Bangladesh 'Tiger Widows': Ostracised, Blamed for Husbands Death, Superstition; Climate Crisis
- ‘Husband eaters’: the double loss of Bangladesh’s ostracised tiger widows, The Guardian, April 30, 2024. - Edited.
- After the trauma of losing their spouse and breadwinner to the Sundarbans’ great predator, women are cast out by their superstitious communities. But they are coming together to rebuild their lives
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Nobody saw exactly what happened in the minutes leading up to Aziz Murad’s death. But when his friends got back to the boat where they had left him, they found only his severed hand in the fishing net he was untying. Conflict between people and wildlife is intensifying across the planet as habitat loss, growing populations and the climate crisis fuel competition for fertile, habitable land. In the Sundarbans, on the southern coast of Bangladesh, an estimated 300 people and 46 tigers have been killed in human-tiger conflict since 2000.
Over the next few decades, researchers predict that climate change and rising sea levels mean no suitable tiger habitat will be left in the Sundarbans by 2070.
According to Bangladesh’s last census, 114 tigers are estimated to remain; down from 440 in 2004. But it is not only tigers that face an existential threat. More than 3.5 million people live on the edge of the Sundarbans, eking out an existence by fishing, collecting honey or wood, and subsistence farming. More than 40% of households are below the poverty line, but the climate emergency has made life here even harder. As sea levels rise, islands disappear and increasing water salinity threatens the health of mangrove forests and the quality of soil and crops. Disruptions to fish populations also affect communities.
As a result, desperate villagers are often left with little choice but to venture deeper into the forest, making them more vulnerable to tiger attacks.
The intensive exploitation of the forest is also forcing tigers to leave the forest in search of food, targeting livestock and humans. The govt. is constructing a 40-mile fence to keep tigers and people out of each other’s territories and has set up 49 tiger-response teams in an effort to lessen the conflict. But they could not save Aziz Murad. Murad’s widow, Shuna Banu, 43, recounts how her life changed that fateful day. “Though tiger attacks are common in this area, nothing prepared me for what would come next.” The attack in 2020 did not just leave Banu without a husband; it turned her into an outcast overnight.
In a superstitious society where being a “tiger widow” carries its own stigma, she was considered cursed and ultimately blamed for her husband’s death.
She joined hundreds of other women living in the region referred to as swami khejos - “husband eaters”. Banu’s in-laws decided she could no longer stay with them in case she brought bad luck, so she moved back in with her parents. She says tiger widows like her are prevented from undertaking traditional occupations. Why should we have to suffer because of old folklore that makes witches out of widows? Jamiroon Bibi. “Not only did I lose my husband, I lost my right to a dignified life,” she says. Confined to her parents’ small mud hut and unable to work, Banu fell further into poverty...
More, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/30/husband-eaters-bangladesh-sunderbans-ostracised-tiger-widows-superstition-conservation
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