SARAH HARRIS: The first thing that strikes you when you come

to India is a sense of extreme contrasts.

While some people are still shitting off the side of

railway lines and eating from banana leaves, other people

are drinking Frappuccinos and wearing Gucci sunglasses.

Along with this feeling of progress and moving forward,

there's still this undercurrent of tradition and

religion and superstition and an even more deeply ingrained

caste system.

I didn't realize quite how sharp these contrasts between

new and old India were until I came here last year to

research an article about sex trafficking.

And on my very first day here, I met a group of temple

prostitutes who told me about this ancient Hindu system

where prepubescent girls are dedicated to a goddess, and

for the rest of their lives, they will become sex slaves of

the temple.

The name of that system is devadasi.

This train's a little bit like The Darjeeling Limited, except

we have cockroaches sleeping under our beds.

And there's no one serving sweet lime.

Hello.

So in the beginning, being a devadasi had nothing to do

with prostitution.

In medieval India, they were glamorous temple dancers and

held high social status.

They performed sacred religious rituals and danced

for loyalty in the name of a goddess called Yellamma.

Over the centuries, the link between the devadasis and

their temples gradually diminished, along with their

social status.

They became the paid mistresses of priests, then

kings, and later, rich landowners.

In the 19th century, Western missionaries tried to abolish

the tradition, calling it grotesque and immoral, driving

the devadasis underground.

Today, devadasis are no different to common street

hookers, servicing drunk truck drivers and bored businessmen.

Even though the practice has been illegal for over 20

years, up to 3,000 girls are still being secretly dedicated

every year.

We traveled to the border town of Sangli, which straddles the

two southern Indian states of Karnataka and Maharastra.

Its red light district is home to hundreds of devadasi sex

workers, and that afternoon, we were invited there by

Anitha, one of its most successful brothel owners.

She's a member of an NGO called SANGRAM, which fights

to empower locals sex workers.

Communication was pretty painful, as our interpreter

Somashekar was having some trouble with his English.

Everybody in the houses next door--

this whole street--

is also sex workers like Anitha?

Yes.

SARAH HARRIS: So all the neighborhood.

And they're all friends who live around here?

Everybody is friends?

SARAH HARRIS: So when the customer comes inside, the

door closes.

And this--

SARAH HARRIS: She's not a customer?

She is also a sex worker?

SOMASHEKAR: A sex worker.

SARAH HARRIS: And she uses this room?

SOMASHEKAR: [SPEAKING MARATHI]

[SARAH LAUGHING]

SOMASHEKAR: That's another one of Anitha's friends who's

lying in there.

Hello.

SARAH HARRIS: This is what she's saying?

SOMASHEKAR: I am.

SARAH HARRIS: You.

SARAH HARRIS: Tell me again.

So are you talking as you?

Are you telling me--

Somashekar.

SOMASHEKAR: Huh?

SARAH HARRIS: So you are a sex worker.

SOMASHEKAR: I am a sex worker.

SARAH HARRIS: You are a sex worker.

And you came to Anitha's room, and--

SARAH HARRIS: Yeah.

SARAH HARRIS: You work in this room, and Anitha

works in this room.

SOMASHEKAR: This room.

SARAH HARRIS: So you all work together.

OK.

[SPEAKING MARATHI]

SARAH HARRIS: The whole place is completely difference to

what I thought it would be.

I kind of imagined these really seedy, anonymous

hotel-looking brothels.

And actually, there's kids running around everywhere.

There's women doing their laundry, making lunch.

And it kind of feels like quite a

tight-knit little community.

The ladies of Sangli wouldn't let me leave without showing

me the temple around the corner.

It seemed like wherever there were brothels, the goddess

Yellamma was never far away.

For Anitha and her friends, being a devadasi was nothing

to be ashamed of.

Sex work was their choice.

They had condoms, power in numbers, and SANGRAM looking

after them.

But these were just the lucky few.

For the vast majority of devadasis,

prostitution isn't a choice.

It's forced upon them, and most often by their parents.

Like most Hindu legends, the story of the goddess Yellamma

is long, convoluted, and surreal.

However many times we heard it, it still

didn't make much sense.

But it seems to go something like this.

The whole ordeal begins when her son is ordered to chop her

head off by her husband after he catches her spying on two

people getting frisky by a lake.

After a complex process of death, reincarnation, and a

load of fat Hindu gods with blue skin and gold bikinis,

the goddess Yellamma was born.

She fled to the villages of Karnataka and became a symbol

of worship for the lowest Hindu castes.

So after a really sweaty 10-hour train journey, we've

finally arrived in this town called Mudhol

up in Northern Karnataka.

And it's in the villages around here that we've been

told has the highest concentration of devadasi

women in India.

An estimated 23,000 women in this part of India have been

dedicated to the goddess.

And roughly half of those will have resorted to sex work in

order to feed their families.

