In south India’s poverty belt, where drought and crop failure are common, adults go to bed hungry on a regular basis so that their children will have enough to eat. As soon as they are old enough to earn in the fields, children are pulled from school.
Girl preparing tufts of neem leaves for the festival. Devadasis prove their devotion to the goddess by walking up the steep mountain flank to the temple wearing only a robe of neem leaves. Before their dedication ceremonies, girls used to be required to run up the hill naked, but the custom has been outlawed. Police keep careful watch, but nude worshipers occasionally slip through the cracks.
Dr. Shantha Mohan
shantha@servantsofthegoddess.com
MORE INFORMATION ON THE FUND WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON.
Devadasi Education Fund
Support a child, save a life.
“Some people look down on me because I don't know whom the fathers of my children are. They think they are better than me, but they're not. We too are human beings.”
-- Durga, sixteen year-old mother of two.
In south India’s poverty belt economic pressures and ancient traditions conspire to perpetuate the devadasi system, a tradition that leads thousands of girls each year into a life of sexual slavery.
Education and economic empowerment have proven to be the most effective tools in fighting poverty and oppression.
The Devadasis Education Fund will provide stipends and scholarships to girls and boys of devadasi communities across South India’s poverty belt where it is estimated that over a quarter million devadasis live. For today’s devadasis, who are for the most part illiterate, the “oldest profession in the world,” is the only profession open to them. While schools do exist, children from the lowest strata of society are pulled from school as soon as they old enough to earn in the fields. Droughts and crop failure bring near starvation to tens of thousands of families on a regular basis. Even in good times, adult members of the family go hungry so the children have enough to eat. Dedicating at least one girl per generation as a devadasi is a form of insurance; she will provide for the family in difficult times. According to a local proverb, “a beautiful girl equals three acres of land.”
“If my child had been a girl, I would have killed her. Really, I would have strangled her at birth. She would have become a devadasi, like me. Her life would have been full of pain and sorrow, like mine; I wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing that happen to my child.”
-- Rukmini, a fifteen-year-old devadasi and mother.
The Devadasi Education Fund will provide stipends for primary and middle school education (up to the age of fourteen) to communities that feed the devadasi system. In order to avoid gender bias, families with school-aged girl-children will be required to show that their daughters are enrolled in the program before they can enroll their sons. Stipend beneficiaries finishing in the top twenty percent of their class in the last year of middle school will earn scholarships to attend high school.
Project Manager: Dr. N. Shantha Mohan
After seven years at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), in Bangalore, Karnataka, Dr. Mohan joined the National Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in 1997 where she is currently Professor of Social Sciences. Over the years, Shantha has headed many poverty-alleviation and gender-sensitization programs. She first encountered devadasis as a student working for a literacy campaign in Northern Karnataka. After exposure to Dalit (Untouchable) communities in remote, rural areas, Dr. Mohan committed to working towards social and economic change.
Catherine Rubin Kermorgant will be the chief fund-raiser for the Devadasi Education Fund.