on the topic of today's talk, which is today's podcast, which is the Widow colony located in the Licknugger in New Delhi. And what brought you from your undergraduate and master's studies to this doctoral research of the Widow colony in Delhi? When I was young, I remember in 1984, it was Halloween night and I was a young girl living in the Vancouver area at the time with my family. And I remember I was trick-or-treating with my cousins. And when we came home from trick-or-treating, we saw news on the television that showed several sick women in New Delhi burning an effigy of Prime Minister Indra Gandhi with cricket bat and they were kind of beating it with cricket bats. And they were yelling in Punjabi. And if I can use a slur, they were saying Indra Gudi Hai Hai. And I remember that memory so clearly and being confronted with this as a child. And we were really frightened by the images that were coming across on the television. And I was told by my family that the women were widows of men who were being killed, started being killed on the day that she had died. So again, because of the time difference, it was a little bit later on the day and they were showing some, I believe it was a live feed at that time. And so that was the first time I had come across this issue of violence against sick minority communities in India. And growing up, that kind of always stayed with me. And I think for many of us who are a second generation immigrants, for example, we grew up with these kind of stories looking at things on the news, but they weren't really talked about within our own families. There was a lot of fear around that time as well, specifically in the Vancouver context, the bombing of area India happened in the 80s as well. And the sick community was targeted in a particular way. And so there was a lot of fear about speaking up around political issues. And as a result, that kind of always stuck with me. And once I finished my undergraduate degree, it was something I was kind of interested in exploring was looking at sick women. And I remember as an undergraduate student, I was at the SFU Library, the Simon Fraser University Library, and I was looking up books on sick women. And at that time, this is the early 2000s, I was only able to find two books. And I remember, I think at least one of them was a biography. So it wasn't even a really general book on sick women. And I just thought, how can it be that one of the largest religions in the world, they're so little written about sick women. And they're so little written about sick women and accessible to people who are living in the diaspora. And so when I started my master's research in gender and development, I was very interested in the oral histories of sick women and making sure that those kinds of things were accessible to people like me. And others in future generations. And so for my master's, I did work with women who were widows of sick men who had died in Punjab. And that sort of translated into my PhD. And I decided to do my research on the widows of Delhi for a few reasons. One of the most basic reasons being actually safety as an anthropologist, and as a single woman at that time on my own. I was very worried about doing long term field work in Punjab. And the reason for that is other anthropologists have written that they have been sexually assaulted in the field and all sorts of things like that. And so I was quite fearful of living for two years in Punjab on my own. And I had decided that it would make much more sense for me to be working in Delhi where I kind of had family that were closely accessible. I could stay with a roommate, et cetera, et cetera. So I found that that would probably be some safer parameters for me for research. When I started my PhD program, I started at York University before transferring to University of British Columbia. And while I was living in Toronto in those early years, I found that there was a real burgeoning network of sick youth activism, specifically with the sick activist network and other local groups. And one of the events that was organized was a spoken word event around 1984. And I just remember, I think there were probably about 1,100 youth there. And I found that to be so powerful. And so this issue around 1984 was talked a lot about sick youth, but I really wanted to know what had happened since 1984. I felt like the conversations that were happening were kind of in a little bit of a silo, a time silo, or they were kind of temporally stuck in the sense that we always focus on what happened in 1984, but we don't really talk a lot about the aftermath. And there's a lot of rumors circulating. I would go to these sick youth events and people would say, sick women in Delhi, widows and Delhi are walking a mile to get water. And I just thought, after I did my research, I realized that that's actually not true. So there's quite a lot of rumors circulating around as well about sick women's lives, specifically widows' lives. And I wanted to look into that a little bit more. And rather than the diaspora placing our own lenses and experiences on them, I wanted to kind of look at what their lives were like 30 plus years after the fact. And so that's kind of how I moved into deciding into doing this anthropological and ethnographic research. And what was your field research about? And could you tell us a little bit about your methodology? So the first interaction that I actually had with the widow colony was a few years earlier. And in 2009, 2010, I was traveling to Delhi to kind of do some pre-field work and look into that neighborhood and see if this would actually be a feasible project for me to do. Once I decided that it was, I did spend roughly two years there from 2012 to 2014. So the methodology was really informed by a really deep sense of concern around ethics in this area. And I've taught qualitative field work methods classes before and research ethics is something that I take quite seriously. recently and that I'm quite interested in. And I was worried about being a researcher in this neighborhood where so many members of the public come and ask these women for their stories. So it's kind of a hot spot in the sense that whenever there is a state election, journalists will come down and start interviewing these women. Whenever in 1984, October, November 1984, rolls around, journalists will again come down and interview these women. Then you have researchers like me who are interested in their life stories. And you have politicians from India, Canada, and elsewhere trying to go there to do photo ops and things like that. And so I was really concerned. And one of the questions I thought about in terms of my methodology and my ethics was, well, how would I feel if I had gone through this great trauma 30 years ago? And people kept coming to me and knocking on my door and asking about it. And so that was one of the main questions that I had that kind of stuck with me throughout my fieldwork was that I really needed to cultivate a sense of sensitivity around that and to do my fieldwork very slowly. So I've had researchers contact me and say, I'm really interested in the widow colony. I'm going to India for two weeks. And I'd like to talk to people. And I always say, well, what are