SARAH HARRIS: We traveled to the outskirts of this dusty

transit town to meet two teenage devadasi girls.

[SPEAKING KANNADA]

SARAH HARRIS: Madigas are considered filthy and

polluting and are only permitted to work in the

lowliest positions, as street cleaners, sewage collectors,

and of course, prostitutes.

When we took the girls out shopping, they seemed

terrified of the higher castes recognizing them as devadasis,

which they did.

[SPEAKING KANNADA]

SARAH HARRIS: It was surreal to see the reaction they got.

The shopkeepers wouldn't even look them in the eye.

[SPEAKING KANNADA]

SARAH HARRIS: So now it seems this religious ritual is just

a justification for poor families to

pimp out their daughters.

[SPEAKING KANNADA]

SARAH HARRIS: It was strange sitting with Belavva's family

on the floor of their one room hut, knowing it's also the

place where she has sex with customers while her brothers

and sisters wait outside.

BALAVVA: [SPEAKING KANNADA]

[SPEAKING KANNADA]

SARAH HARRIS: Karnataka is one of India's largest producers

of sugar cane.

Hundreds of trucks pass through towns

like this every day.

The roadside can be a scary place.

Horny drivers and bored agricultural workers gather

here, looking for ways to spend their wages.

They are one of the main transmitters of HIV throughout

India, spreading the virus through the country's

extensive road network, putting girls like Mala and

Belavva at risk of this deadly disease.

SARAH HARRIS: Back in Sangli, we were invited to meet

another devadasi called Pandu.

We were told she was different, but we weren't

prepared for just how different.

[MALE SPEAKING MARATHI]

SARAH HARRIS: Every morning, he spent two hours polishing

brass Yellamma statues and blessing his beloved shrine.

[SPEAKING MARATHI]

SARAH HARRIS: Can you ask him to show me how to make chai?

Tea powder.

Wow, that's a lot of sugar.

Fucking hell.

[SARAH LAUGHING]

SARAH HARRIS: Still?

Going, going, going, going, going.

SARAH HARRIS: Can we watch him dance today?

We have to persuade him, sweet talk him.

Ah, wow.

Wow, Pandu.

Who's this guy?

You put a sari over his head.

[PANDU SPEAKING MARATHI]

SARAH HARRIS: He's got money between his teeth.

Your best friend, Sudir.

Oh, wow, that's a nice photo.

Wow, thank you.

[SPEAKING MARATHI]

SARAH HARRIS: Later that day, at our hotel, Pandu showed us

his favorite Bollywood videos and the famous

Sangli condom trick.

SARAH HARRIS: You're about to witness a demonstration of the

classic Sangli condom trick that Pandu has just taught me

when his male customers don't want to use a condom.

[SPEAKING MARATHI]

SARAH HARRIS: I think I lost.

Pandu may want a better life for his daughter, but for many

other devadasis, there's a lot of money to be made in

recruiting the next generation.

Now, we're on our way to another village, about five

kilometers outside of Mudhol.

And most of women who live there are from the madiga

caste, and so most of them are

vulnerable to becoming devadasis.

One of the interesting things about this village is that

we're going to be able to go to the house of a devadasi

woman who's made a real career out of prostitution.

And she's built this enormous house in the middle of the

village as a kind of symbol of the her success.

So she can become a role model to the other girls living in

the village that becoming a devadasi is

a good way of life.

The legendary owner, Champa, doesn't even live here.

She's too busy turning tricks in Bombay.

Inside, shiny display cabinets of unused crockery line the

walls as testaments to her success.

There were groups of village children roaming around the

house to gawp at her flickering color TV sets and

shelves of broken electrical equipment.

The message is clear--

prostitution is a lucrative business.

So this is the necklace, the muthu, that the devadasi women

wear when they get dedicated.

And hers is just hanging on the wall of her mud hut.

She's an old lady called Shavvavva, and she's one of

the oldest devadasi women in the village.

And I've just been told that she brought the very first

radio to this village.

No one had ever seen a radio before she brought it here.

Walking through the village, we notice Yellamma's presence

everywhere.

The locals told us that all devadasis in the area were

preparing themselves for the full moon festival, which is

apparently the most important event in

the Yellamma calendar.

After hearing so much about the famous full moon festival

in Saundatti, we drove four hours out of town to catch the

first day of this month-long celebration of Yellamma.

Just up there in the center of that big arch is the face of

the goddess Yellamma.

That's the entrance to her temple here in Saundatti.

Over the course of the 28 days, more than half a million

people will pass through the temple doors.

A heaving shantytown springs up around the

famous Yellamma shrine.

The place is filled with garish Hindu icons, Bollywood

music, sticky sweets, and the symbolic red and yellow colors

of the goddess Yellamma.

Hello.

Nice to meet you.

We're not allowed-- we're not gonna take the camera inside.