Sitavva Jodatti and her quest to eradicate the Devadasi System in India

MAHILA Abhivruddhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe is an organization based in Karnataka that rescues and rehabilitates disadvantaged women who are exploited under the banned Devadasi system. For centuries across India, girls and women were “dedicated” to the Devadasi system in the hopes of the family receiving a blessing in return. In time, this practice degenerated into the sexual exploitation of girls and women and often continues from one generation to the next. The Devadasi practice still continues today but is being fought by individuals such as Sitavva Jodatti, the CEO of Mahila Abhivruddhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe or MASS. 

 

Who is vulnerable to exploitation?

In most cases, it is families who are in extreme poverty that dedicate their daughters to the Devadasi system. When a girl is dedicated, she has little awareness about what is happening to her. But once she reaches her teenage years, she is given to a man and is forced to have children with him. In most cases, this happens when the girl is still a minor. Once these girls reach adulthood, many are taken to red light districts and forced into prostitution and their children are even at risk of being sexually exploited. Mahila Abhivruddhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe is on a mission to end this banned practice that exploits girls and women.

 

How MASS rescues exploited girls and women

Founded in 1997, Mahila Abhivruddhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe has rescued thousands of women from exploitation and rehabilitated them with education, job-related skills training, health support, legal aid and raising awareness on the dangers of Devadasi dedications. MASS is based in Belgaum district in Karnataka, one of most vulnerable areas and works in local communities in the areas of prevention and rescue-rehabilitation of the women and their children. In preventing Devadasi dedications and rehabilitating those who have already been dedicated, MASS believes that the Devadasi practice can be eradicated completely in India. 

 

Her fight against exploitation is personal 

Sitavva Jodatti is the CEO of Mahila Abhivruddhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe and she has personal experience as a victim of the Devadasi system. Her mother dedicated Sitavva to the Devadasi system when she was just 7 years old. When she turned 14, she was given to a man and had three children with him – all before she was 17 years old and still a minor. But life changed for Sitavva Jodatti when she came into contact with a Karnataka-based organization called Mahila Abhivruddhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe that works to eradicate the exploitation of disadvantaged girls and women under the Devadasi system. 

 

The organization MASS helped Sitavva Jodatti understand how the practice degrades girls and women and it opened her eyes to the plight of others like her in desperate need of rescue. Sitavva Jodatti joined the organization in 1997, started raising her voice against the Devadasi system and has rescued thousands of women since the 1990s. In recognition of her selfless effort, Sitavva Jodatti was given the Padma Shri award in 2018 which has helped bring to light the situation of girls and women exploited under the Devadasi system, which was officially banned as early as 1947 and subsequently in other states throughout India. 

 

Fighting the discrimination against ex-Devadasis

The challenging mission of rescuing girls and women from the Devadasi system is not a simple one. The system is built upon centuries of tradition that upholds the practice and has settled in the minds of people from disadvantaged communities as perhaps the only way to survive in this world. These are marginalized communities that have long been denied access to education and employment and therefore, dedications are the sole solution to the poverty that crushes them. In dedicating their daughters, these families receive a small amount of financial support from the men who the girls are dedicated to. 

 

But these men are not their husbands. Even though the minor girls are sent to live with the men and have children with them, the girls and women are not their legal wives. In most cases, the men go on to get married in the legal or “accepted” sense, and this leaves the dedicated girls out in the cold with no one to look after them any longer. Surviving on their own is also a challenge since the women and their children carry the stigma of being a Devadasi. The women find it almost impossible to get jobs and live in financial independence and their children are also taunted in classrooms as being the child of a Devadasi. 

 

Sitavva Jodatti and MASS understand this discrimination and work to their fullest ability to not just prevent dedications and rescue girls and women from the system but also to rehabilitate the women with education and livelihood training to help them learn employable skills and earn an income without having to resort to becoming victims of exploitation just to stay alive. The NGO also works among local communities to help them understand the dangers of Devadasi dedications and give them another avenue to lift themselves out of poverty without succumbing to the exploitative practice of Devadasi dedications.

 

Support Sitavva Jodatti’s noble mission

Sitavva Jodatti of Mahila Abhivruddhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe needs your support to continue her work among vulnerable populations in the Belgaum district of Karnataka to rescue and rehabilitate women and their children and help them lead safe, dignified and respected lives with full access to their rights. With Sitavva Jodatti’s life as an example, ex-Devadasis can be given opportunities to rebuild their lives and have prosperous futures. When you support Sitavva Jodatti in her mission to rescue and rehabilitate more girls and women, you help provide education, livelihood training and medical support to liberated women. 

 

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