you trying to get out of that? Like, two weeks is not a very long time. So for me, one of the most important things in my methodology was to make sure that it was long-term. So I didn't think that two months was enough or six months or even a year. And I ended up spending roughly two years there. And that really gave me an advantage in my research in terms of I could see what their life and daily patterns were year round, rather than just looking at what their life was like for two weeks during the winter time or something like that. So because changing seasons bring themselves, they bring a lot of challenges to life and deli. It was very helpful for me to sort of be their year round and kind of witness the different changing of seasons and sort of the things that people would do to sort of deal with that. So in terms of the methodology unstructured interviews were really key to understanding their life and their experiences. So I would often start out talking about their background with them, their family where they were from, their childhood. And then we would sort of start talking about their experiences of 1984. And I would ask them sort of open-ended questions. So I wouldn't say, did this happen to your husband? Did XYZ happen to your husband? I would say, why don't you tell me what you would like to tell me? Tell me whatever you're comfortable with. And so some women were comfortable sharing more details and some women were not. Other people in the neighborhood didn't want to talk to me at all. And I completely respect that. So I asked a lot of open-ended questions talking about their experiences in 1984, their childhood, their upbringing. And I was really interested in looking at their religious belief and religious practice. And also their day-to-day experience is living in that particular neighborhood. I was also interested in their relationships with their families as well. So I had several questions that I kind of wanted to explore. And really those questions were shaped by what women were sort of willing to share with me. And in terms of the religious practice, I also spent a lot of time at the Shaheed Ganges Girdwara, which was the closest Girdwara in the neighborhood. And I would witness their prayers and things like that twice a day. So I would go to the morning program and the evening program. And sometimes I would hang out there during the day. And so that's kind of the just of the ethnographic part was I would kind of just observe. And in anthropology, we call it participant observation in the sense that you're participating with people in their daily lives. And then you're also observing them. In addition to that, I also did quite a bit of archival research. So I worked with the Delhi State Archives, the Narrow Memorial Library by Veer Singh Library and National Archives. But the issue that I faced with the archival work was that it was a very difficult and bureaucratically heavy process that had a lot of administrative and technical issues in terms of getting permissions and poor record keeping and things like that. And I also sort of managed to contact some other journalists and scholars who were working on this issue and use their own personal libraries and collections as well. Professor Uma Jekravathy, who's a historian, was particularly helpful in this account. And in terms of other ethics, some of the steps that I took was making sure that all names and identifiable information for those residing in the area were changed to a sure sort of privacy and anonymity and other measures that I was taking to sort of safeguard my data. And finally, I also used a-- I hired a research assistant, a local research assistant. So this young woman was a master student and she worked at this NGO that was in the widow colony neighborhood called Nishkam. And you may have heard of them. They have offices in Canada and elsewhere as well. And this organization started out in 1984, actually, as a response to the massacre and deli that happened against six at that time. And so this young woman was working as an assistant in Nishkam. And her mother had also worked in Nishkam since inception. And so although I changed her name in my publications, she was quite instrumental in introducing me to people living in the neighborhood because I didn't want to just go up without knowing anybody and knock on someone's door and they have no idea who I am. So it was very helpful for me to use her and her skills and her connections to get people to trust me. So when I was in the field, I actually didn't start interviewing women for about a month or two because I really wanted to make sure that they were comfortable seeing me around in the neighborhood and that they were comfortable speaking to me before I began to engage with them more one-on-one. You mentioned earlier about the ethics of this study. And it reminded me from what I had read earlier in your I Get Peace article. This idea that the locality and the construction of the neighborhood itself presents some ethical concerns because it places all of the participants and subsequent interviews all in one place. And in that context, could you explain a little bit about the construction of the widow colony and some of its background for those that don't know so much or aren't too familiar with? Yes. The built space of the widow colony is quite interesting in that. So I'll do a little bit of a background for her. So after the violence of 1984, many women and their families were living in refugee camps around the city. And what the government did at the time was provide the houses or the homes in the widow colony as a space of compensation. And this neighborhood, which is called Thelik Vihar, is in Thelik Nugger, the larger sort of neighborhood of Thelik Nugger. And it's now, if you go to New Delhi, it's along the metro line, a little bit west of central Delhi. So Thelik Vihar, at that time in 1984, was an empty apartment complex. And it's under the auspices of the Delhi Development Authority or Delhi Developmental Authority. And so the government decided that they've got this empty housing and that they're going to put many of these survivors about 700 widows and their families into these homes. So they were put in there as a means of compensation and rehabilitation. This was especially true for women whose homes were destroyed. For example, in Thurlok, Burti, and surrounding areas, those areas were kind of the worst hit by the violence. And women who didn't have other places to go, other family to stay with, they were also disproportionately affected as well. So these women were put into this housing complex. And when you look at it on the outside, it looks like you're standard, large apartment building complex in Delhi, except it's what is known as a quote unquote designated Islam area. And so when you look at the actual construction of the buildings and the upkeep over time, the construction and things like that has gotten quite shoddy over the years in the sense that there needs to be a lot of repairing done. There are problems with water and electricity as an elsewhere in Delhi. And so the standard of living isn't very high anymore. And if you look at the way that the apartment complex is constructed, there's not a lot of public space