Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Other Hindu and Hindu-derived contexts Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, India · 2022

India: NHRC issues suo motu notices over continued devadasi dedication despite decades-old bans

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

temple and priestly structures receiving dedicated girls, dedicating families acting under religious custom

Organization

No organization assigned

Spiritual nexus

The devadasi institution binds a girl, dedicated before puberty, as a servant of the deity — a spiritual status that then structures her exploitation. The NHRC's action documents both the institution's persistence and the near-total absence of prosecutions under the acts that ban it.

  • Ritual, oath, or initiation
  • Institutional obedience or isolation
  • Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2022-10-14 · suo motu notices to the Union and six state governments

    National Human Rights Commission of India. The NHRC issued suo motu notices to the Union government and six states over the continued practice of devadasi dedication decades after the state prohibition acts (Karnataka 1982, Andhra Pradesh 1988), citing the Justice Raghunath Rao Commission's finding of roughly 80,000 devadasis in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and estimates of about 70,000 in Karnataka, and demanded compliance reports within six weeks.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • pre-puberty dedication binding a girl as 'servant of the deity'
  • channeling of dedicated girls into sexual exploitation

Primary record

Sources

official government body official finding National Human Rights Commission of India, press release, 14 Oct. 2022.

The NHRC's own notice recording the practice's persistence, the commission findings cited, and the compliance demand.

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