● A century-old tradition and a living goddess
We have all heard stories of Cinderella and Snow-white. We have watched movies and played dress-up when we were kids. Imagine being a Goddess.
I think one thing we have all learned as we grow old is fairy tales are not really what we think they are. They are just beautiful lies fabricated to entertain the kids.
Nepal has its own living goddess who is selected when she is 2 to 4-year-old and replaced when she bleeds. That’s the whole childhood of a young girl.
We have all heard stories of Cinderella and Snow-white. We have watched movies and played dress-up when we were kids. Imagine being a Goddess.
I think one thing we have all learned as we grow old is fairy tales are not really what we think they are. They are just beautiful lies fabricated to entertain the kids.
Nepal has its own living goddess who is selected when she is 2 to 4-year-old and replaced when she bleeds. That’s the whole childhood of a young girl.
The living goddess
In the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, there is a century-old tradition of worshiping the child deity, the Kumari Devi, a living goddess manifested in the body of a young girl.
It is said that even a glimpse of the young and beautiful goddess will bring good fortune. Both the Hindus and Buddhists worship her.
The literal meaning of Kumari is Virgin or unmarried girl. They chose a Kumari from 2 to 4-year-old girls. She has to meet some specific standards. They test the girls for 32 very specific physical attributes and signs of fearlessness and serenity.
The physical attributes include “eyelashes like a cow” and “thighs like a deer”. Also, her astrological chart must be favorable to the King of Nepal.
Kumari lives in the Kumari house, which is an old palace building. The building is without modern facilities. She will leave her palace for ceremonial purposes. She always wears red clothes, has her hair in a topknot and the fire eye painted on her forehead and it is believed that Kumari has special power over the illness.
Transition to the mortal world
Until recently, the Kumari’s weren’t educated. They could not use the internet and had to spend their days inside the poor-lit room.
Many people have come forward criticizing the tradition. The ex-Kumari Rashmila Shakya, in her memoir Goddess to Mortal, had described her lack of education and the difficulties she has to face returning to the normal life after her life as a goddess.
“Nepal has ratified the convention on the rights of the child. It says that you can’t exploit children in the name of culture,” one of Nepal’s leading human rights lawyers Sapana Pradhan-Malla told The Guardian.
Imagine a child sitting in one place for six to seven hours and not talking.
One of the ex-Kumari is Preeti Shakya. She became a goddess when she was just 3 years old.
“They say they feel some kind of fire, a positive energy around me,” she says. “The people praying to me have actually been blessed but I don’t feel anything.”
When Preeti was 11, she entered the mortal world. They start looking for the new goddess before the current leaves her position.
“If the girl starts menstruating while serving as Kumari, it is considered inauspicious.” — senior official Deepak Bahadur Pandey told Reuters.
“After my retirement, I realized the world is so cruel,” Preeti says. “Teachers started scolding me as I was a little poor in my studies, and when I first went to school one of my classmates, said I look so fat. At that time, I was completely broken because nobody used to talk in that manner.”
The steps the government took for the ex-Kumari’s
After the memoir of Rashmila came out, the Nepalese government took some steps for the better future of the Kumaris. Education was made mandatory and a monthly stipend was established towards the ex-Kumaris’ education.
They started a pension program. For her whole life, the ex-Kumari will get a pension. The municipality will pay a monthly sum of Rs. 10,000 ($134) to her.
Many activists criticized the Kumari tradition. They called it child labor. But in 2008, Nepal’s Supreme Court overruled the petition to end the practice because of its cultural value.
When I was 3 years old, I couldn’t imagine me sitting quietly for such long hours. Even if that came with beautiful clothes and lots of gifts. This tradition, like many others, shows how much we expect from women from such a young age.
The priests judge 2 to 4-year-old girls based on their looks and their quality to stay calm. We expect a toddler to understand the extent of the burden put on her. The burden of expectations.
Her feet should never touch the ground, and she should not speak to anyone but her immediate family. I cannot do that even at 25.
Kids are meant to play and run around. Laugh and talk as much as they can. They are supposed to have fun not reign over the nation as a deity.
The efforts of many activists have made the transition for ex-Kumari’s a little better but is this enough? They still don’t learn people skills and how the world really is.
They are not aware of what the world has to offer till they bleed and then all their powers are lost just because their body changed like it was supposed to?
Practices like this objectify women. Women are seen as goddesses, but they are treated as objects in society.
There is the freedom to live the ordinary life after they leave their position as Kumaris’ and they can be anything they want to be. But is this practice really worth the childhood of the young girls?
I am not against any religion and I don’t want to hurt the sentiments of people, but this practice is not really in the best interest of these young girls. To cut them from society for their almost entire childhood is a cruel thing.
What if someone in our neighborhood is doing the same thing? What if they are not allowing their children to talk to anyone but their family? They can’t go out and play or go to school and get an education. Will we react in the same way?
Just because many people are in favor of this practice, does this make it more acceptable?
Besides this, making a child feel so special that the entire country, even the country’s king and leader, bows in front of them and when then taking it away just because they have started their menstrual cycle and then leaving them to live life like a normal kid will affect the young child’s life and mental health.
The things normal kids learn gradually about the world, they have to learn in a day.
People around them expect them to return to their life and studies like any other normal kid their age when they have not even set foot on the floor in their entire life.
Before they can even talk, others are making such big decisions for them. The decision will affect not only their childhood but their entire existence.
Practices like this need to stop. I don’t know who benefits from such practices, but it is definitely not the children.