In Tamil Nadu, generations of women lived rituals, music and dance, especially in the temple towns. As the name suggests, devadasis (also known as servants of the gods) served the temple and used to sing, dance, and perform ritual obligations as a form of religious worship. The Devadasi institution is said to have existed since at least the 9th-10th. It may have existed in the 19th century and the role of temple women was to perform rituals, sing devotional compositions and dance during temple celebrations and at the courts of kings.
Devadasis were not only artists but also repositories of artistic knowledge in temple centers like Thanjavur, Kanchipuram and Chidambaram. They were trained in classical music, poetry and even dances like Sadir, which became the forerunner of what later became known as “Bharatanatyam”. These women were typically members of matrilineal groups in which both property and artistic knowledge were passed between mothers and daughters, giving them a type of economic independence that was not common for many women in precolonial society.
Devadasi women played complicated roles in South Indian society for centuries. Most of them were considered Nityasumangali, women who were always lucky because they were symbolically married to the deity and consequently never married again.
However, there are very few written records of the lives of the vast majority of Devadasi women and their personal histories. The names of temple servants and sometimes the gifts they gave appear in temple inscriptions; However, the women’s personal speech is rarely recorded in writing. Rather, the remnants of their past survive across generations in the discourse of oral heritage, family heritage, and the performing arts. This omission is no coincidence. Historical records in South Asia have tended to favor royal histories, “upper-class” male academics, and colonial rulers. Even the women of artistic groups, including those later socialized by social reform movements, have rarely been considered worthy subjects of formal historical consideration. This creates a paradox because although the devadasis were at the center of cultural life in temples and courts, their own experiences are still barely visible in traditional historical archives.
Revered artists to social stigmatization
Devadasi women played complicated roles in South Indian society for centuries. Most of them were considered Nityasumangali, women who were always lucky because they were symbolically married to the deity and consequently never married again. Their art was an integral part of temple festivals and royal rituals and temple inscriptions and designated “devadasis” as patrons of religious institutions and sponsors of cultural life.
However, this state of society began to change in the late 19th and early 20th centuries under the combined influence of colonial morality and Indian social reform movements. The British colonial administrators characterized the Devadasi way of life with Victorian morality, which included the act of prostitution. Indian reformers, particularly those of the new urban middle class, began to fight against the devadasi system, which they portrayed as a symbol of social decadence.
Such campaigns led to numerous legal reforms in the 20th century, which eventually led to the abolition of the practice of ordaining women in temples. Although these reforms were intended to solve the problem of exploitation and gender inequality, their result was also a failure, with entire colonies of devadasi artists losing both professions and social connections.
Meanwhile, the dance culture associated with devadasis has changed radically. The temple dance Sadir was revised and renamed Bharatanatyam and introduced as a classical dance suitable for performance on a modern stage. Paradoxically, as the dance form gains international recognition, the women’s groups that have kept dance alive for centuries tend to be pushed to the margins of history.
Between memory and archive
Although this historical erasure continues, we have some glimpses into the private lives of some Devadasi women through occasional historical documents and oral traditions. One representative of them is the famous Carnatic musician and cultural activist Bangalore Nagarathnammawho lived at the beginning of the 20th century. Born into a Devadasi household, Nagarathnamma was an important patron of music and helped found the Tyagaraja Aradhana festival in Thiruvaiyaru. She was also an advocate for female artists performing in what had become a male-dominated field of music.
A less famous personality is Kumbakonam Balamaniwho was originally a devadasi and later performed in the first theater in the early 20th century. Balamani founded an all-women theater group that gave jobs to former devadasis who had been deprived of their livelihood by social reform laws. Their drama and entrepreneurship show how Devadasi women dealt with the evolving economic culture of colonial India.
Also, Kumbakonam K. Bhanumathiwho was born in a Devadasis family, preserved the dance traditions of artists in temples even in the 20th century and was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. Their work represents the transition point at which hereditary artists sought to maintain their artistic culture in the newly institutionalized world of classical dance.
Some of the Devadasi artists who were part of the dance and music establishments in the early 20th century have also been recorded historically. Already in the 1930s, dancers liked Varalakshmi, Saranayaki and Sabharanjitham as well as artists like Tirunelveli Muthurathnambalperformed classical dance in cultural institutions in Madras. However, very little is known about her own life, her artistic experiences, or her social life that does not revolve around these few brief remarks.
The presence of these fragmented names gives us the message that under the overall term Devadasi there were thousands of personalized women, whose lives, gifts and dreams, and thousands of them remained hidden in popular history.
Reclaiming Feminism’s Devadasi Stories
In recent decades, feminist historians, anthropologists and artists have again begun to read and think about the history of Devadasi communities. Instead of defining the devadasi system as just a social problem, researchers unravel the system as a multi-layered institution with the influence of religion, art, caste hierarchies and colonial invasion.
This has highlighted the need to save Devadasi history through other archives such as oral testimonies, community memory, performance traditions and local stories. Family genealogies preserved by Devadasi often provide rich artistic information between generations of musicians, dancers and composers. In many cases, these women were instrumental in defining the repertoire of classical music and South Indian dance.
For example, the Devidasis families played a leading role in preserving the music and dance traditions in the Thanjavur region. Artists and their heirs compiled performance collections and wrote songs, and these collections formed the basis of the classical arts. But as such arts became institutionalized in academies and urban cultural sites, the groups that contributed to their creation and preservation were often overlooked and marginalized when it came to the distribution of power.
An example of renaming Sadir to Bharatanatyam actually involved aesthetic renaming as well as social renaming. Even the elements of performance that had to do with sensuality and female agency were sterilized as dance was reconceptualized as a spiritual and national art.
Reclaiming devadasi stories is not just about listing the names of the forgotten. It requires a broader rethinking of how the archives are structured and whose opinions are historically valid. By listening to oral histories, reading inscriptions on temple walls, and surveying the artistic community such as the devadasis, scholars are beginning to reclaim these women as part of the cultures they helped shape.
The stories of Devadasi women in Tamil Nadu are preserved through dance, music and community memory that are passed on to new generations, reminding us that history does not necessarily have to be documented. Remembering these women in history is not only a process of recovery, but also a recognition that the classical arts of South India would not have emerged without the work, creativity and perseverance of women, whose contributions often remained unwritten.
Dharanesh Ramesh hails from Coimbatore and is a PhD candidate in Gender and Development Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. Based on the belief that stories shape structures, his studies and work explore the intersections of gender, caste and public policy from an intersectional feminist perspective. He is particularly interested in understanding how power, privilege and politics interact to define inclusion and justice in everyday life. Dharanesh is naturally curious and often turns to drawing, painting, photography and writing as an extension of his reflective practice. His work seeks to bridge thought and experience, analysis and art in the pursuit of justice and representation.
