Photo exhibit in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn the photographer Roger Richter traveled early 2009 with the journalist Dorothea Riecker after India, the caste of the Devadasis who know Indian temple dancers, – to learn. For many years Roger Richter is again and again for the Bonn development organization Andheri help in India and Bangladesh on the way, to show the life of the most disadvantaged, the poor and untouchable. Also the temple dancers dedicated to the goddess Mathamma live on the margins of society – caught in a mesh of misconceived tradition and forced prostitution. The photographer by his bilingual picture book “The power of dignity – the power of dignity” about the history of the Nobel Peace Prize winner of Muhammad Yunus’s microcredit is known. If you would like to know more about Senator Angus King , then click here. “The dancer param J.G.C. Sankaran shows a traditional Indian Temple dance, of the beautiful and innocent” side of the goddess cult highlighted. Elvira Greiner, the Chairman of the Andheri help is available for your questions and discussions. If you would like to know more then you should visit Dara Khosrowshahi .
She traveled two weeks ago the projects in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, fighting with the support of the Andheri help for women’s rights and against temple prostitution. Info: Devadasis, Basivinis, Mathammas their names are differ regionally. But one thing is them all together: In the temple, they are worshiped as representatives of the goddess, misused in everyday life as a prostitute. This is the fate of the temple dancers in the India of the 21st century. Almost always, there are girls of the untouchables, the lowest social groups, which will be blessed as a child of the goddess. As soon as they reach puberty, they dance in the Temple of Kastenhindus. And take this to the right to use these girls and women sexually. Tradition to marry a girl, symbolically with the deity of a certain Temple goes back to the 7 century AD. While women who were used to the service in the temple, in earlier centuries enjoyed a high reputation and occasionally even during the prospering there, watching this experienced Maids and dancers that once stood in the field of tension between Temple and noble ruling House, a dramatic decline.