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Servants of the Goddess: The Modern-day Devadasis

servents of the goddessServents of the Goddess is a pioneering account of contemporary devadasis—women forced to spend their lives serving the gods and servicing the males of an ancient fertility cult in Karnataka.

Servants of the Goddess tells the heartbreaking and life-affirming stories of five devadasis—female temple-slaves in the clutches of an ancient fertility cult in Karnataka. Catherine Kermogrant sets out to make a documentary film about the lives of contemporary devadasis. Through her, we meet and get to know the devadasi women of Kalyana, a poor village in Karnataka. As the women begin to trust Catherine and welcome her as an honorary sister, we hear their stories in their own words—stories of oppression, discrimination, violence, and, most importantly, resistance. Catherine becomes a part of these stories and finds herself unwittingly enmeshed in a world of gender and caste bias which extends far beyond Kalyana—all the way to Paris, where the documentary is to be edited and produced.

Servants of the Goddess is a testament to the strength and wit of women bound by a tradition that puts them on the borderlines of prostitution, and a remarkably astute analysis of gender and caste relations in today’s rural India.

Born in France and raised in New York, Catherine Rubin Kermorgant studied Classics at Brown University and did a masters in Anthropology at the London School of Economics. After working for three years as an assistant on feature films and documentaries, she was hired as a development manager by Gaumont TV and began to research and write her own documentary films. One of her films, funded by BBC and Canal Plus, led her to south India, where she spent several months learning about devadasis. It was an experience that she would never forget. Committed to making their voices heard, she decided to write a book about their lives and their tradition. Catherine Rubin Kermorgant lives in Paris with her husband and her three children.

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