Giving Daughters Away

India's huge sex industry is fueled not only by poverty and despair, but by centuries old religious traditions trapping women [and others] in prostitution for life

By Laurie Garrett, Staff Correspondent

[The second half of the article mostly discusses eunuch Devadasi. There are far more of them than you would guess from the first half of the article.]

On the auspicious day of the full moon of Magha in 1907, when she was 7 years old, Radha Murali's parents took her to the Saundatti Temple in Karnataka and gave her to the goddess Yellamma. From that day forward Murali lived as a Devadasi - never marrying, working as a prostitute and beggar.

Now 94, Murali is the matriarch of the Hindu Devadasi sect. And she has decided that no more children should be given to the goddess.

"The time has come for Devadasi to end," the frail Murali said, surrounded by other Devadasis in a room in Kolhapur, in western India.

"It happened with me, that my parents gave me to Yellamma, and to the rest of my generation," she said. "But it should not happen to other girls. What I have suffered - I don't want to continue that."

India's growing AIDS epidemic has provided a sense of urgency to Murali's decision. And it is forcing reappraisal of other unique Indian religious and cultural practices that may be promoting the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus.

For centuries, India's lowest castes were - and still are - forced by poverty to view girl children as onerous financial liabilities.

One traditional response, sanctioned by the Hindu religion and ignored by the government, is to give daughters away to the Dasi (worship) of Dev (god), or Devadasi. Though boys are also given to the Devadasi, the vast majority are girls.

Wedded to the deity, the young girl wears a necklace of beads that signifies she can never marry a mortal, and her hair remains forever unwashed and uncut. When she reaches puberty, an auction is held and men bid for the privilege of being the first to touch the virgin child.

The so-called "touching ceremony" today finds two primary groups of bidders: Brothel owners, and men who have syphilis or gonorrhea. It is widely believed among India's lower castes that having sex with a virgin removes sexually transmitted diseases.

"In ancient times, she [the Devadasi initiate] had to look after the Brahmin [priests], clean the temple and serve in various religious functions in praise of Yellamma," said Prof. Sadhana Zadbuke, a social scientist with Kolhapur College who has studied the sect.

But formal temples declined while millions of children were still being offered as Devadasi, she said.

"Today about half the Devadasi are prostitutes. They're basically prostitutes until they are too old, and then they become beggars."

The Bombay-based Indian Health Organization (IHO) estimates that 15 percent of the nation's roughly 10 million prostitutes are Devadasis. In parts of southern Maharashtra and Karnataka states, where the cities of Bombay and Bangalore are located, they represent more than 80 percent of the male and female prostitutes.

Dr. Jeanette Rodrigues has been testing the Devadasi in Pune, some 100 miles to the north of Kolhapur, since 1987. Back then, she said, absolutely none of the Pune-area sect members were infected. By 1991 more than a quarter of them carried the AIDS virus, and studies she has just completed find that 52 percent are now HIV-positive.

"This amounts to religiously sanctioned prostitution, and approved spread of AIDS," said Dr. I.S. Gilada, the IHO head.

Though there are many religions in India, upwards of 84 percent of the population is Hindu, and many traditional Hindu practices have been absorbed into the culture as a whole.

The Hindu religion, one of the most ancient of those practiced today, is not structured as Islam and Christianity are. It has no central leadership, no laws and no system of authority. On the other hand, its impact on people's lives can be far more pervasive; Hinduism is not only a theological system, but also a scientific, philosophical, artistic and musical tradition, and an all-embracing lifestyle.

Among the literate castes, Hinduism is best defined by the 1,200-year-old Mahabharata and its several Sutras, the most famous of which, the Kama Sutra, describes many ways in which couples can achieve enlightenment through sex.

Though the British colonial rulers outlawed the Hindu practice of giving children to the gods in 1934, only four sets of parents have ever been arrested. And millions of youngsters have been led up the steps of their area's temple in the sacred month of Magha (late February or early March) for a ceremony in which the breaking of the glass bangles that adorn their arms signifies their marriage to the deity.

Some of the most important rituals of the Hindu faith, including wedding and funeral blessings, require Devadasi participation. The children of Devadasi prostitutes are considered members of the sect, and it is a measure of the seriousness with which Indians respect the cult that B. Shankaranand, born a Devadasi child, is now the nation's Minister of Health.

Devadasi elder Murali, whose matted unwashed gray hair hangs like a knot from her head, offered a visitor Bhandei and saffron - a sacred smear of temple water and yellow powder on the forehead. A middle-aged member, Nagowa Pathlu, lifted a large wooden gourd and plucked the single string stretched over it. She sang a monotonic tune in praise of Yellamma, while one of the young male Devadasis donned the sacred beggar's headdress - a three-foot-tall figurine of the bejewelled goddess.

The Devadasi tell how their goddess, Yellamma, was able to gain fulfillment - even a baby boy - without a mate. That is the reason they forego marriage in her honor.

