The Rev. Rosalie Richards ’81, ’20: Reflection from a Pilgrimage

Colors of India – Maathamma Temple Prostitutes

I put this dress on as soon as it arrived. The ladies of the church stitched it for me and I wore it all the way home. They also cut the big banana tree leaf almost as tall as I am.

There is so much to celebrate in India as you can imagine – it’s beautiful – the colors are amazing. As one friend said the pink scald your eyes and you could drown in the blues. I see women who are very poor who have the most beautiful colors on their dresses, it's a joyous place. 

In the center of that picture there is the backdrop of difficulty. Women are second class... it's not even a question... it just is.

That's why I was invited to CSI (Anglican Church of South India) -- for a woman's conference to support this important empowerment movement that will never stop until we reach what is which is our true reality as fully human. That's the message that I repeated.

I want to share how the unempowered Dalit (“untouchable”) women of CSI are changing the situation of the temple prostitutes – the most vulnerable of the women in India.

As is the case with oppressed groups, women have no power in this culture—but they are often the people who make things happen.  I witnessed this in their ministry to the Maathamma Temple prostitutes in a small town two hours from the large city Chennai. 

It is said that there are hundreds of small one-room Hindu temples in South India which practice temple prostitution, and that 450,000 females are devadasis, temple prostitutes.  They are sentenced to a life deprived of family. When they are 40 to 45, they no longer are desired – so survival becomes even harder.

The situation briefly is this:  in poor communities the young girls are brought to the temples and left there to serve a Hindu deity.  In the town I visited they serve the goddess Maathamma. They are left to survive in whatever way they can, sleeping in the woods or in basic housing with their sister prostitutes.  These girls and women are available for any man’s pleasure.  This is their offering to the goddess—their lives.

The Maathamma mothers typically no longer have names, they call themselves by the goddess’s name.  A few years ago, one of the church visitors asked the women their names. Always, the answer was: “My name is Maathamma.”

CSI ladies created a kitchen, hired a cook, and now provide food for the Maathamma women. They work to get medical care for the ladies because HIV is rampant. A few years ago, these women requested one thing:  education for their children, so that the children could have a different future than the mothers. 

The church women found ways to get education for the young children.  When I was brought to visit the site, I saw some children in school uniforms—a badge of honor!

But the miracle of transformation is this:  when I asked women what their names are, they answered with their own Indian names. To me this says that they are recovering their identity, symbolized by their own individual, personal names! 

This transformation, these programs, are the work of the unempowered women of India, the Dalit Christian women, of all oppressed groups the most oppressed.

I told the women at the conference that the people of my church in the United States stand with them, pray with them.  Please join me in praying for these magnificent powerful/unempowered women!  In particular, will you pray for one temple prostitute, whose name is Pensell (the only name that my Western ear could retain).  To me she represents her sisters. A prayer for Pencell is a prayer for all the women shackled by this inhuman structure.

I asked the women’s group leader to send the small, stitched handkerchiefs/napkins that the ladies make as a fund raiser.  As they arrive, I will make them available to church groups that request them, in order to receive donations for this powerful and important grass roots mission of the church women of South India.

Please take a look at my photos with the temple ladies.  Pencell is the one with the saddest eyes I have ever gazed into.

A video of the Maathamma ladies, the history and their present life is being made. It will be available in 2023. Please let me know if you or your church would like to show it.

People said that India would change my life and I didn't know what they meant and I still don't know. But I know it did change my life because it entered me — people entered me, as if we had known each other always. And the ladies from the temple let me come into their lives. I felt like in India people had room in their souls for me. That made my own soul get bigger, feel bigger.

For more information please contact me at RevRoseRichards@gmail.com

I ask for your prayers.

Blessings,

Rose Richards+