In Maharashtra’s drought-prone regions, widow remarriage is gradually shifting from a social taboo to wider acceptance. The shift is partly shaped by the growing number of unmarried farmers struggling to find women willing to marry them. Faced with low incomes, agrarian uncertainty and the social challenges of farming, many such men are now turning to widows. But Radheshyam Jadhav finds that many women are declining these proposals, choosing financial independence and personal autonomy over the complexities that often accompany remarriage
Severe cramps gripped her abdomen. Neelima Renge ached to scream her heart out in anguish and anger. She was eight months pregnant when her husband Moreshwar died by suicide. Crushed under the burden of debt, he decided to end his life. In that haze of grief, anger and pain, she decided never to remarry. More than a decade later, she has not wavered from that decision.
“That decision was correct,” she asserts, standing in the corner of her dingy two-room mud house in Zadgaon, a remote village in Yavatmal district of Vidarbha region, the epicentre of Maharashtra’s farmer suicide crisis.
Inside, a broken charpai (cot), farming tools and stacked soybean sacks leave barely enough room for two people to sit. “This is what I have built on my own — my house and my life,” she says.
Married in 2011, Neelima was unable to complete her secondary school education. Her husband, who cultivated the family’s land, struggled with alcoholism. She says she made every effort to persuade him to stop drinking, but failed. Barely three years into their marriage, he died by suicide, leaving her widowed at the age of 26. A month after his death, she gave birth to a son.
In the years that followed, marriage proposals came through her parents and relatives, while several suitors expressed interest in marrying her, both directly and indirectly.
According to Kishor Tiwari, leader of the farmers’ advocacy and social action group Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, western Vidarbha recorded 30,969 farmer suicides between 2001 and 2024 across Akola, Amravati, Buldhana, Washim and Yavatmal districts. Agrarian distress remains acute, with Yavatmal alone recording 102 farmer suicides between January and May 2026, according to Kishor.
When young women are widowed, their parents often urge them to remarry for financial security and social acceptance.
At times, social activists act as matchmakers, helping widows and prospective grooms connect. In Buldhana, a young farm widow and an unmarried farmer fell in love but, unable to openly announce their intention to marry, sought the help of a local non-profit organisation.
Yet, for widows such as Neelima, whether a man has been married before matters far less than whether he treats her as an equal partner. She did not believe she would find such a relationship and has therefore remained single.
Alongside women widowed by farmer suicides, rural Maharashtra is also home to many never-married farmers who struggle to find wives because of unstable incomes. A network of matchmakers assists these farmers, often searching for prospective brides in the relatively underdeveloped regions of Vidarbha and Marathwada. While prospective grooms initially hesitate to consider widows, many eventually do after repeated rejections from previously unmarried women and their families.
Many widows also turn down proposals from farmers, most of them over the age of 40. They are unwilling to give up their autonomy or risk reliving the trauma of an earlier marriage.
Over the past seven to eight years, the problem has grown into a social crisis. It gained political visibility during the 2024 Lok Sabha election, with both farmers and political parties calling for government intervention.
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Navigating life
Neelima’s in-laws declared that she was no longer part of the family and had no claim to its land. They were also resentful that the government compensation released after her husband’s death had been deposited directly into her account rather than theirs.
Neelima took shelter at her parents’ home in Hinganghat, about 55 km from her marital village. She began working as a tailor. Her parents urged her to remarry, arguing that it would be difficult for a young woman to raise a child alone without a man’s support. But even as marriage proposals came her way, Neelima remained convinced that she did not want to step into that “trap” again.
“At the same time, I was terrified about how I would navigate my life and what the future held for my son. I didn’t want to become a burden on my parents and brother. It took me three years to gather the courage to return, knock on my in-laws’ door and demand my share of the land. It was the only source of livelihood for me and my son,” she says.
When her in-laws once again refused to accept her and her son, she insisted on claiming her husband’s share of the land and demanded a meeting of village elders to “do justice”.
Eventually, her in-laws agreed to let her cultivate a three-acre plot. However, they made it clear that its legal ownership would pass only to her son once he attained adulthood. Her in-laws and fellow villagers feared that if Neelima remarried, the land would eventually go to her new husband.
