Those who have watched Ramesh Sippy's 1975 Sholay remember Jaya Bachchan's role of a widow as short yet impactful. The character also harkened back to when widows had no voice or individuality, even if sati was abolished by then. Today, the scenario might be different, but it's not always hunky dory.

Widows in India have always suffered from religious inflexibility, patriarchal oppression, and entrenched fear within society. Even after the official abolition of sati—the heinous act of burning widows alive on their husband's funeral pyre—widows in India had little recourse to dignity. They continued to live with shaved heads and were required to wear plain white clothing instead of colourful clothes. They were considered unlucky, inauspicious.

For centuries now, they have been denied any honour whatsoever. They have been cut out of life completely—no remarriage, no desire, and in many cases, no rights. Indian films, even Bollywood films, have perpetuated this negative reality. With rare exceptions, most films would have shown widows as one-dimensional characters with no desires, rarely if ever reminding us they are human beings, as they were still mourning an idea of a dead man.

Let's examine films, characters, and real-life women who broke barriers and took a stand to have a voice.

Bollywood's Widows: Stuck between Misery and Modernity

Mother India (1957): A Widow without the Label
Nargis Dutt’s role as Radha in Mother India is that of a true functional widow. The film begins with her husband leaving her early due to an accident. After that point, Radha is left with the entirety of raising their children while battling poverty. While she is not listed as a widow, socially and emotionally, Radha is experiencing widowhood—fighting against loneliness, larger society's judgements, and simply surviving without a partner. She becomes the ultimate mother figure: she sacrifices her happiness, even kills her son, in the name of morality. The model of the widow-in-good-standing—a saintly widow Bollywood sought to maintain for several years—is stoical, asexual and virtuous forever. Yet, Radha can also be seen as the start of the 'mother-as-martyr' character that later films stole from her for decades.

Sholay (1975) – Jaya Bachchan as Radha
Radha, a widow in mourning, embodies silence. She fits the model of the ‘ideal widow’—modest, subdued, and the ultimate sacrifice, never given the chance to flourish, for Amitabh’s character. She is the epitome of the emotion at that time: ' Widows must kill desire.' Basanti is the opposite of Radha, yapping continuously while having the freedom to roam around without fear (apart from Gabbar, of course!).

Prem Rog (1982) – Padmini Kolhapure as Manorama
Another Raj Kapoor classic, it was one of the earliest films to challenge both widowhood taboos. Manorama is widowed and sexually assaulted, but her narrative offers her an opportunity to find love and remarriage. The film conducts a critique of Brahmanical patriarchy that is willing to condemn women to a widowhood without the option of remarriage or love. At the same time, men are allowed to remarry essentially without consequence.

Khoon Bhari Maang (1988) – Rekha as Aarti
Aarti is widowed after her husband is killed in a car accident, only to be later betrayed and almost killed by her second husband for her wealth. Aarti's transformation from a meek widow to a glamorous, vengeful woman was revolutionary. Be it standing up for herself, her kids, or her horse, she commits to the act without second-guessing. The film glorifies her rage and reinvention, something widows were rarely permitted to do on screen.

Mrityudand (1997) – Shabana Azmi as Ketki
Ketki is not a literal widow at the beginning, but she represents the disintegration of a marriage and her death from within. Shabana Azmi plays a woman oppressed by patriarchy, and her widowhood is a metaphor for countless women abandoned in loveless, domestic, and violent marriages. Her rebellion is radical enough, within a form of her death-like domesticity.

Chandni Bar (2001) – Tabu as Mumtaz
Mumtaz navigates the violent loss of her husband to gang violence, mourning while also being the only parent to their two children in a world that is entirely cruel. Luckily, the film does not romanticise her grief. We witness Mumtaz's trauma and resilience in her efforts to allow no longer widowhood to be defined as a human being. Tabu's skill captures the pain of someone holding strength close to herself while being shredded to bits on the inside. The film's portrayal of Mumtaz does not glorify her suffering but shows how she learns to adapt and ultimately survive.

Chokher Bali (2003) – Aishwarya Rai as Binodini
Adapted from the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, it revolves around the character Binodini, who is both youthful and educated and a widow. Aishwarya plays a woman who has lived by the social, visible norms and rules that govern widows, but she is ultimately teeming with desire and intelligence. The fictitious treatment of widows presents a very strong opposition to Victorian moral codes that subject widows to emotional celibacy. Binodini does not apologise for her sensuality or her need for love and autonomy.