Though the Devadasi elders of Kolhapur still worship Yellamma, they say they now refuse the children that parents hope to give to the goddess. And they are trying to build new lives, learning how to conduct legitimate businesses.

In Kolhapur (population 417,000) Zadbuke has identified some 5,000 Devadasi: 3,500 are women, 1,000 are men, and about 500 are Hijras - eunuchs who dress as women and consider themselves to be a third gender.

In Pune (population 2.5 million), Noorie, Lata and Ambica proudly display their Devadasi necklaces. Noorie, 27, and Ambica, 30, are conservatively dressed. But 17-year-old Lata is wearing a tight miniskirt and a sweater that shows off a buxom chest.

All three are prostitutes who offer their customers anal intercourse - all three are Hijras.

Some of the Hijras worship Yellamma and are Devadasi, but they also have their own Hindu goddesses, Baitra Mata or Bachucharamata, and perform special functions in most major Hindu ceremonies.

To be made a eunuch, a boy or young man, drunk on alcohol and surrounded by chanting Hijras and ceremonial drum beaters, is held down and his genitals are removed. What remains is the hole to the urinary tract, the membranes of which are peeled back so that it resembles a tiny vagina.

IHO's Gilada said he has discovered that most Hijras were sexually abused as children, before joining the cult. He believes these abuse episodes - usually at the hands of an older male - form the psychological basis of the boys' decisions to live as females.

"When we were younger, in my case eleven years old, we were allowed to join the Hijras," explained Aruna, a 27-year-old converted Catholic who wore a diaphanous pink sari and a rhinestone stud in her nose. "We stopped wearing the clothes of boys, because we felt more comfortable as girls. Before the castration, when I was ten, I was never attracted to girls. I was attracted to boys."

If the castration is performed at an early age, the young Hijras may develop breasts, like Aruna and Lata, and never have facial or chest hair. "We are very beautiful, as you can see," Aruna said, smiling slyly.

Their customers come from all castes, the Hijras said, and most are married men.

"Some are homosexuals. And some are just curious. They want to see what is different about us," Noorie explained.

Though the Hijras are religiously sanctioned, they are not accorded the modicum of respect Indian society gives other Devadasis. As a result, IHO's Gilada said, the Hijras tend to avoid the medical profession and all government agencies.

In Delhi Dr. Rampal Vashist, deputy director of the city's AIDS Control Cell, has done random surveys of Hijras, finding that about 40 percent have active cases of gonorrhea or syphilis and more than a third test positive for HIV.

"It's a great problem," Vashist said. "This is one group that is very difficult to organize. They aren't concentrated in any one place - they're spread out all over Delhi."

It is estimated that there are 10,000 Hijra prostitutes in Delhi, which has a population of 9 million to 10 million people.

"And we can't organize their clients, because they do not think of themselves as gay," Vashist said. "Most are bisexual and married men who happen to prefer anal sex. And they don't think of sex with a Hijras as homosexual, because they don't think of them as men - they say they are hermaphrodites. So it's not same sex."

Further, Hijras are cheap. In Delhi female prostitutes charge about 50 rupees ($1.50) per sexual act, but Hijras will work for 10 to 20 rupees (30 to 80 cents).

Far to the south of India, in Madras, a newly formed private AIDS group called the Community Action Network has opened a small envelope-making business for the city's deeply alienated and socially isolated Hijras, who refuse to use condoms even when informed of AIDS.

"Unless you can assure a person's bread and butter, you cannot talk to them about AIDS," Community Action Network director K. Pradeep said. "That's been our experience for the last year and a half."

In the state of Karnataka another Hindu practice, Amta, may be playing a role in the spread of AIDS. Under Amta, particularly pretty 10-year-old girls are selected for special training by an older woman in sexual matters. When she reaches puberty, the girl is auctioned off in her village, usually to a married man. The wife must step aside, allowing her husband to enjoy sex with the girl until such time as she decides to move on to another man.

The wealthy Gounder community - also Hindu - believes that the daughter-in-law must provide sex on demand to not only to her husband, but to any male member of the household, or male guests.

Madras Medical College professor and AIDS expert Dr. S.A. Jayakar Paul insists that very few Indian men are monogamous, despite marriage vows and religious rhetoric.

"Polygamy is common among Indian men," Paul said. "In the West you have multiple wives, but sequentially. Here we have more than one simultaneously. It's not frowned upon. And Indian religion doesn't object. An arranged marriage is a business arrangement. But the second, third partners are the romantic, passionate ones. So when you say in AIDS rhetoric, `Stick to one partner' how can you? They already have more than one at a time!"

Such religious, cultural and caste practices "stand in the way of AIDS control," said Dr. P.K.K. Choudhuri, president of the Indian Medical Association. The leader of India's western-style physicians, Choudhuri is deeply concerned about the nation's inability to acknowledge and discuss the real factors responsible for spread of HIV.

"Unless we take up the problem very aggressively right now," the Delhi-based physician said, "we will miss the bus on this epidemic."

Copyright (c) 2002, Newsday, Inc.

Article originally published December 19, 1994

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-a ... dia3.story