Essay about Devadasi in Kannada
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Commonly known as ‘dancing girls’ or ‘temple girls’ is a system that has come in to existence for more than thousand years. When the great tamil kings belonging to the erstwhile Chola, Chera and Pandya Kings built huge temples for their gods, they felt that there is a need to maintain these temples in a proper way and thus need full time devotees to take care of the diety and the temple premises. One other angle given to constructing Huge temples are to protect the people from flood, cyclone or any other natural disaster. In other words, temples are meant to be shelter for the people of that area from natural disasters. Hence they appointed girls to maintain these temples. The main function of these girls are to sing and performing dances and taking care of the diety. They are considered to be the ‘wives’ of the ‘gods’ in the temple in which they are appointed. They are not allowed to marry any mortal man during their life time. These girls are held in High esteem as they are considered to be close confident of the god. The dance which they perform is famously known as ‘Barathanatyam’ the most famous dance form of South India.
This practice of dedicating girls to deities are commonly known as ‘Devadasi System’ and the girls thus dedicated are known as ‘Devadasi’ which is a Sanskrit word or ‘Thevaradiyar’ which is a Tamil word that literally means ‘female slaves of the god’. As mentioned above these ‘Devadasi’ are expected to be experts in Music and Dance. As years passed ‘their service shifted from gods to earthly gods and lords’ . They are forced to do service not only to the deities, but also to the landlords and rich devotees of the deities. In short, they started living the life of a prostitute with religious sanction and customary backing. Initially this system was prevalent only among the upper caste Hindus particularly of the Brahmin community .
The British colonization of India brought major change in the religious and cultural fabric of India. The upper caste ‘Brahmins’ occupied major positions in British rule and were able to recognize the dance performed by ‘Devadasi’ as ‘Bharatanatyam’ and were able to give a cultural supremacy for this form of dance, thus bringing out devadasis’s to main stream of life.
However, the ‘Brahminical Hindu Religion’ which is known for its Caste imbalances and discrimination against the lower caste sowed the seeds of the system into economically, politically and socially disadvantaged lower caste Dalit Hindus. This system started spreading its tentacles to other parts of the country in different forms and names such as Bogams in Andhra Pradesh, Jogatis or Basavis in Karnataka, Thevaradiyar in Tamil Nadu, Muralis in Maharashtra, Maharis in Kerala.
Dalits dedicated their girls to the Diety mainly because of two reasons one is because of the superstitious belief that it will bring glory to their family and their village, the other one is the economical reason that it is very difficult for the parents to marry of their daughter because of the prevalent ‘dowry’ system and also if they dedicate the girl to the Diety, their family will be taken care of by the village rich man to whom the girl do the sexual favours in the name of the ‘Diety’. Over a period of time, this practice has represented a clear violation of Human Rights with these ‘Dalit Devadasis’ were dedicated with a hidden object of performing sexual favours to initially upper caste Hindus and then they become a public property forcing them to enter prostitution. They are also not allowed to marry any man of their choice and often fell a prey into the hands of Broker agents representing brothels from Mumbai and other areas.