Untouchable Temple Prostitutes of Andhra Prades

India is the world’s largest democracy, a nuclear power and at the forefront of grand social changes, but  some of the cultures and customs practiced here, in my view require a revolutionary face-lift. The young people of India will be judged very harshly by posterity if they cannot turn tables on some of the cultural practices that  take away human dignity. This is not to say, obsolete and uncouth cultures don’t exist in my part of the world. Ugandans right now are battling with the demonic culture of child sacrifice. Men seeking riches willingly give their children to be slaughtered by witches on the promise of lots of money. Some actually go on to be rich. Others pay money to poor strong un-employed men to abduct young kids from distant lands for sacrifice and they rest at nothing until a child is killed and heads, tongues and other parts removed for fetish purposes. These cultures definitely violate children’s rights and deny them their normal and happy existence.

The Untouchable Temple Prostitutes

 There are many social issues of untouchability in India but there is none that is as humbling as the untouchable whores. In Andhra Prades indecent culture of untouchable whores targets the girl child born with a wild mane of hair matted in dreadlocks. Any girl with this kind of hair is automatically dedicated to the goddess of Ellammal and condemned into sexual slavery as Jogini woman.

Role of the Temple Prostitutes (Jogini women)

Society in this part of the world constructed the role of the Jogini women to be performed exclusively by the  Dalits. As sex slaves, they are required by the goddess of Ellammal to have sex with any man that wants them for sexual pleasure. They are also supposed to offer free sex to whoever wants and  no man is mandated to take responsibility for the children they bear. A Dalit will live her life without being permitted to marry. Parents who are asked to dedicate their children to the goddess of  Ellammal  present their children willingly believing that goddess Ellammal gives them divine protection and any disobedience of the sign of the goddess attracts divine punishments.

How the Temple Prostitutes are chosen

A careful analysis of how a girl is  chosen for dedication to  the goddess of Ellammal however, reveals that it is more driven by economic imperatives than religion. In the case of a little girl Yellamma (pictured above) who was dedicated to be a Jogini in 2000, she  was the daughter of a very poor day laborer who could barely feed sher only daughter. The wife had earlier died of TB and he works in people’s fields and gets paid only in rice. It is believed that her father’s hopeless economic condition made him a target of the religious priests to force him to dedicate his only beautiful daughter to the goddess of Ellammal as a temple prostitute. Like many gross injustices that have been meted out against Indian women since the colonial times, the use of temple prostitutes or th Jogini women was outlawed in 1984 but very little enforcement has been done by  the Indian authorities. The Rural communities continue to practice this vile tradition of the untouchable whores, with the majority of them bonded to their work through the fear of divine punishments.

Way forward

With intervention by civil society, it has been  proved that it is possible to change this culture and many ex Jogini women have been rescued from their lives of misery and sexual servitude without any serious divine punishments. Some of the ex-temple prostitutes have been married and it is hoped that with sustained awareness raising and government support, obnoxious customs such as the untouchable whores can still be dismantled from the areas where they are still being practised.