Water (2005) – Seema Biswas as Shakuntala & Lisa Ray as Kalyani
Deepa Mehta's controversial film is arguably the most honest depiction of widowhood. It is set in colonial India, with widows portrayed as being discarded, exploited, and devout. The married widow Shakuntala struggles with her own internalised sense of guilt while Kalyani, the young widow, is sold into impending prostitution. The film is a visual way of protesting against religious hypocrisy.

Dor (2006) – Ayesha Takia as Meera
Meera is a widow living in a conservative Rajasthani household. The transformation from being a subservient, grieving woman to someone who reclaims her autonomy is poignant. Ayesha's unassuming performance accentuates the quiet strength in the journey of widowed Meera. The film disrupts the visual stereotype of a widow, revealingly showing her journey in which she reclaims colour, voice, and freedom.

Ishqiya (2010) – Vidya Balan as Krishna
The film portrays the widow Krishna as a not-so-docile version of what Bollywood may typically reduce to sad tragedy with voyeuristic pleasure. Not only does Vidya Balan give her sensuality and deceitfulness, but Krishna also always masks her grief, and she is not weak. She is intelligent, sensual, and threatening—precisely the type of characteristics that contemporary film or, strictly speaking, Bollywood has never assigned to a widow.

Rajneeti (2010) – Katrina Kaif as Indu
Indu becomes a political widow in a patriarchal world. The fragment of her underdeveloped character arc suggests that widows are often politicised as symbols. Her mental grief is never thoroughly investigated, but she is given political power, which is a remarkable element in Bollywood.

Qarib Qarib Single (2017) – Parvathy Thiruvothu as Jaya
Qarib Qarib Single is a light comedic film, wherein Jaya is a widow who decides to start dating again as a 30-something woman. Jaya's narrative does not indulge in melancholy but is a narrative of romance-infused rediscovery. The film allows her character to laugh, flirt and love again—in ways not articulated in preceding narratives.

Is Love Enough? Sir (2018) - Tillotama Shome as Ratna
Tillotama Shome's Ratna is a powerful, subtly dignified portrayal of resilience and suppressed dreams. A 19‑year‑old widow has moved from her village to Mumbai to support her young sister’s education and pursue her goal of studying fashion design. Ratna works in a live‑in domestic capacity for the wealthy Ashwin and delves into something intimate about her presence in the home while simultaneously remaining invisible.

Ratna firmly maintains her boundaries; she speaks softly, but stands tall in self‑respect. She quietly rebels against confining customs, or maybe most importantly, to see colourful glass bangles on the street level in the city, yet told us that 'life doesn't end' with being a widow. Shome contributes weight to Ratna through riding her level gaze well, small gestures, and a sustained poise that portrays Ratna's complexity, agency and humanity as a maid, a dreamer, and a woman who takes up space and will not be written out.

The Last Colour (2019) – Neena Gupta as Noor
Reflecting the darkness of Varanasi, where widows are still treated as pariahs, Noor is a widow banned from colour and happiness. While Neena Gupta’s performance has the softness of isolation, her character feels forgotten as an element of humanity. The film illuminates that for many women, the termination of marriage resulted in disappearance in those times.

Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi (2019) – Redefining Widowhood with a Sword
Kangana Ranaut's portrayal of Rani Lakshmi Bai, a real-life widow who defied every societal norm of her time, is a fitting role for her. When Rani's husband dies, it was expected of her—a commonplace expectation for widows of that time—to renounce worldly pursuits and retire to Kashi. Instead, she ascended to the throne of Jhansi. Manikarnika reflects her defiance of prescribed behaviour, expecting her defiance to remain quiet against the defiant armies of the British colonisers.

Instead of mourning her husband's death, Manikarnika led her armies, planned battles and revolutions, marching women of every creed into battle, building her army in the middle of a war. In a time when widowhood meant being obscured from public view, Manikarnika became queen, mother, and warrior. The film lauds her actions, but also hints at continued critique of the institutions and structures that sought to pitifully erase widows, where here was a widow who did not carry prayer beads, who wielded a sword, who was even immortal in this doing.

Thappad (2020) – Dia Mirza as Shivani
While Shivani may not have been an ideal widow, she is a single mother, raising her child long after her husband’s death. Still, she is emotionally whole, nurturing, and strong. We do not see her as a woman to pity in the way widows are depicted, but as a woman who processes the past quietly and with dignity. She also stands firmly with Amrita, showcasing what women can achieve when they have each other's backs.

Pagglait (2021) – Sanya Malhotra as Sandhya
A sigh of relief, Sandhya's character stands out because she is a young widow who does not mourn traditionally; instead, she is confused about whether she should feel sad. The narrative unfolds questions about attachment, identity, emotional numbness and self-discovery in becoming oneself. Sandhya does not have a man to reframe her self-discovery. In a scene, her mother-in-law asks Sandhya and her parents for beverages, and she quickly blurts, "Amma, hum chai nahi piyenge. Ek pepsi mangwa dijiye." One can make out how detached she was.

