Recasting The Devadasi- Patterns of Sacred Prostitution in Colonial South India

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Women are no more hidden in the history of India. The work of a fairly large number of feminist historians have brought them to the centre stage and have thus succeeded in recovering their voice. To begin with the focus of enquiry was mainly on the efforts undertaken by the social reformers to 'emancipate' women from the discriminatory, oppressive and inhuman conditions to which they were subjected in a society governed by feudal ethos. Therefore, much of the early interest in women's history revolved around the movement against Sati, infanticide, child marriage and such other practices. Not long before the interest marked a major shift to incorporate the study of the evolution of social and political consciousness among women and thus to record how they contributed to the movements which shaped the society. Thus the participation of women in social reform movement and the anti- colonial struggle attracted much scholarly attention. Understand- ably they were all primarily concerned with the political and social endangerments of the middle class women. In most of these studies the underprivileged women hardly figured. A change occurred only when the marginalized within women - those who are really hidden from history- became subjects of study and analysis. Priyadarshini Vijayaisri's research into the world of the Devadasi.

is a part of this welcome departure in Indian historiography. This development in Indian historiography raises an important theoretical-analytical question. To what extent 'women' can be used as an analytical category to interrogate the modes of oppression and exploitation they are forced to confront and suffer? All women are subjected to common discrimination and oppression because of gender. The nature of oppression, however, is not uniformly the same among all sections of women. The working of the patriarchy has different connotations for different sections of women.

This work is about the patterns of sacred prostitution in south India, during the colonial period, with special focus on the Kannada and the Telugu speaking regions. An attempt has been made to locate various manifestations of this custom in a culturally pluralistic context. The Kannada speaking regions that come under the purview of the study are the Mysore State and the erstwhile Maratha Country that today comprise of the northern districts of Karnataka. The Telugu speaking regions under study are the Hyderabad state and the Telugu speaking regions of the erstwhile Madras presidency. These regions were specifically chosen as they shared a history of origin and development of this tradition. So also, what makes these regions distinct from other parts of the country is that, the multiple patterns manifested predominantly in these regions, providing ample scope for hypothetical as well as theoretical deductions.

The book seeks to explore certain hitherto unexamined issues in a historical and holistic perspective. In seeking to do so, a need to conjure the evolution and development of the custom of sacred prostitution was felt, which, other wise is not the prime concern of a student of modern history. The imperative need for this was felt as the developments in the colonial period had to be situated on an appropriate premise.

This study is prone to inconsistencies, given the scope and framework within which the issue has been analyzed. Given the widespread prevalence of the custom, a number of lacunae are likely to emerge in deconstructing the monolithic identity of the sacred prostitute. However, treading a historically unchartered past, it only seeks to explore some of the most conspicuous yet neglected dimensions of the custom. This attempt only calls for more work in the area where much continues to be unexplored and misunderstood.

The custom of Sacred Prostitution continues to evoke a great deal of curiosity and academic intervention. The application of the term 'sacred prostitution' is to emphasize the sexual identity of the temple woman as an ideal cast by Hindu religion. This deliberate choice could, perhaps, be construed as an unnecessary qualification of the terminology or an ideal forced by an erroneous colonial perspective of a native custom. In this context, it needs to be taken into cognizance that instead of the legitimate term 'Devadasi in the abundant literary and epigraphic sources of the ancient and medieval period, these women were referred to as Sule, Sani, Bhogam and Patra et. al. which in Kannada and Telugu imply a prostitute. So also, these terms recur consistently since the earliest evidence of this custom in both the regions. Taking cognizance of this archetypal identity and the need to retain its intrinsic meaning the term in its translated version, was preferred instead of a blanket term like Devadasi that has now become the most popular academic terminology. It was only during the colonial period that the sanskritised term Devadasi gained popular currency and was deployed by the intelligentsia in their conscious reformist endeavour at recasting the temple prostitute in a critical historical context. The sacred prostitute embodies the religious belief of sex as symbolic of spiritual union and sexual intercourse as the means of attaining salvation.