“I was not bothered about what they thought. My priority was to secure a foothold on the land and begin cultivation,” she says, adding that she has successfully experimented with different crops even though her land is entirely rain-fed, with no irrigation facilities. Even now, her relatives and neighbours remain unconvinced that a single woman can survive independently without a man’s support.
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Breaking the taboo
Just 22 km from Zadgaon, Chhabutai Waghade, Kusum Aaglane and other women farmers gather at Vanita Shende’s home in Tirzada village. All of them lost their husbands to suicide and have walked a path similar to Neelima’s. They are waiting for the remaining members of their self-help group to arrive. Together, they plan to discuss loan schemes that could support them.
“Life must revolve around men; otherwise, it has no value. That’s what I was taught, and I experience it every day,” says Chhabutai.
Her husband died by suicide after repeated crop failures and mounting debt. Her two daughters are now married. Her brother-in-law seized her land, arguing that a woman without a son “had no need for it”. Living with her widowed mother and having no brothers, Chhabutai says she has spent the past 15 years being reminded that she needs a man’s support. “Yet I have managed well and fought back in my own way,” she says. The other women in the group agree that remarriage often brings more complications than relief.
“Women like us have suffered in marriage, carrying heavy emotional and financial burdens. The thought of remarriage raises one overriding fear: what if the second husband is like the first? That is simply moving from one trauma to another,” says Vanita. Many young widows, she says, were married as children and denied even a basic education. Becoming mothers at a young age and then widows, Vanita adds bitterly, “There was no room for dreams. Here, girls are raised only to marry and bear children.” Kusum and Chhabutai silently affirm her words with a nod.
Women are expected to bear sons, and those who do not are often pressured into repeated pregnancies until they do. Tears well up in Vanita’s eyes and her voice trembles with suppressed anger. Within moments, she regains her composure and says she wants to show what she has achieved on the farmland she wrested from her brother-in-law after a long legal and social struggle.
Walking through her fields, she explains that she adopted farming practices her husband would never have permitted. She has introduced a multi-cropping system and grows vegetables organically. “Men chase only cash crops. If that crop fails, everything is lost,” she says. Stopping at one corner of the field, Vanita points proudly. “This is a turmeric plant.”
Her smile comes after years of struggle. A few years ago, Vanita and a group of farm widows began cultivating turmeric, sending shockwaves through the community. “The turmeric plant is accorded an upper-caste status, and menstruating women are forbidden from cultivating or even approaching it,” she says wryly.
A long-held superstition maintained that the touch, or even the shadow, of a menstruating woman would pollute the crop. Widows were already excluded from haldi-kumkum ceremonies, in which married women exchange turmeric and vermilion as symbols of marital bliss, making it unthinkable for a menstruating widow to handle the plant. Caste and gender taboos intersect closely in local agricultural practices. Yet as families sought alternative sources of livelihood during the COVID-19 pandemic, Vanita broke the taboo. Along with other widows, she planted turmeric in backyards, kitchen gardens, pots and grow bags, tending to the plants through every season and every menstrual cycle.
Today, many women in the region cultivate turmeric in their fields. The belief that men are farmers while women are merely helpers is another stereotype that has been sustained for generations, says Vanita. She adds that she and other farm widows have shown that women can farm successfully without men’s support.
Vanita had, in any case, been fending for herself even while her husband was alive. He had thrown her out after she developed leukoderma, a non-contagious skin condition that causes white patches on the skin. By the time he died by suicide, she had already learned to live independently. Remarriage was never an option. “Even when a man is willing to marry a widow with children, he still expects her to be physically ‘whole’,” she says.
The men and markets
In Buldhana district, social activist D.S. Lahane runs the Manas Foundation, which supports widows and single women seeking remarriage. Working in a region marked by severe agrarian distress, he has observed that many women who approach the foundation eventually decide against remarriage.
Among those open to a second marriage, almost none are willing to marry a farmer, even if it would be the man’s first marriage. Lahane says this reflects a deepening crisis across agrarian Maharashtra. “Despite owning land and earning a modest income, farmers are no longer considered desirable marriage prospects because of the declining social status of farming and the uncertainty of agricultural incomes,” he says.
Many young farmers, he adds, have registered with the foundation in search of brides. Most initially seek previously unmarried women but, after repeated rejections, become willing to marry widows with children.
However, such marriages often bring their own complexities. Women in the region say those who remarry frequently face intense social and familial pressure to have children in their second marriage, even when they do not wish to. Although a previously unmarried man may marry a widow with children, many still want biological children of their own.