Real-Life Widows Who Redefined the Narrative
While Bollywood often limits widows to paths of tragedy and sacrifice, many real-life women have etch-a-sketched and rewritten that narrative. These women took their losses in stride, refusing to let loss determine their identity, and they lived on with a fantastic sense of resilience, strength, clarity, and independence. Through public candour or professional pursuits, they demonstrated that widowhood is less the ending of a woman’s story than the beginning of a new one.

Krishna Kapoor
Krishna Raj Kapoor, who was married to legendary filmmaker Raj Kapoor, displayed an extraordinary sense of grace, courage, and quiet authority during her 72 years of marriage. Krishna was born to a cultured family and married Raj Kapoor at the young age of 16. While her husband was busy creating the golden age of Indian cinema, Krishna was the solid foundation behind the scenes, raising five children, managing an enormous household, and nurturing the Kapoor legacy. Her son Rishi referred to Krishna as "the anchor of the family," who was responsible for raising the kids and overseeing their education while keeping the sprawling Kapoor family together.

Industry stalwarts such as Amitabh Bachchan referred to Krishna as a symbol of "grace and dignity" with perfect etiquette and care. Although primarily considered the "woman-in-white" look, she was not blind and walked out of the family home when Raj Kapoor was caught flirting, a demonstration of her self-respect. As the grand matriarch of Bollywood’s first family, Krishna Raj Kapoor quietly shaped domestic harmony and cinematic heritage, epitomising resilience and elegance.

Leena Chandavarkar
Leena Chandavarkar was first married to Siddharth Bandodkar, who died, and then married music legend Kishore Kumar, who also died a few years later. Rather than bowing to tragedy, she raised their son, Sumeet Ganguly and his musical legacy. Leena was not a recluse. She remained engaged in public life, judging reality shows and writing about her life. In a culture that often erases widows, Leena was unapologetic about love, loss, and survival, thus providing a real-life counter to the Bollywood 'suffering widow' trope. Her refusal to submit is representative of the hundreds and thousands of Indian women who try to piece their lives back together after a tragic heartache.

Mandira Bedi
Mandira Bedi broke all stereotypes, even before she was widowed. A fitness icon, anchor, and actress, Mandira lost her husband, Raj Kaushal, in 2021. The media anticipated silence and mourning; instead, Mandira returned to work, cared for her children, and continues to fight for women's liberty. She even posted video content of herself working out and on self-love just after her loss, demonstrating that grief and strength are not mutually exclusive. While films will place widows within a white sari and the confines of weddings and family resumption, Mandira embraced colour and courage, precisely the representation India needs to see more of.

Madhu Chopra
Priyanka Chopra’s mother, Dr. Madhu Chopra, lost her husband, army doctor Ashok Chopra, in 2013. However, she did not fade into the background. Instead, she helped manage Priyanka's career, established her aesthetic clinic, participated in media interviews, and publicly appeared at events. Madhu represents what it means to be a modern Indian widow - grieving, but not defeated. She has become a figure of maternal strength and pride, whose example reconceives widowhood as a stage of autonomy instead of finality. On film, widows languish in mourning. Madhu Chopra lives in motion.

Rekha
Rekha's tale is filled with intrigue, glamour and social scrutiny. After her husband Mukesh Aggarwal's suicide, Rekha was called a widow, a vamp, and so on. But she didn't cave in; she simply controlled the narrative. She was widowed in the public eye, but she didn't back away; she became an enigma. She continued to act whilst dressing in bridal wear at functions, contrary to how one was supposed to act as a widow. She lived with dignity, power, and choice, which is uncommon with Bollywood widows on-screen.

The Takeaway

For decades, Bollywood has reduced widows to emotionless creatures clad in white. They are either saints or sinners, but rarely recognised as complete human beings. This pattern is changing. With films like Pagglait, Dor, and Water, we see the shift from depictions of widows with little more than sorrow to portraits of complex widows with wants, smiles, and choices.

Despite this progress, the distance between reel and real widows is long. Real-life widows like Mandira Bedi, Leena Chandavarkar, Rekha, and Madhu Chopra teach us that even through loss, there is life. Losing a partner doesn't strip a woman's identity, beauty, or ambitions away. It redefines them. There is a lesson for Bollywood in this regard.

With this knowledge, let's move beyond the white saree and allow widows on-screen the respect they have already shown us off-screen.