Random Variable

On Sunday, I went to watch Water at the Curzon Soho. Directed by Deepa Mehta, Water depicts the oppression of widows in Hindhu society in the late thirties, and the attempts of a follower of Ghandhi to liberate at least one widow from a so-called refuge.
In these refuges, girls as young as seven may be dumped because their betrothed husbands have died where they live in practical life imprisonment, and perhaps used as prostitutes by the local Brahmin.
What struck me is that I’ve actually unwittingly been to one of these places in the Tibetan Plateau, China (Xiahe to be exact). However, the place was described to us as a convent, as if the women had opted to be there, perhaps to prevent us as foreigners, from being filled with horror at this inhumane treatment of women. I hope I am mistaken in this realisation.
However, this is not the first time I’ve seen water being a strong component of a film about religious extremism, the previous one, being The Clay Bird about madressas in Bangladesh in the 1960s. Can anyone shed any light?
When one of the widows asks Nanrayan, the male protaganist about why widows must live in such conditions, he says, “It’s one less mouth to feed, one less bed to keep, one more corner to use. It’s a case of money disguised by religion.” That sentence probably sums a lot about fundamentalism and extremism - that they’re usually the result of social deprivation.