Who to blame for heinous practices such as this - Devadasi? Their poor families who cannot feed despite back-breaking work all day or the system created such practices with a tag of honor and in the name of culture? Some argue these poor have no right to have children when they cannot feed them, very convincing and intelligent argument for those who do not bother to understand the other side of the fence. Whatever the reason, the sufferers are the children who came to this world with no fault of theirs. They grew up and continue the same cycle however unpleasant their childhood was. Who are the victims and who are the beneficiaries? Why to promote this kind of practices in the name of culture and religion? Hope, some drastic and concrete steps will be taken by the governments of this modern era to decimate these practices with heart and soul putting into it. Benjamin http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/gods_women_or_god-forsaken.php God's women or god-forsaken? Vasanthi Hariprakash , Sunday August 23, 2009, Raichur Huligamma laughs when I tell her that she should have been a 'fillim heroine'. The Narayanpet maroon sari with a green border drapes well around her head, the big red bindi standing out on her dusky forehead. The dozens of green bangles cling-clang on her arms as she adjusts the chains of black beads and gold around her slender neck. She proudly shows off her `muthu' to me - a long chain of white beads that has over four flat silver coins strewn with the images of female deities and strangely, an icon of Hanuman. Her eyes speak a thousand things in a minute. And when she picks up her smaller-than-a-tanpura two-stringed instrument and starts singing, its like you can hear her soul speak.
I don't wish to tell you that Huligamma is a devadasi. For, it will colour the way you visualize this feisty woman. Particularly, if you are someone fed on Hindi cinema `classics' for whom the devadasi is a richly clad bejeweled woman waited upon at her home; while she waits for her love. Huligamma is a Dalit, living poor at Kurudi village in one of Karnataka's most backward districts, Raichur. She looks like she is in her fifties, but she doesn't remember how old she is. What she clearly remembers is that she was 8 when her father ordained her to be a devadasi. Devoted to the Gods. If you ask me: `Dedicated to humans' as I will tell you a little later. When I set out from Bangalore to Gulbarga and Raichur, meeting Devadasis or working on a feature on their lives was nowhere on my radar. It was red gram that took me on this journey to the Tur Bowl of Karnataka; why the pulse crop price had shot up is what I had wanted to find out & report on. But when I arrived at Raichur, I saw this group of women braving a non-stop strike outside the Deputy Commissioner's office at Raichur, demanding food security and fixing of their ration card anomalies. That's when I decided to stop to take a look at their lives. And that is what took me to Huligamma's village, 20 km further away from Raichur. Meeting her was a revelation. A complete reversal of what I had heard about devadasis. No, they are not glorified prostitutes who are common property of the village. In fact, most of them stay committed to a single partner all their life. No, not all of them are artists or dancers either. Of the two types broadly classified into `Ranga devadasis' & 'Anga devadasis', only the former would be dedicated to the arts & temples. Huligamma ran away to near the village well when she learnt of her father's plans. How difficult was it for a family to drag back home a wiry eight-year-old? "I told him .. throw me into this well, give me away in marriage or give me up for adoption if we are so poor." But Huligamma had to pay the price for being the first-born in a family of only-girls. When there are no sons who will look after them in their old age, the parents are allowed to take shelter with their daughter without the society frowning upon them. Because she is a Devadasi. The Daughter that shall maintain the family, fund the family functions with the price she gets from the man who will `claim' her, all with social sanction. "Vasanth'avva" she pulls my hand affectionately to squat me down facing her in her mud hut.. "How nice it would have been isn't it if I too had `made' a husband for myself - idhenidhu (`whats this' in Kannada)? Living on leftovers.. No matter how `correct' we are, (she pauses, staring long at me), `devadaaasi' they taunt us. And married women.. no matter whatever they do behind their doors.. there is a screen to protect them (she gestures with her hand to indicate `shut'). Am I right?" Like Huligamma, Yellamma too was `correct' - she was claimed by a Muslim partner and it is with him that she has been all along. She bore his children. Three sons. Yellamma is much younger, in her thirties, beautiful in a rustic way, fair for her caste, strong for her slender frame. "They ask me - avva, why don't we have a father like everyone else? Who is our father? I show them my man, but since he comes once in a while, and he goes .. it is tough for them to relate to this man as their father. They think maybe their avva is bad.." With the Devadasi system officially abolished in the eighties, you would think life is a better deal for them. The Karnataka government too has schemes that `rehabilitate' Devadasis - 400 rupees a month as pension to a woman who is over 45 years old, home loans and subsidies for those younger, upto 20,000 rupees for a Devadasi who remarries. Noble intentions. But ask Mansiah, prominent Dalit activist of Raichur who has been involved in the Devadasi movement since the eighties: "The govt schemes only create naqli devadasis madam. People who manage to get fake certificates from the taluka office. Recently in the Chief Minister's Devadasi Sammelana, we saw for ourselves many middle class upper caste married women coming forward calling themselves Devadasis and taking the money given for Devadasi Remarriage." "Very often, the remarriage is nothing but a deal that lasts less than a month," continues Abhay, a deeply-committed but painfully shy activist, who has founded a women's strong collective called `Navajeevana Mahila Okkuta' in Raichur. "The man and the woman split the money and the marriage is off." The real Devadasis, most of who subsist as coolies or agricultural labourers, have no money to grease the palms of the government officials to get their own dole. "They ask us for 500 rupees, 1000 rupees to release pensions and money for home loans," says Yellamma, "Where do we get that kind of money from - we earn 30 rupees per day from farm work." Their children are their constant worry; though most of the Devadasis stay `faithful' to their man, there are no property rights, no secure future for the children they beget. "Sometimes I wish ... if only my children were born to someone else," she looks at me sitting next to her on a mound, "they would have a father whose name they could proudly write in their school records; their father would buy them clothes, books, bring them up..". >From where we are, I watch children with torn clothes and loud screams >surrounding my cameraperson colleague. Just one cemented house stands out in >the village, just one double-storeyed. Cattle look all bones, the children no >better. Kurudi is brown from dust and dry air that the district is notorious >for. Only Huligamma who I watch going around houses seeking alms as a Jogini >would, puts a mist in my eye with her divine Devadasi song. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ An educated man without character and humility was more dangerous than a beast. If his education was detrimental to the welfare of poor, he was a curse to society. -Babasaheb Dr B R Ambedkar Please visit www.friendsforeducation.org or www.ambedkarscholarship.org