for people to gather. There is one ground that a large empty field behind the widow colony. But in terms of the actual colony itself, the hallways are extremely narrow. The stairs are very deep. It's not very accessible for those with mobility issues. So those are all things that can affect your standard of living. And the other thing in terms of this colony is that all of a sudden you have women and their families who may have not known each other before at all or have had little in common. All of a sudden, let's say you're a widow, you've gone through unspeakable trauma, you've lost up to 11 members of your family, for example, and male members of your family. And all of a sudden you lose your home and you're put into housing surrounded by people who have gone through the same trauma. So even if you wanted to escape the trauma or you wanted to get about it or move on from it, it's really difficult because everybody around you has had the same lived experience of this trauma. So it's almost like the topic of 1984 and the violence around that is inescapable or unavoidable because everybody living around you, all of your neighbors have gone through a very similar trauma to you. And so in some way, women are kind of pitted into these roles of being a widow because of the neighborhood that they're in. So when I was doing my research, I really looked at the impact of the built environment, right? So what is the actual architecture of the housing complex? And what is that what kind of restrictions or limitations does it place on women, for example? And you're right in saying that, you know, it makes it for researchers and journalists and politicians, etc. It makes it very convenient for us to do our work because you're just going to one particular location. You're not traveling around the city or traveling to different cities, talking to people. And so in that sense, this kind of built environment in a sense that is sort of shadowed and shaped by this trauma is very easy for the outside world to latch onto. And if you are someone who is a descendant of somebody who's been affected by the 1984 violence and you live in that neighborhood, it's very difficult to escape that. Your study has a large religious dimension to it and touches upon the religious expression of the widow colony. And part of that construction and design of this neighborhood involves this particular purpose built godwara called Shaheed Ghandgit Godwara. How does that form part of the public space and design regarding to what extent a role it plays in learning how important it is for them? Yes, that's a great question. So the Shaheed Ghandgit Godwara literally translates to home of the martyrs, Shaheed being martyr. And it was created to commemorate those who died in 1984 and also serve their families. So the godwara is kind of in the middle of the colony area and it shares a wall with the nishgam organization. So the nishgam organization is quite large. They provide doctor services, they have a pharmacy, they provide computer classes, they really do you know quite a bit of work for the community. But again, as with every nonprofit, you know, there's some in the community that agree with the work they're doing and there's some that have critiques of the work that they're doing. So they have quite a large building there and the ghridwada is sort of on the other side of this building. And so ghridwada, what's really interesting is the name Shaheed's Ghandgit. So it means home of the martyrs, but when you ask a lot of the women who live in the neighborhood, who have gone through this trauma and lost their husbands in the massacre of 1984, they don't actually, you know, at least the women that I spoke to, they don't consider their husbands to be Shaheeds. And the reason is they say that, you know, for example, my husband wasn't a political person, he was just trying to get to work, you know, on the day of October 31st or get home from work, and he was killed. He wasn't killed for a political purpose. So when you think about the term Shaheed, it gives an idea or kind of a feeling of that, you know, the death was for a particular purpose, right? That the person died for a cause and they knowingly die for a cause. And a lot of these women say, look, our husband wasn't overtly political, they were just trying to live their lives and they were killed. So we don't consider ourselves to be wives of Shaheeds, for example. And so that name itself, it kind of permeates into how women are treated by the administration of that Gurdwata. So the Gurdwata is a place that is really patrolled by men and it's administered by men. And, you know, the caretakers are men, the people who do the Kirtin, the Baj, the grantees are men, there is a youth gurd then group that, you know, has young girls in it, but, you know, they perform during special events and things like that. So it's men kind of doing all of this administrative work and then the women are using the space. And the way that the administrative caretakers of the Gurdwata refer to these women is actually kind of places these ideas of being wives of Shaheeds on them. So, you know, they'll say, you know, things like we want you to partake in Siava. And if you really want to remember your husband and you want to be a good, you know, widow, you should be, you know, doing this for us, right? You should be coming and making drop down, for example, for the akhandbott or whatever it is. And so there's a way that that kind of label is placed on women through the administrators of this Gurdwata that also kind of perpetuates itself outside the community, where, for example, a lot of the Sikh community in the diaspora will consider these women to be wives of Shaheeds and they would say that that's not the case. And so the other important thing about the Gurdwata is that even though it's policed by men, it does provide a space for women to get together. So like I mentioned, the neighborhood in which they live is very restrictive in terms of the fact that there's not a lot of park space or public space for women to kind of get together. And, you know, if you have people over for tea and things like that, you know that, you know, having anybody over as a guest can cost money. And a lot of these women are not really making much money at all. And in fact, our living in poverty are quite probabilistic in some cases. So it's not like, you know, you may be comfortable inviting people over for tea or dinner or things like that. And so this Gurdwata really provides a space for women to come together and to kind of share the, you know, as we say in Punjabi docks of their lives, right? So they talk about weddings, they talk about Husek, they talk about kids going to school and happenings in their lives. And that's a really, really important space for them. But again, you know, because there are male caretakers of the Gurdwata, they say things like, well, this is a space for religion and religious practice, you shouldn't be quote unquote gossiping here. So there's a real tension between how the space is envisioned in terms of its use by the male administrators and the women who are actually using the space not only as a religious space, but as a social place as well. That was really eye opening for me because