In Chikhali, about 40 km from Buldhana, a farm widow with two children received a marriage proposal from a young man from her village whom she already knew. After they married, he insisted on having a child of his own.
“When I gave birth to a son, both my older children began to experience neglect. My elder son, who was old enough to understand what was happening, eventually left to live with my parents. It is deeply painful for me,” she says, requesting anonymity. “Life has become immensely complicated as I try to navigate the demands of being a wife again. Sometimes I think I should have remained unmarried, but I lacked the courage to live entirely on my own in a society that is always ready to exploit a single woman.”
Neelima says choosing to remain single comes at a price. “You can live alone only if you have courage. It requires tremendous resilience and a strong support system of family and friends. Otherwise, women should remarry,” she says.
By choosing to remain single, Neelima, Vanita, Kusum, Chhabutai and many others have challenged deeply entrenched social norms. They continue to wear kumkum and the mangalsutra, traditional symbols of a married Hindu woman. Relatives and fellow villagers routinely criticise them for doing so, objecting to what they see as a violation of local custom.
“We don’t wear them out of attachment. We wear them as protection against predatory behaviour when we travel outside the village. Men often assume that a single or widowed woman is vulnerable and therefore available. To avoid unwanted attention, we wear the mangalsutra and kumkum, even if reluctantly. People in our villages know our circumstances, but this helps protect us when we travel to nearby markets or government offices,” Neelima explains.
When Neelima and Vanita took their soybean and cotton harvest to the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) at Ralegaon for the first time, they found little encouragement from traders.
“They asked why I had come to the market myself instead of sending the produce through a middleman. I told them I wanted to know the market price of my soybean directly and decide for myself whether to sell it,” Neelima says.
She adds that the sight of women—whether married, widowed or single—selling their produce directly at APMC markets remains unfamiliar and, for many traders and market officials, uncomfortable.
Standing with courage
Yavatmal-based activist Madhuri Khadse, who works with Prerna Gram Vikas Sanstha to help farm widows rebuild their lives, says many widows approach her seeking help to find a husband.
“I ask them why they want to remarry, and the primary reason they give is protection from persistent harassment and unwanted advances,” she says. Young widows, she adds, remain highly vulnerable to exploitation wherever they go, and remarriage is often seen as a means of protection. Simply being perceived as a married woman shields them from much of the abuse they would otherwise face.
Madhuri says that while widow remarriage was traditionally discouraged among some upper-caste farming communities, attitudes have gradually begun to change and marriage proposals are becoming more common.
In a region where thousands of widows are struggling to rebuild their lives, many also face sexual abuse within their own families, a reality documented in several studies, including a 2018 report by the Maharashtra State Commission for Women and Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch, a nationwide alliance of women farmers. While such abuse is often concealed in villages, everyday actions—such as riding pillion with a man, working alongside male labourers or even speaking to male relatives—are enough to trigger gossip.
Markets, village panchayats, government offices and police stations are rarely welcoming spaces for women. Widows who have built resilient and independent lives must summon additional strength simply to navigate everyday life.
“Even mata (mother) lived this way,” says one woman.
The mata they refer to is Sita. Unlike in many other parts of the country, where idols of Ram, Sita, Laxman and Hanuman are worshipped together, the ancient Sita Mata temple at Raveri in Yavatmal district houses only an idol of Sita. She stands alone in the temple and is especially revered by women. Local belief holds that after being abandoned by Ram, Sita found refuge at Sage Valmiki’s ashram in this region. Stripped of her royal status and forced to endure hardship, she rebuilt her life on her own terms and is believed to have spent the rest of her life here.
Sita’s story later became a powerful symbol of the women’s farmers’ movement in Vidarbha. When the late Sharad Joshi, founder of the Shetkari Sanghatana, helped rebuild the temple, he placed Sita’s legacy at the centre of the 2001 women farmers’ convention held at Raveri. He also developed the concept of “Sita Sheti” (Sita farming), which placed women farmers at the forefront of agricultural decision-making, crop experimentation and household food security.
While much of the country celebrates Ram Navami, many women in this region reserve their celebrations for Sita Navami.
(Those in distress can contact Tele MANAS at 14416 to seek help)
radheshyamj@gmail.com
