http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/31/child-goddesses-in-nepal/?_r=0
Nepal – Child Goddesses: Kumaris
View on Website (Link Above) Slide Show of 25 Photographs – Credit Stephanie Sinclair
By James Estrin – Aug. 31, 2015
PERPIGNAN, France — Stephanie Sinclair is best known for having published and exhibited her photographs of child brides, images that she hopes will expose — and one day end — the practice of young girls forced into marriage.
In 2015 she was at the Visa Pour l’Image photography festival in Perpignan, where she exhibited her child bride images in 2012, with a new exhibit about young girls. It focuses on a very different tradition among the Newar people of Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley — the worship of girls as living goddesses, or Kumaris.
The girls are identified by priests as being the embodiment of a goddess worshiped by both Hindus and Buddhists. From that point, until they bleed — either from a cut or by reaching menstruation — they are thought to be able to heal the sick and see into the future. People seek them out daily for special blessings of protection and prosperity, and they are worshiped publicly during auspicious occasions.
“It is an honor to be chosen as a Kumari,” Ms. Sinclair said, “but also a burden.”
There are currently 10 Kumaris in Nepal, and some cannot attend school because of their obligations, Ms. Sinclair said. The most important Kumaris are carried everywhere they go because their feet can’t touch the ground. Parents of the Kumaris often have to pay for tutors and have their lives turned upside down for several years. And they, too, worship their own daughter as a goddess.
Ms. Sinclair photographed the Kumaris while on assignment for National Geographic and was able to spend time with several of them. She observed a 6-year-old, Unika, both before and after she became a Kumari.
Unika became more confident and serious and sat still for four hours at a time, as thousands of people asked for her blessing after she was inhabited by the goddess, Ms. Sinclair said. But there were also special challenges for her parents.
“Simple things, like she’s a goddess,” Ms. Sinclair said. “If she wants ice cream at seven in the morning, she can have it. She wins every game that she plays with her brothers and sisters and the family doesn’t want to make the daughter upset.”
Kumari Dangol must wear red — the school tie being her only nod to convention. In other respects, she is like any other schoolchild, except that her teachers and fellow pupils address her as Dya Maiju, meaning Little Girl Goddess.Credit Stephanie Sinclair
After the Kumaris menstruate for the first time, or bleed from a cut, the goddess leaves them and they go back to being a normal, everyday girl.
Or teenager.
Ms. Sinclair met with several former Kumaris who told her that it was a positive experience, but that it took time to readjust to mortal life.
There have been some complaints against the tradition among the Newar, including that the girls are too isolated. And some families who support the tradition choose not to put their daughters up for consideration when asked by the priests, either because of financial considerations or because they preferred to keep the girls in school.
The Kumari assignment was not Ms. Sinclair’s first story among the Newar in the Kathmandu Valley. In 2007, she photographed another traditional practice: child marriage among the Newar. During Ms. Sinclair’s assignment on the Kumaris she discovered that child marriage was starting to recede in the villages as they became more developed and connected to the rest of the world.
“Child marriage is a traditional practice, but it’s mostly done out of economic necessity and out of a lack of understanding of how important education is,” said Ms. Sinclair, who also helped start the nonprofit group Too Young to Wed to end the practice. “The question is how does society differentiate what traditions are helpful and special and beneficial to that community and which are not.”