for a long time, we are wired to believe that talking in the Gurdwata ought to be frowned upon. And there is such a large stigma to that yet the role it plays in healing. And as you describe, sharing their stories, joy, emotions and pain is actually a large part of the healing process, especially in the context of this Gurdwata. And for me, it's a shame that as a consequence of the absence of female representation in this Gurdwata, we then witness such policing and stigma, which ultimately failed to acknowledge and respond adequately to the needs of this particular Sangat. One of the things I talk about is when we think about the idea of a public sphere and who is involved in that, as citizens, when we think about civic issues, we think that the public sphere should be a space that is for everybody, right? That everybody has an equal opportunity to get involved into public in public lives. And when we look at the lives of women living in the widow colony, but not only those women, but widows in general, women are very much excluded from the public sphere. And as citizens, it seems like their opinions don't matter. They're almost invisible. And so there is critiques about the public sphere saying that in terms of gender, it's actually not very open for women. And so that's why I think the Gurdwata is so important because it's a space that is both in the public, but you can also share your private issues. And you're right. The Gurdwata was built for this particular community. And so it's really important for women to be able to use the space as they would like in some sense. So, you know, generally when the when their religious programming is going on, they're participating. It's really only after the, our loss comes to an end, for example, that they start sort of socializing and chatting and things like that. And to me, I don't particularly see that as a problem because generally when we think about the public sphere, it's comprised of a lot of exclusions, right? And it's historically discriminated against women, specifically in India against lower castes, for example. And it can be patriarchal in a lot of ways. And so I think that the space of a Gurdwata can really provide a lot of emancipatory potential for women to sort of share the minutiae of their everyday lives. And when I say the minutiae of their everyday lives, that is a no way minimizing how important that is. And so I think, you know, because the women of this area have very little access to that. And they have little public resources to sort of address and talk about their grief. It's really important for them to have this space because those stigmas and restrictions that they face as widows outside on the street and in their neighborhood is much less in this particular space. There were two other questions I wanted to touch upon, but in no particular order, which I think they might be quite closely related. In fact, the first being this idea of a good widow and social death that follows. What does that mean? And secondly, could you expand on this notion of a counter-public where you describe how they are able to reappropriate and re-utilise the Gurdwara space for their own collective healing of trauma and their actions to socially and emotionally survive. Yeah, so one of the areas that I sort of researched while doing this work was looking into the experiences of widowhood. And we know that widowhood in India and in North India in particular really comes with a set of frankly dire circumstances. So widowhood in North India can include, you know, losing your social status, having limited mobility, little visibility in the public. Like you said, expectations of celibacy that you should be lifelong mourning ostracized by your own family or your own community and also living in structural poverty. So, you know, a lot of times we think about North India and North Indian culture and is that sick culture and vice versa. So I want to make a distinction in saying that it's not that sickism is prescribing these kinds of conditions for widows is that we live in a cultural milieu in North India that has prescribed these circumstances for women. So some of the research around widowhood in North India calls it a quote unquote social death because you really suddenly get this lowered status after you lose your husband and you're kind of excluded as this sort of functional member of your family unit. You kind of become invisible or a pariah or kind of a nobody. And so when you look at Hindu texts or a grammatical texts about widowhood, there's kind of two ways that a widow can kind of live her life, you know, originally, right? If you look way back, you either become an aesthetic and you remain celibate in your home or you're somebody who commits a sathy or widow emulation, right? And so that social death, that idea of social death of being a widow, I think plays into the lives of these women in really big ways. So one of the ways is that earlier on after 1984 happened, many of the women actually ended up marrying their brothers in law in what are known as lever at marriages. That's the kind of anthropological term to use. And the reason for that was that it would protect their social status so that they were no longer to be considered a widow. And it would also keep the money in the family and also keep child rearing within the same family. Now, you know, from what I understood, not all of these marriages are really entered into willingly, but some of the women think that this is actually a better alternative than becoming a widow. And so I think that's really important, right? Because you kind of in these cases, they're sort of avoiding that label of widow altogether. Yeah, just adding to that, I think the tradition is called "Jadracharon". Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I have a colleague, Breet Verdi, who actually works in this area around sick marriages and remarriage. And so, yes, they would, you know, in some cases marry their brothers in law to avoid that. And one of the other things too, I think about in terms of widowhood and this neighborhood is that a widow is seen as a pariah because she also poses, I think, a sexual threat in the sense that she is not claimed or in a partnership with any man, right? So it's no surprise then that widow's, you know, one of the other words for widow in North India is Rundi or Hore, right? So I think that definitely there's an element there in the sense that there's no male ownership of this woman. And therefore she kind of presents a sexual threat in that she's, you know, on her own. And if we want to extrapolate, I would say that that applies to divorced women in North India as well, in that they're seen as, you know, kind of just out there and on their own and too bold and living their life on their own and that shouldn't be allowed. And so I think that that definitely plays into this particular issue. And yes, in terms of the counter public, widows are, you know, almost completely excluded from that. They're labeled with a stamp. They're seen as kind of invisible. And the only way in which women in this neighborhood gain their visibility is through their label as widow. And I say gain visibility not only for Indian politics or Indian society, but I would also