Parliamentarian Hema Malini’s comments on migrant widows in Vrindavan are in extremely poor taste.
In one swoop she has denigrated a whole set of people whose greatest ‘misfortune’ in life is that they lost their husbands and, consequently, their economic independence and their relevance at the homes of their offspring.
Such prejudices, like stating her opposition to widows from Bengal, Bihar and Odisha coming to Vrindavan, reveals a mindset even her conservative upper middle class background could not have helped shape.
In saying “Vrindavan widows have a bank balance, good income, nice beds, but they beg out of habit,” she has not lived up either to her personal liberty in being able to seek a career in Hindi films in Mumbai or her liberal outlook in romancing a fellow star from Punjab, far from her home in Tamil Nadu.
She owed it to her party and herself to keep off such a controversy in which she showed an attitude that is almost xenophobic.
Vrindavan is in her Mathura constituency in UP. It is home to many destitute women who live in conditions that are terrible, rather than luxurious, as the former actor tried to project.
Politicians may be prone to a foot-in-the-mouth predilection.
But, being far from the stereotypical dumb bimbos of filmdom, Hema Malini betrays an ignorance of the democratic principles of her own country in which people can travel from state to state without hindrance.
Such insensitivity towards widows, who live their lives in poverty, was least expected from a woman.
