Girls led into life of 'sacred' sex slavery

Rampant HIV/Aids adds to misery of India's temple prostitutes forced to attend to Hindu high priests. Peter Foster reports from Dhanwada

It is a tradition as old as India itself - lowly, village girls from "untouchable" families being dedicated to serve as temple prostitutes for Hindu high priests and Brahmin elders.

Dalit girls as young as 10 forgo conventional marriage to a single man in exchange for a life of service to the local deity, performing rituals and puja (prayers) for their village.

At puberty they are "married" to the temple amid ritual and celebration before spending their "wedding night" with the priest or upper-caste elder - a prelude to a life of sexual slavery.

However in modern India the jogini (lady-saints) are facing a new and lethal difficulty in their already-troubled lives - the rise of HIV/Aids in the sub-continent.

India will shortly overtake South Africa as the country with the most HIV sufferers in the world.

In the villages of Andhra Pradesh the scale of the problem is starting to reveal itself.

Research for the Christian Aid charity has found that, despite the practice being officially outlawed in 1986, about 40 per cent of Andhra Pradesh's 42,000 joginis are HIV positive.

As victims of such backward, rural practices, the jogini tradition exemplifies the social and cultural obstacles facing those trying to prevent India's Aids problem from reaching African levels.

Grace Nirmala, a Dalit-born social worker from Hyderabad works educating fellow Dalits on their basic rights.

She explained that, as the lowest-born, the joginis are unable to protect themselves.

"These women have many sexual partners.

" They cannot refuse the men and they cannot ask them to use condoms - and the men certainly aren't going to volunteer to use them," she said. India already has more than five million people infected with HIV, which is still less than 0.5 per cent of the population.

But a World Bank report this year gave warning that if condom use did not improve Aids infection rates would be running at three million per year within a decade.

By 2033, the report estimated, Aids could be India's biggest killer, outpacing malaria and other water-borne diseases and diarrheal infections.

When Mrs Nirmala arrives in the village of Dhanwada, 100 miles south of Hyderabad, 10 joginis gather in the gaudily-painted temple to the goddess Yallamma to welcome her.

Among them is 19-year-old Chinaguddi, a bashful but beautiful young woman dressed in a flowing, blue sari. She was only 12 years old when she was dedicated to Yallamma.

Her story, according to Mrs Nirmala, is typical. Chinaguddi never went to school, has a sick mother who cannot work and a father who died when she was young and so is ripe for exploitation.

"The people in the village respect me," she says falteringly. "They ask me to come and perform some puja for them because I am jogini and have been dedicated to Yallamma."

Chinaguddi does not remember fear or choice. Her dedication was an event that occurred beyond her control. "My mother has asthma and is too weak for working, so this is my life," she says simply.

Joginis live with their families and continue to serve the temple until their looks fade. Like the brothel madams of European tradition, elder joginis support and counsel the next generation.

Everyone in the village knows Chinaguddi is a jogini and, according to practice, upper-caste men will approach her mother with gifts of money and food, for permission to have a "friendship" with her.

Asked if she feels angry at her situation, Chinaguddi expresses regret but accepts that, as a dalit with multiple sexual partners and a family who rely on her, she has little choice.

"Sometimes I ask why mother did this to me. Why I cannot have a normal marriage and go and live in a husband's village," she says.

"But what can I do? Who will marry me now? I am a jogini."