say sick diasporic society as well. Often, you know, you'll go to events and things and you'll hear things like save the widows or oh, the widows are so poor, the widows are so destitute, we have to save our widows. So there's this weird kind of sense of ownership. I mean, if you even take that term save our widows, what does that actually mean? They're not your widows to begin with, right? They're women who are standing and living lives on their own. And so I think I use this term called vessels of remembrance. And that basically means that the widows' bodies are placed as metaphors in a certain way in the sense that people kind of attach all of those memories of 1984 onto their bodies, right? And onto their widowhood. And I find that to be quite problematic because it kind of ignores their lived and day-to-day experiences and sort of places them into a position as being these vessels of remembrance. And they may or may not want that position. Regarding the counter-public and it's reutilizing and reappropriation of the Goddora space, how does that materialize with reference to the role of memory in the context of this Goddora and the widow colony in general? Because you mentioned in your article some practices that are solely dedicated to the remembrance because it is more than a Goddora for them, it seems. Yes, exactly. It's kind of a whole social and spiritual center. So the Goddora, when you enter into the front doors and right before you enter the barhole on the right hand side, there is a large room that is filled with memorial photographs of men and boys who were killed in the 1984 violence in Delhi. And that space is very interesting to me because it's almost like a memory palace if you can call it that, right? The whole room is just completely covered in photos and the photos themselves are really stylized in a particular way. So, you know, they're very technicaler, they're very bright, they've been edited so that some of the photos have interesting backgrounds like stars. And I remember seeing one photo actually that had a fence photoshopped into the back. And to me, it kind of almost looked like this person was crossing into the afterlife for something. And so the ways that these pictures are stylized, colored, you know, their soft focus, certain features are sticking out, I think really shows the level of engagement that the community has with these pictures. So often women and children will go into this room before or after they're in the Darbar hall and they'll go around the room and they'll kind of, you know, walk around and touch their hands at different points along the wall. And when they get to the photo of their loved one who has passed away, they'll often touch the picture and then they'll touch their eyes, right? Almost like they're receiving a bun or a kind of blessing from that person. And it's very interesting for me to see children who have never met, for example, their grandfather who passed away or whatnot, also go and interact with this photo. It kind of almost provides them with sort of a living material object that they can engage with. And so that is very different than anything that you would see in a normal goodlada, right? In a normal goodlada, you know, often you'll see photos on the wall of sheheeds and sick history. And in this word, Lada, you've got a whole room that's dedicated to this memory and making this memory and having people interact with this memory. And what's really interesting is that when I was there in 2013, the Delhi State elections were happening and journalists who came and interviewed these women set them up in that room, right? And they had the photographs of them in the back. And it was kind of a very set up scene to sort of inculcate the sense of memory. And I remember that in terms of their embodiment and their affect, a lot of the women, like I remember one woman being interviewed, you know, she was fine. And then right when the camera turned on, she started crying. And right when the camera turned off, she stopped crying. So it was almost this very kind of deeply performative aspect of mourning in the sense that probably these journalists and, you know, anybody watching this newscast is expecting women to behave in a certain way. So when we think about death in Punjab or in Delhi or in North India, when we think about women in relation to death and funerals, we think about women mourning and beating their breasts and crying and kind of being uncontrollable. And I think those ideas are really playing into these women as well in the sense that, you know, when journalists come, often this is how women will behave, for example. And again, using that space as a particular reminder, you know, an immediate visual reminder of the past. And when you go into the Guadwata, you know, at the end of the back of the Guadwata, at the back of the Dharbarha, there's also, you know, there's a Dya that's lit 24/7 in another small room with other photos. And that's my not necessarily something that you would see at other Gurdwadas. So, you know, in a lot of sick Gurdwadas, we say that you shouldn't have pictures up, but you're not supposed to be worshiping idols or pictures of the gurus or you shouldn't be worshiping photos, for example. And here you have a idea that's lit around the clock with photos of the dead. And that's not something that you really see very often in Gurdwadas. And in terms of the makeup of the Gurdwada, on any given day, the congregation would be 80% women and 20% men. And like you're saying, it's really unfortunate that women are not more involved in the day to day decision making of this Gurdwada, right? So in terms of the purgash and the sikhasan ceremonies and opening and closing the gates and managing the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, it's all done by men. And it's really women who are almost, you know, standing by as these things go on. But again, there's women, there's ways in which women engage, right? So for example, when they're walking through a Gurdwada, I've noticed that women will often stop at different points of the Gurdwada while they're matataking. So sometimes when you go into a Gurdwada to matatake, you might matatake at the front and you might go around once at the back and matatake or circle around the Guru Granth Sahib Ji once and then go sit down. But what's really interesting is that women will often, in my dissertation, I actually have a map of this, women will often matatake and kind of circulate around the room in four or five different places. So for example, on one of the walls, there's a large picture of the Hadim and their Sahib or Golden Temple and Nimrat Sahib. And they'll often go to that picture and they'll touch the picture with their hands and then they'll bring it to their eyes. So again, it's this idea of darshan or dhan or you're kind of getting a blessing or you're creating a relationship with that material thing, which I find quite interesting. There were a couple of other points I wanted to go over namely this idea of intersectionality in the widow colony. Because when studying such a large demographic, we know there can be many instances where gender and caste dynamics are presented. In this case, the discussion is gendered from the start. But