Devaraj hums with nervous energy. A fire seems to burn in the man too visceral and furious to be restrained by his human frame. If Mother Teresa represented the mystical, introspective face of piety and social compassion, Devaraj is its activist and entrepreneur. A man of medium height, he appears bigger. Radiating warmth and charisma, Devaraj has that rare talent to envision and make people feel that anything is possible. Politicians, senators and captains of industry fall under his spell. A man with a mission, a dreamer who has proved that he can take a big idea and turn it into reality. His rhetoric has substance.
A dramatic change took place in Devaraj’s life in 1993. Three years previously he had relocated to Mumbai from South India and was adjusting to life in the rapidly expanding city. He quickly discovered that the money capital of India hid a darker side. Wretched slums cowered beneath monolithic, futuristic skyscrapers, symbols of Mumbai’s new wealth and prestige; and in the city’s heart, an even darker stain: the red-light district of Kamathipura with its caged sex slaves. ‘Kamathipura,’ a name that will be remembered in infamy, created by the British for their troops, and now used for the sexual gratification of Mumbai’s migrant workers, perverts, pedophiles and corrupt public servants. Here, in Kamathipura’s narrow streets, Devaraj changed from philanthropic tourist to radical social activist. Against a backdrop of brothels and the ludicrously painted girls vying for customers, Devaraj was approached by two children, daughters of sex slaves. “Uncle,” they pleaded, “you should take us from this hell or we’ll end up like our mothers.”
Devaraj listened to the girls and discovered his vocation. He did not turn away. Two years later he opened his first children’s home. From this small beginning, he created the Jubilee Homes and a village of hope in Badlapur called Ashagram.
Here many of Kamathipura’s children are cared for in a big, joyful family and provided with an excellent education. Those two little girls, who otherwise would have been coerced into the sex trade, have both completed their Masters in Social Work.
These outcast children of India’s nefarious sex industry are becoming leaders of the tomorrow. But this was only part of Devaraj’s vision.
He visited the cages and heard first hand the stories of the girls’ abductions and brutal initiation into sex slavery. Devaraj understood their predicament. In any just society, criminals are imprisoned for their crimes; in Kamathipura, the innocent are imprisoned by criminals and society upholds the sentence by refusing to accept them back. A violated girl is an unwanted girl; the stigma can never be washed away. Even if the madam allows her to leave the brothel, there is nowhere for her to go. For the rest of her life, she is caged behind immovable bars.
Devaraj’s solution to the problem was Ashagram, a village that welcomed sex slaves and restored them to dignity.
This human salvage operation has been remarkably successful. Visit the Ashagram village and Kamathipura’s painted girls have been transformed. The vacuous faces, the empty eyes, the forced, robotic movements, the crushing sadness, and the acrid stench of despair and decay are gone. The girls are alive again. They smile, sing and laugh and move with their old spontaneity. Vocational training gives them a future outside the indignities and entrapment of the sex trade. Walk through this village of joy and there are no bars in sight, only wide open spaces and endless possibilities.
For most men this achievement would be enough, but not for Devaraj. He is haunted by the thousands of sex slaves trapped in India’s cities.
How can an ancient and civilized people tolerate such inhumanity?
He cannot turn away. Inspired and crazy enough to attempt the impossible, he has launched this campaign to Stop Sex Slavery in India.