HIV/AIDS and religious prostitution

HIV/AIDS and religious prostitution

“Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases” is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. In India, the HIV epidemic shows a declining trend from 2.73 million in 2002 to 2.27 million of 1160 million population in 2008, according to the UNAIDS India-2010 Country Progress Report. http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2010/india_2010_country_progress_report_en.pdf
The primary drivers of the HIV epidemic in India are unprotected paid sex/commercial sex work, unprotected anal sex between men, and IDU. It is noted that long-distance truckers and single male migrants form a significant clientele of sex workers. By state, Maharashtra recorded the highest HIV prevalence in 2007.
Most of sex workers did not take up that profession by choice but out of poverty. This poverty is the cause of the continuation of the devadasi system (religious sex workers) especially in southern part of India. The devadasi system of dedicating children to temples goes back to around the 4th BC in which time religious prostitution was a common factor in many civilizations. During the medieval period devadsis were regarded as a part of the normal establishment of temples. They occupied a rank next to priests. The popularity of devadasis grew around 10th and 11th century. However their popularity was devolved with the fall of Hindu temples. The destruction of temples by invaders from the northwestern borders, which spread through the whole of the country later devoured their prestigious life. As the temples became poorer and lost their patron kings, and in some cases were destroyed, the devadasi's were forced into a life of poverty, misery, and later to prostitution.
(Religious Prostitution – Sacrifice to tradition – Par I and Part II. Dec. 2008)
http://living.oneindia.in/kamasutra/spheres-of-life/religious-prostitution.html
http://living.oneindia.in/kamasutra/spheres-of-life/religious-prostitution-partii.html
Today, despite anti-devadasi laws, dedication of children as devadasis was still going on secretly. At least half of all devadasis ended up as prostitutes in rural as well as urban areas. According to the Indian Health Organisation, a Mumbai-based NGO, at least 15,000 children are still being dedicated as devadasis in southern India each year, in the four states (Maharastra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh), an estimated one million women and children, including some eunuchs, operate in the sex trade and at least one-fifth of sex workers in the four states are estimated to be former devadasis, and in Mumbai, half or more of them are HIV positive.
Here is a story of a girl who served as devadasi in Karnataka from age 2 to 18. With two illegitimate children she had no choice but became a prostitute in a village near Mumbai. She died with HIV/AIDS at the age of 33.
(Tragic plight of India’s young temple girls. March. 2010) http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100319/FOREIGN/703189870/1103/NEWS)
“Effective prevention requires an integrated and all-inclusive approach than a compartmental AIDS prevention centered approach. Close co-ordination between the governmental, non-governmental, international and community-based organizations in implementation of intervention programmes may prove to be cost effective and cost efficient. AIDS is less of a medical problem but more of a social, culturel and developmental problem. These include steps toward removing social injustice and inequality, improving economy and achieving overall development, efforts to increase the status of women in the community and development of safe and effective primary prevention interventions like vaccine or vaginal microbicides.” (HIV/AIDS epidemic in India: risk factors, risk behavior & strategies for prevention & control. April 2005)
http://icmr.nic.in/ijmr/2005/April/0412.pdf
The story of devadasi may sound unreal but I actually met and talked with sex workers in Gokak, Karnataka when UNESCO Japan, NGO based in Tokyo with which I worked, implemented a program which provided literacy/health education and assisted sex workers to organize a self-help group.