Dikshitar
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Briefly
Jaya Menon & Pushpa Narayan, TNN, July 23, 2023: The Times of India
Every day, 14-year-old T R Raja Chandra Krithivasan divides his time between studying and doing the ‘sandhyavandanam’, ‘samithadhanam’ and ‘maadhyanikam’ poojas for the gods. “I am also worried,” the class 9 student tells TOI on a video call, his long hair plaited and tied in a knot, stone ear studs sparkling, and ‘vibhoothi’ (holy ash) spread on his forehead, arms and chest. Krithivasan, son of a dikshitar (priest) of the Nataraja temple in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, is worried because his family has not found him a bride yet. There’s a rule that only a married male, even if a minor, can perform duties at the temple as a dikshitar, and Krithivasan is among some 20 boys waiting for brides.
But brides aren’t easy to find because dikshitars are endogamous – they marry strictly within their 1,200-member community – and consanguineous (among blood relations) marriages have also resulted in fewer brides for the boys. “Normally, there are 105 girls born for every 100 boys, and women outlive men,” says Tamil Nadu’s former director of public health Dr P Kolandaisamy, adding, “In this micro clan, it (paucity of brides) is a sign of extinction. ” The dikshitars agree their community has shrunk since the 1950s.
Spotlight On Child Marriage
The community has traditionally practised child marriage although the dikshitars now say they have stopped the practice and only ‘engagements’ happen between boys and girls before the legal age. However, the issue of dikshitar child marriage has been in the spotlight ever since the DMK formed government in Tamil Nadu in 2021. Shortly after, the Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department closed in on the Chidambaram temple. A few dikshitars were arrested and some girls were subjected to medical tests. In an interview with TOI, Tamil Nadu governor R N Ravi alleged some of the girls were subjected to the banned two-finger (virginity) test. While HR&CE minister P K Sekar Babu, state health minister Ma Subramaniam and former DGP Sylendra Babu denied the charge, T S Sivarama Dikshitar, secretary of the temple administrators, said the children were subjected to the banned test and had to be counselled to “calm them down”.
Prof S Rajasomashekar Dikshitar is a trustee and priest at the Nataraja temple, and assistant professor at Annamalai University in Chidambaram. His 40-year-old sister S Jayalakshmi, a school dropout, was married early. When TOI met her, she was draped in an ‘onbathu gajam (nine-metre)’ sari. She said she had not been to the movies in five years, but had “no regrets. ”
Nonetheless, it is well-known that early marriage closes options of higher education and employment for women and affects their health as well as that of their children. Some families in the dikshitar micro-community have children with disabilities and rare congenital diseases.
Gods Are Playmates For Kids
At Rajasomashekar Dikshitar’s home in one of Chidambaram’s busy market streets, small metal idols of Kamakshi Amman, Krishna, Hanuman, Shiva and Bhairava draped in blue and green silk are placed on low metal stools. In dikshitar homes, children grow up playing with such idols. “Our lives revolve around Nataraja,” he says.
His 18-year-old son, Soma Aniruddh Dikshitar, has a pooja room of his own where he spends time after school and the evening vedic classes. Aniruddh is awaiting admission to an engineering course at Annamalai University. His nine-year-old brother is a special child.
