Devadasis are a taboo subject in India. For centuries they played a special role in Hindu temples rituals, but since being banned in 1947, much of their history and art have been forgotten. 

“In the Western mind, ‘devadasi’ is just a monolithic term for prostitute,” says Saskia Kersenboom. “They were really professional artists and ritual specialists. The core of their dance was this professionality, and not what people have made out of it.“

Kersenboom is a long-time student of devadasi dance and a professor at the University of Amsterdam. She says that although some devadasis were sex workers or the lovers of prominent men, their most important role was to ward off evil eye and entertain people in temples and royal courts. 

Outlawed
“The Hindu Renaissance, the new India, really tried to get rid of the phenomenon of the devadasis,” Kersenboom says. When they were outlawed from their inherited roles, most former devadasis were driven to the margins of society. 

Banning the devadasi tradition has not stopped girls from being ritually married to a god. Thousands of women in southern India still work in the sex trade under the devadasi banner.

You can hear a South Asia Wired radio version of this story here.

A sacred tradition, forgotten
Kersenboom says the laws only suffocated the devadasis' unique arts. Much of the dance and temple rituals have been forgotten, or reinvented in “bourgeois” baratanatyam. “Nowadays [the dance is] no longer to be seen. There are only very few performers.”

Kersenboom’s teacher bequeathed to her a dance manuscript handwritten by her teacher’s grandmother. Last year Kersenboom carried that to India with the hope of reviving the disappearing dance. With the support of a Dutch organisation called Theatre Embassy, she found a pair of elderly musicians who had once accompanied devadasi performers. Together, they reset a few dances.

“These ritual musicians are performing a music that has a time depth of about two or three hundred years.” Kersenboom says. “They knew when these dances were performed, where they were performed. That is rare nowadays.”

Conditionally warm reception

Kersenboom says that despite the deep taboo about devadasis, the musicians were eager to recreate the dances. Their two recent performances in southern India were well received.

“We even got invitations to go to other temples and do similar things. That was encouraging, but at the same time, it is a matter of degree. If I present it in an isolated occasion, it’s very good.

But if it means that I would like to resuscitate devadasi arts, then it becomes obnoxious, ‘Why does a foreigner want to mess up our history? We don’t want to remember this so why don’t you shut up.’ The stigma is so deep that even today it cannot be overcome.”

Taboo
While she was in India, Kersenboom says, she met many people who did not want to acknowledge their devadasi roots. Others were willing to work with her, as long as the word ‘devadasi’ was never used.

She says she saw no real interest in a revival of devadasi arts. “India so much rejects this tradition, that if you try to reimplement that, nobody in the community will come forward to study it.”

Possibilities for preservation
But Kersenboom has not given up entirely. Working with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, she plans to publish the dance manuscript from her teacher. For posterity, they are also planning to produce a video of her dancing with the temple musicians.

Kersenboom says, because the musicians were not kicked out of the temples, there might still be a chance to preserve the music of the devadasis. “This is an existing community, with very tangible problems. It is also very clear that this is important national heritage that has to be safeguarded.”

Cultural heritage
There are fewer musicians than there used to be, and low wages are driving people to turn away from their heritage to find better paying work. Over the next three years Kersenboom will work with the national arts centre to lay the groundwork for having the music designated as ‘intangible cultural heritage’ by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. That might give the musicians more leverage in their fight for living wages, which would help to preserve the music. 

As for the dance, Kersenboom has a few dedicated students – some from India, some from the United States – to whom she will continue to teach the disappearing dance of the devadasis.