Girls become deukis either because their parents offer them in hopes of gaining protection and good favor from the Gods or because their parents sell them to wealthier couples seeking the same holy approval.
Poor families who offer up their daughters gain status and approval from their communities from the perceived sacrifice they have made. They are also relieved of the burden of finding husbands for their daughters.
After offering the girls to the temples, neither parents nor couples who bought them provide any financial assistance or have additional contact with deukis. Because they are considered unfit for marriage and receive no money from those that dedicated them to their temples, deukis have to depend on worshipers’ monetary offerings to the temple.
Left with insufficient income, no skills or education, and pressure brought on by the folkloric conviction that s$x with a deuki can cleanse sins and bring good luck, many deukis are driven to survival s$x, a form of prostitution in which s$x is traded for basic necessities such as food or shelter.
Due to the law stating that Nepalese citizenship falls along the father’s line, daughters born to deukis, known as devis, frequently cannot become citizens of Nepal. Denied access to education and other social services, many devis become deukis. Though a legislative change in 2006 makes it slightly easier for deukis to get citizenship for their children if they can prove that the father is Nepalese, matrilineal descent remains unrecognized.
They performed various services for the temple to which they had been offered until they reached puberty, at which point they were expected to provide s$xual services for male priests and worshippers.
The role of deukis in society was once quite different from its current stigmatized reality. In his dissertation, Robynne A. Locke describes the ancient deukis’ status:
In the past, teenage girls dedicated to temples occupied a high status in society. Elaborate public ceremonies and feasting occurred to legitimize their dedication to the temple and marriage to God, and their role as a caretaker of the temple was valued and respected. For their service, women were granted a parcel of temple property and accumulated wealth through donations to God.
Today, deukis are frequently raped by a priest immediately after dedication- still when they are between five and seven years old. Abandoned by their parents and all other support systems, these girls grow up largely on their own with no education or learned skills.
In recent scholarship, some authors have asserted that the s$x trafficking problem in Nepal has roots in traditions like deuki, which created the precedent of women being viewed more like objects and symbols than like people.
Others assert that the presence of deuki in communities simply leaves their populations predisposed to accept such practices.
The practice of deuki has been formally abolished by the Nepalese government. Despite this fact, girls continue to become deukis. The Nepal Constitution of 1990 deemed the practice to be human trafficking and exploitation in the name of religion and culture, and several pieces of legislation have passed that should have curtailed the number of Deukis.
According to a UN report, however, the number of deukis increased between 1992 and 2010. The actual number of deukis today is contestable, as the exact statistics are unavailable.