during your study, did you ever witness any dynamics associated with caste, which was evident in the widow colony? Yes, definitely. So in the widow colony itself, originally, the colony is broken up into different blocks, right? Like block A, B, C, for example. And originally, the way that the apartments were divvied up was actually based on caste and kind of ethnic group as well, which I find very interesting in the sense that one block was reserved for Punjabi six. And one block was reserved for LaBana six, who originated from Rajasthan, who are considered low caste six, right? Even though technically in Sikhi, we say that we don't have caste, but obviously we live in a society that is very caste oriented. And so I find it very interesting that the neighborhood was kind of split up into that way. And I think ostensibly the reason why that was was because they didn't want to have a lot of caste tension. And what's really interesting is that across the street, behind Nishkam, there's actually a community of ballots who are living in that community, who are not, you know, part of the widow colony per se, but they're kind of just adjacent to it. And I remember when I was going around the neighborhood in a rickshaw with my assistant, and I was kind of trying to create a map in my notebook about what the neighborhood looked like. And I said, OK, let's take the rickshaw across the street to the area behind the NGO. And she said, Oh, no, no, no, we can't do that. And I said, well, why not? And she said, well, I've never been there. And I was completely floored by that because this young woman had been living in this neighborhood for 20 plus years. And she had never been in the ballot area across the street. That was, you know, less than 500 meters away from her own home. And so that was quite shocking to me in the sense that there's quite a strong division of caste in the neighborhood. And actually in 2013, on Independence Day, I was actually away from the field. I had contracted typhoid. And so I had to go home to recuperate for a while. But on Independence Day, there was a riot that broke out between the widow colony inhabitants, some of the children of the widow colony inhabitants, and some of the children of the Dalit families who were living across the street on the other side of the neighborhood. And ostensibly, nobody really knows how it started. There's a lot of rumor and speculation, you know, there's speculation that kids started fighting over something or that somebody got pushed, some of one, you know, kid was riding his bike and he pushed someone over by accident. And so it's not very clear about how it started, but it is clear that it started between some children. And it proliferated from there. And it became an all out quote unquote riot. And I'm using that term pointedly because it wasn't something that was organized by a community, but it was kind of violence that in this sense really did spontaneously break out. Due to these long standing cast tensions, though. And so what ended up happening was that, you know, hundreds of police descended on the area and they actually instituted a curfew for that night. And I remember when I came back to Delhi, families telling me that they were really fearful around that time because it was kind of a reminder of what had happened during 1984. In the sense that they were again living under curfew, you know, you had to hide behind your doors, you had to sort of, you know, people were stockpiling weapons for defense and things like that. And they were quite frightened actually. And so that's one indicator of really long standing marked cast tensions within the neighborhood in the Grodwada itself. You know, there are a lot of low cast LaBana women who are living in that neighborhood who are widows and survivors of 1984. And they do share the Grodwada space in that they pray together and they may speak together, but both groups have kind of remarked that they'd rather just kind of quote unquote stick with their own people. So in the Grodwada, I haven't seen kind of any overt tensions between cast. I would say that they do socialize, but, you know, they prefer to socialize within their own cast group or their own social group or their own ethnic group, we could say. The LaBana women specifically often speak in their own dialect of Hindi, you know, they have a different language that they use. So they have their own language that they're using within the Grodwada when they're talking. And often when they're speaking to the B&W-SIG women, then they'll start speaking Hindi because that's kind of the common language that they can use. So within the Grodwada, it's interesting to see actually that they're coming together in a way because they're all praying with each other and they say hello to each other. But definitely outside the Grodwada from what I've seen in terms of my own research, there does seem to be quite a strong cast is divide not only between LaBana women and Punjabi women, but also between the widow colony itself and their beloved neighbors. Saying that what comparisons were you able to draw with that Grodwada and those in the diaspora in terms of the commonalities and differences that we might see. Yeah, in terms of the commonalities with different Grodwadas in the diaspora, I would say that there's quite a bit in common in terms of the gendered administration of the Grodwada. Certainly at least in my experience, you don't see a lot of women being involved in issues at the administrative level. And women who are involved in the administrative level are often tokenized, right? So for example, if you have a committee leading the Grodwada and there's one woman on the committee, people will say, oh yeah, yeah, well, we have a woman on the committee. So we've taken care of the gender issue. And so in terms of that day to day administration being mailed, that's very common in other places. Definitely though, I think you're seeing a surgeons of women wanting to become more involved in Grodwada politics and Grodwada administration. But that space really needs to be opened by those who are already in power. And so we really need a concerted effort from men who are involved in Grodwada committees to include women or include folks of different genders. And we don't necessarily see that. In terms of the makeup of the Grodwada itself, in case, Gange Grodwada, it's fairly, I would say in my experience, more common to see gender segregation in terms of seating. And we don't often see that in other Grodwadas in India, right? Like if you go to a bungalow side, for example, people kind of tend to just sit wherever they want to. And so in the diaspora, definitely, I would say, you see a pretty clear, at least in the Grodwadas that I've been to, you see a pretty clear marked area between where women are sitting and where men are sitting. And so I would say that that's definitely a commonality as well. That's really interesting because the architecture of a lot of Grodwadas in India tend to be designed such that the sun that can sit in families and the Guru Guru on-site is at the center. So it's not gendered. And rather than having this walkway, which is similar to a monastery, the sun got our equal distance away. However, in the Shaheed Gange