PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988-2001 8 Living with STDs and AIDS: The Mother Saradadevi Social Service Society, India

Document begins: PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988­2001 8 Living with STDs and AIDS: The Mother Saradadevi Social Service Society, India Jaya Shreedhar Introduction something. What we had imagined as a problem of Madras had arrived at our own doorstep". As day breaks over the town of Palani, near Madurai, hundreds of pilgrims throng the Founded by Prasanna and her husband Raja in hilltop temple of Lord Muruga, the town's 1988, the Society is named after the wife of the presiding deity. One of the most popular well-known Hindu spiritual leader, pilgrimage centres in the State of Tamil Nadu, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who attracted a large following in the early part of the twentieth Palani is a mixture of the old and the new. In century. Saradadevi was a leader in her own response to the burgeoning influx of pilgrims, a right, whose work in promoting women's bewildering variety of shops, hotels, garishly painted lodges and tourist cottages has sprung education and the rights of widows was up around the ancient temple. considered progressive at the time. The Society works on a range of health, environment and At the same time, as in many other temple economic development programmes for women of different ...