Nepal's living goddesses: child slavery or cultural diversity?

by Actual News Geezer | January 2, 2007 at 10:53 am | 868 views | 1 comment

Nepal's highest court is wrestling with a local custom whereby prepubescent girls are selected to serve in religious temples as incarnations of the Hindu goddess Taleju. This is an intriguing story from the Christian Science Monitor, one of the more interesting news organizations around.

ATHMANDU, NEPAL - Receiving goddess-treatment in this Himalayan nation is not always as good as it may sound. The tradition of isolating and worshipping prepubescent girls as living goddesses - a practice that dates back centuries among Nepal's Newar community - has recently become controversial.

In a practice that is long believed to support Nepal's king, Buddhist girls as young as 4 years old have been selected in this kingdom to serve as Kumaris, the incarnations of the Hindu goddess Taleju.

But two petitions filed at Nepal's Supreme Court, one against and one in favor of the ritual, have placed Kumaris at the center of a tug of war between religion and human rights.

In a case filed in May 2005, lawyer Pun Devi Maharjan said the practice violates child rights and women's rights. In April 2006, Chunda Bajracharya, professor of culture at Tribhuvan University, the country's oldest, filed another petition demanding the tradition be preserved.