Devadasi

A devadasi, literally a servant of the deity, was a woman ritually dedicated, in a ceremony traditionally described as a marriage, to a South Indian Hindu temple's presiding deity, taking on ritual duties that included performing dance and music as part of temple worship. Soneji's study of devadasi memory and modernity documents how this ritual role gave rise to a substantial and rigorous performance tradition, and the classical dance form now known as Bharatanatyam descends directly from repertoire and technique developed and preserved within devadasi lineages over many generations, even though the dance form's public presentation and social respectability have been reshaped considerably since the devadasi institution itself was dismantled.

Devadasi women in some periods and regions also held other temple responsibilities, and the specific privileges, obligations and social standing attached to the role varied significantly by region, temple and period rather than following one single uniform pattern across South India. Some devadasis achieved genuine renown as accomplished performers and were granted land, patronage and considerable social standing within specific temple towns, a level of recognition that complicates any account of the role as uniformly exploitative across every period and region it appears in.

In several regions and periods, the devadasi institution became entangled with sexual exploitation, as some devadasis, particularly in later centuries and under conditions of colonial era economic pressure on temple institutions, were pushed into forms of prostitution loosely dressed in religious language rather than genuine temple service, a development that provoked a sustained nineteenth and twentieth century reform campaign, often called the anti nautch movement, led by both Indian social reformers and colonial authorities. That campaign culminated in formal legal abolition of the institution across Indian states through a series of Devadasi Prohibition Acts, including Madras in 1947 and Karnataka's own prohibition legislation in 1982, and the practice of formal temple dedication is now illegal throughout India.

Soneji's research documents that vestigial and clandestine forms of the practice have nonetheless persisted in pockets of rural poverty in the decades since, a continuation driven far more by economic desperation than by intact religious institution, which is why any honest account of the devadasi role has to include this history of exploitation and abolition rather than presenting it only through its classical dance heritage.