“Discrimination against widows has existed for centuries,” India’s solicitor general Mr Tushar Mehta told dinner guests at the House of Lords, adding that “as the most populous country, the largest democracy and the fastest-growing economy in the world, India has an important part to play in finding solutions to challenges and creating a sustainable world for everyone.Mr Mehta was speaking by live video link from Delhi, addressing a banquet hosted by Crossbench Peer Lord Raj Loomba CBE to commemorate International Widows Day, which was simultaneously marked with eleven Loomba Foundation-coordinated events in locations throughout India, as well as by other organisations in UN member states throughout the world.“This is a deep-rooted problem that cannot be solved by the Government alone,” Mr Mehta said. “It requires a cultural change and I am pleased that it is a charity with Indian roots, the Loomba Foundation, that has led the campaign for widows over the last 25 years and persuaded the United Nations to adopt International Widows Day as its own initiative.”
Former UK First Lady, Lady Cherie Blair, CBE, KC, president of the Loomba Foundation, recounted how Lord Loomba “came up with the idea of an annual, global, day of action when we came to realise that the plight of widows is by no means confined to India but is prevalent all over the world, built into deep-rooted traditions and customs that are hard to shake even with national legislation.” She said that following its adoption by the United Nations in 2011 after a five-year campaign, “the issue is no longer invisible, and slowly but surely the dial is beginning to shift,” adding that “we all have our part to play in completing that task.”
The banquet was also addressed by G P Hinduja, chairman of the Hinduja Group, and by the Indian High Commissioner to the UK, HE Vikram Doraiswami.
In his vote of thanks, Loomba Foundation founder and chairman/trustee Lord Raj Loomba CBE noted that the reason International Widows Day had been established was that “we wanted to achieve more than we could alone, and that we can only do through awareness.” He noted that “when we got the unanimous support of the United Nations General Assembly in 2010 it was the culmination of a campaign, but as ever, when we reached the mountain top, it showed the path ahead and the even higher peaks that must be scaled.”
“Young women, Lord Loomba pointed out, “are still routinely blamed for the death of their husbands, deprived of their inheritance and left unable to fend for themselves or their children. The customs and rituals around widowhood in many countries are dehumanising and degrading. Our aim is not just to help widows and their children, but to eradicate discrimination from the world. The World Widows Report published by the Loomba Foundation in 2016 showed that there are still a quarter of a billion widows of whom 38 million live below the poverty line with their dependent children.”
