The Karnataka Devadasis (Prohibition of Dedication) Act, 1982

The Karnataka Devadasis (Prohibition of Dedication) Act, 1982, is a primary legal source, the actual Indian state legislation criminalizing the ritual dedication of girls as devadasis, temple servants whose role had by the twentieth century become widely associated with sanctioned sexual exploitation and prostitution rather than its earlier temple-service origins. As the enacted statute itself, it is directly authoritative for what the law prohibits and its stated legal rationale. It is a legal instrument responding to a specific social reform campaign, not a historical or anthropological account of the devadasi tradition's earlier religious functions or of the considerable regional variation in how the practice was actually carried out before its later exploitation and legal suppression, questions requiring separate historical scholarship.