Each day when Pallavi Doraiswamyakka and Radha Sankalappa sit in their university classrooms, nothing seems out of place to professors or other students. But Pallavi and Radha know the truth: They’re ushering in a revolution.
Pallavi and Radha both belong to India’s Devadasi community—one of the country’s most oppressed and marginalized groups. For the vast majority of Devadasis, finishing high school, let alone college, is a far-off dream.
Devadasis are women in regions of southern India who are ritually ‘devoted’ to a Hindu deity, a patriarchal practice that results in women facing extreme social exclusion, cycles of poverty, and sexual exploitation at the hands of higher-caste men. While this practice is illegal, it persists due to deeply entrenched religious beliefs and caste inequality.
Sakhi Trust supports these women and their children to liberate themselves from this immense social stigma and internalized shame, reclaim their power and create dignified lives. Pallavi and Radha are among the nearly 3,000 women that AJWS grantee Sakhi Trust has empowered, supported, and funded to re-enroll in school and enter higher education.
“We were born into a system that’s oppressed women for so many generations. But we are the daughters here to break the cycle. We are not only ending this system in our own family, we’re breaking the system itself. We are the changemakers that so many women before us have waited for,” says Pallavi, 23, who is studying development at Azim Premji University in Bangalore.
Pallavi’s mother and grandmother were both dedicated as Devadasis. Her mother never studied past third grade, but vowed to help her own daughters—born without fathers and deeply persecuted, as Devadasis are barred from marriage and often forced into sex work—escape this oppressive cycle of suffering. Sakhi Trust helped Pallavi process her internalized trauma and shame, and today is supporting her tuition.
“Sakhi Trust is like a big tree, and we are all small leaves given new life,” she says. “This organization has given life to so many Devadasi women, and provided shade for so many more.”
For Radha, the path towards a dignified life has been thornier.
Radha was in high school when two of her siblings died and her parents decided to dedicate her as a Devadasi—lower-caste families without sons may dedicate their daughters to ensure they’ll stay at home and support them into old age. Radha didn’t know about exploitive social expectations of a Devadasi, but “within two months… I understood. Older men would approach me for sex; it was torture.”
Soon, she was a mother of three. As Radha was unmarried, her children were born into a life of social exclusion and shame.
“I felt so angry, like I was robbed of a dignified life. I could’ve been a free, independent woman. I could’ve been married, happy and secure,” she says.
When Sakhi Trust entered Radha’s life, the organization “saved me from being the trash can of my village.”
Radha began joining Sakhi Trust workshops and rebuilding her sense of self-worth. Sakhi staff helped her catch up in her studies, 10 years after she’d been forced to drop out. In Sakhi’s community, she thrived and regained the courage to dream of a university degree. Sakhi Trust subsidized her applications, books, and tuition.
Today, at 32, Radha is finishing her sixth semester at Shri Shankar Anand Singh College, studying sociology and history. She’d already felt things change internally, but she began to feel a shift in her community as well.
“Education not only gives us freedom, but also respect. For so many years, I looked in the mirror and saw a Devadasi. And now I see a student. I see a woman reinvented,” she says. “In my village, people see my student ID. My backpack and books. It’s unmistakable. I am no one’s slave.”
She talks of writing a thesis on the history and social impact of the Devadasi system—while devoting herself to dismantling it. Radha began community organizing work with Sakhi Trust, other Devadasis can follow her lead.
“It’s so important for me to be a light to other Devadasis,” she says firmly. “I’ve suffered a lot, but I know others have, too. It’s healing for me to help other women, and see them shed their pain and trauma. We both benefit. We both get to see we’re not alone.”