Grodwada, it's gendered. And what's interesting is that because generally there's so many more women than men, the women often end up, you know, on really busy days, we'll start ending up encroaching into the male space, right? because there's just too many of them. And you definitely see this in larger events when they do a kind of bots and things like that, is that will they just start taking over the space because there's no room? And yeah, in the diaspora, you do see this kind of very clear divide between genders. And if anyone breaks that divide, it's very noticeable, right? Like if a woman goes and sits on the men's side, people will talk about it or vice versa. And so it's very, very clearly marked and you're right in saying that in Punjab and in other Gurdwatas, we see in India that many Gurdwatas tend to be more family oriented in that you're sitting with your children or you're sitting with your family. One of the main differences, I think, between the Shaheed Ganges Gurdwata and Gurdwatas in the diaspora is that women in the Shaheed Ganges Gurdwata were actually quite powerful in the way that they spoke. So they weren't afraid of using the space of the Dharbar Hall to talk about their own social lives or their family lives, et cetera, once the service was over. And they were quite vocal in their critiques of the male administration. So I think in my work, I talk about one example where one of the women had found mouth droppings in the Prasad. And they were not afraid of critiquing the male administration really loudly and saying, how can you let this happen? And that kind of vocalness and standing your ground and using that space is not often something I personally would see in a diasporic Gurdwata. And often the way that the women are using their bar hall in Shaheed Ganges Gurdwata reminds me of the way that women will use to cook longer in diasporic Gurdwatas. Although women and men are involved in longer preparation, for example, in Gurdwatas in North America, for example, you'll often see that longer space being used as women talking about their lives, for example. You don't see that as much, I guess, in their bar halls. Like their bar halls aren't really used for social space. And so that is definitely one difference that I see there. - I'll have interest. Have any of the widows remarried? And if so, what became of that? - Definitely, there were women that remarried. I can't really give you a statistic on how many, because I didn't do a survey of that. But the women who remarried, a lot of them did come from LaBana groups or LaBana cast, for example. And so these leverate marriages are what are known as kind of widow inheritance marriages, right? Because you kind of keep the family, you keep the children in the same family unit, the same money and capitalists circulated in the same area. And those kind of marriages give a legitimizing space for widows, right? It gives them their social status back, because they're now, you know, a married woman again. So I think across India, it's like 10 to 25% of widows that end up remarrying for those reasons, and you know, for other reasons. And women were generally, like, there were a couple of women that I interviewed who were open about their remarriages and they were saying, well, you know, it's really kind of a way for us to survive. Women who I spoke to who had remarried through these leverate marriages, they still, in some ways, considered themselves widows, regardless of their marital status. One of the reasons is because they wanted to construct themselves as widows in order to sort of give justice to their experiences of what they had lost. And also sort of thinking about the long term ramifications of losing their husbands in such a violent manner, right? So even if you've remarried, they're still dealing with the trauma and the fallout and the issues around widowhood, regardless. And, you know, some women would, for example, claim it as an identity, right? And I think one of the reasons is that the state's construction of the survivor of 1984 was the widow. So when you're looking at compensation with regards to 1984, the state constructed the category of widow in a certain way, right? So when you look at the family of the dead men, it's not the parents who are considered to be the survivor, right? It's not the children who are considered to be the survivor, it's the widow. And so the state's construction of this kind of central 1984 widow survivor was really instrumental in terms of compensation purposes. And so that's why I think even women who entered into leverate marriages or widow inheritance marriages or remarried in other ways weren't solely comfortable with completely abandoning that label of widow forever, because that did bring them some sort of semblance of compensation. And also, as we know, many of these cases, in terms of 1984, are still continuing years later and are still in the courts. And so it's important for them to also sort of claim that status of identity as a widow. With remarrying, did that come with relocating? - Actually, in the cases that I spoke to, because I was working in that neighborhood, it was actually there married husbands, their new second husbands who would move in with them in that particular colony. So I imagine that there were some who moved into other areas. There definitely were women who remarried and moved elsewhere, but there are also women who remarried and still live in the colony with their second husband, for example. - Adding to that, if some of them are moving out or sadly passing away and these apartments become vacant, is gentrification an issue? Sorry if that may be beyond this discussion. - From my understanding, when widows are passing away, the housing is going to their children, definitely in terms of gentrification, although the colony on its own, didn't seem to be surrounded by gentrification in its immediate vicinity, definitely that neighborhood is beginning to gentrify. And actually, nearby, there is, for example, there's a huge mall that has sprung up. I believe it's called Pacific Mall. And so that's not really far away. And definitely, you see changes in the PILAK NUGAR market over the years as well. And so in terms of that gentrification, I think the big change that you're seeing is that you are getting these main restaurants and large kind of megamalls that are popping up in Delhi, that are also popping up in this neighborhood. And I imagine at some point would start encroaching this particular area as well. - The reason I ask is because it can surely become an intergenerational issue where the children of these widows are forced to relocate to some, what might become the children of the widow colony. Because when I read in your article that there was a Dalit neighborhood adjacent to widow colony, it reminded me of the segregated refugee camps that were designed in Delhi after partition. - Just a side note in terms of partition, the way that women survivors were constructed, the idea of the women's survivor was constructed in partition is very similar to the way in which women survivors are constructed in 1984. So there's this idea, for example, that in any kind of big bout of violence, that it's the women who you really have to pay attention to. So when you think about partition, India and Pakistan both had very concerted efforts to quote unquote get their women back. For women who had crossed into another border, or were, for example, Pakistani government wanting Muslim women to come back to Pakistan, Indian government wanting Hindu and Sikh women to come back to India. So there was a concerted effort by governments to actually exchange women to get them to go back to where they were quote unquote supposed to be. I think even that very idea of Indian nationhood in some way is tied up with this idea of gender and making sure that you're quote unquote protecting women. And so that's why I think in some way, the survivor of the 1984 violence is gendered as well. - And just before closing, I know you wanted to add some final comments about Sikh and Punjabi women in academia. - Yeah, so I wanted to talk a little bit about gender in Sikh studies and gender, yeah, exactly. Sikh women in academia and Sikh studies and Sikh women just in general. And so I want to emphasize that I think that the stories of women, the stories of queer Sikhs, the stories of disabled Sikhs, of non-binary Sikhs, of gender non-conforming Sikhs are really pushed under the rug in our Sikh community or communities, I should say, around the world. And so as an anthropologist, that was sort of the driving impetus for this work, was that we need to make sure that our stories are included. For example, as a Sikh woman, I was felt very strongly that I didn't see any representation anywhere of Sikh women in academia or elsewhere. When you Google Sikhism, for example, if you type Sikhism in Google and you click on the image tab, what you'll see is just a sea of male faces. And so for me, when I think about Sikhism, the public face of security. is really a male face. And the impetus for this work was to start changing that narrative. And I think it's really important that, you know, when we talk about things like SAVA and the SIC community, that we really speak about women's experiences. So lately, for example, during COVID-19, we've seen several articles come out about SIC communities around the world serving longer and doing SAVA. And when you look at those articles, I would say 90 to 95% of the photos show SIC men. They don't show SIC women working in the, you know, doing SAVA in the Gurdwara. And I find that to be a real shing. And so one of the things that I think is really important to me is looking at oral history. And this is obviously part of what you're doing as well. And the presence of SIC women's narratives, right? Because I think oral history can be a very empowering tool and can really bring women's voices to the fore. And I think that's really important because SIC women's voices have been marginalized. If you look at the canon of literature around partition, or if you look at the canon of literature around Punjabi history, SIC women's narratives are by and large not there. And so I think, you know, the historical inclusion of women is really fundamental to sort of addressing these inadequacies that inadequacies that we have of SIC history. And in terms of SIC women in academia, definitely, you know, just to talk about that very briefly, I can say that as a SIC feminist and a women SIC women in academia, we're not really supported by our community and initiatives like the one that you're doing, I think are really critical for that support. We often, you know, actually myself and two colleagues are working on a paper about this. And the paper is really about all the sort of trolling that we get when we post our views online or we talk about things online. And so SIC women academics don't often receive a lot of community support. And I think it's very important for community members to support those initiatives. Because it's, you know, academics, SIC academics who are writing down our history in some ways and groups like our individuals like you and those need to be supported, right? But I think that the initiatives that you're doing and the initiatives that SIC academics are doing are really, really vital. And I find that as a woman and a SIC woman in academia, our voices are really marginalized and we do have to struggle a lot to get ourselves heard. And we often get attacked. Or for example, not being SIC enough, right? I find that to be really concerning and my hope and desire is that, you know, SIC diasporic communities and communities in India do support their SIC academics moving forward. Would you like to add anything else, something that we might have missed before we close? I would like to say as a caveat that I'm very careful about positionality. So whatever I've found in our discussion, it's really my own personal take on what happened. And in terms of ethnography, even though I was there for two years, my ethnography is very limited in that I worked with a very small group of women. So as an anthropologist and a researcher, I'm very careful to say, oh, SIC widows are like this or SIC widows are like that. Because really, I'm only working from my own truth and my own narrative and what I witnessed. And somebody else who goes down there and does research for two years, or, you know, someone from the community itself who does research in their own community will undoubtedly come out with different findings. And so I think as a researcher, I have to take my positionality into account. So, you know, at the time, you know, I was female, young, unmarried at the time, and I related to the field in a certain way. And so the set of knowledge that I received from that place really hinges on my own particular positionality. And for example, if it was an older male going into the colony to do research, or if it was a person from the colony themselves, they would undoubtedly get a set of different answers. So one of the things I want to underscore is whenever you're reading any research paper that is ethnographically oriented or contains oral history, it's really an account of truth for the person who's writing it at that moment and kind of what they're seeing and observing. - Thank you so much, Dr. Kamala Aroro for coming on today. To talk about your amazing work and, you know, sharing a fraction of what could be available as a podcast, I really enjoyed reading your article and it was a real eye opener on many different fronts. I hope the listeners of this episode are inspired by your research and are now able to consider the construction of the widow colony and deal with a much more wide understanding than before. I think a discussion on Goddard dynamics is always welcome and one which we can all relate to and feel passionate towards. And this conversation on Shaheed Ganj Goddard was truly fascinating for me. And so thank you again for that. And also thanks again to our generous patrons that allow me to create these podcasts. So please do let me know which topics you'd like to hear from me next in the near future. I'd like to thank our sponsor, Six Student Learning and the thousands of followers on our social media pages that continue to motivate us to actively record and share sick history. We hope to continue to keep recording more podcasts and make more sick history accessible in audio format. 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