COMMENTARY
in many villages is completely subject to
Preserving Traditional Healing
Some Political Questions
Deepra Dandekar
Priests and mediums associated
with “healing” folk cults have
also been viewed as empowered
agents of alternative modernity,
and outside the priest’s caste or
class-based social context. In
reality, the healer is often poor,
and belongs to a lower caste. He
or she is subject to the demands of
the upper caste, rich clans, while
ritually diagnosing the ailments
of the latter’s dependents in
return for financial and
political support.
Deepra Dandekar (deepradandekar@gmail.com)
is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University
of Heidelberg, Germany.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 1, 2014
T
here are several anthropological
hypotheses (Davar and Lohokare
2009; Sax 2009, Malik 2009)
about the healing and justice providing
powers, mechanisms, rituals and pro-
pensities of rural or “folk” deities that
are pertinent for local “communities” of
believers and that essentialise these deities
as non-universal and region-specific
phenomena, external to the anthropo-
logist. Those who are in favour of conserv-
ing traditional healing, critique modern
western medical services in India that
form the bulwark of public health, to the
extent of terming the conserved traditional
healing that in their opinion should be
practised in accompaniment with modern
medical care as a form of “alternative
modernity”. Priests and mediums associ-
ated with these “healing” folk cults have
also been viewed as “healers” or as em-
powered agents of this alternative mo-
dernity, an epistemic context existing
only within the anthropological dis-
course, existing outside the priest’s caste
or class-based social context of ritual
practice. In reality, the healer who is
often poor and belongs to a lower caste
vol xlix nos 43 & 44
the demands of the upper caste, rich clans,
while ritually diagnosing the ailments
of the latter’s dependents in return for
financial and political support.
Similarly, the relationship between
midwives and their child-birthing female
clients has often been romanticised. My
aim here is not to rob relationships
bet ween women of their beauty when I
state that midwives in upper caste-dom-
inated villages of rural Maharashtra are
more often interested in appeasing the
female client’s upper caste and rich
clans rather than in building relation-
ships of support across caste, that become
politically problematic for them, espe-
cially when they are blamed for the new-
born’s death. The problem is that an “in-
dividuality” assumed in personal rela-
tionships between priests and devotees
is neatly superimposed on the healer-
client imaginative counterpart by this
anthropologically reflective dualism,
which obliterates the complexity and in-
terrelationships in decision-making,
when women and their clans negotiate
with mediums and midwives, who are
intricately woven into caste and clan
village networks.
Midwives have been theorised upon
a great deal. They have been viewed,
for example, by Sadgopal (2009) and
Chawla (2002) as repositories of origi-
nal knowledge. Conserving the tradi-
tional knowledge of midwifery in India
19
COMMENTARY
from the medicalised perspective of
how “it also works culturally”, without
commenting on the manner in which
conserving midwifery also conserves
caste hierarchy and also preserves
birth impurity for women is not a holis-
tic view. Similarly, interpreting medi-
ums/priests of disease from the lower
castes as “healers” in order to preserve
them within the public health sector as
barefoot agents, views them in isola-
tion from their clan, class and caste-
based social context and creates them
as a hybrid category and status-less
category between their traditional
social belonging and that enforced
upon them by anthropologists, who
may want to have a say in preserving
traditional healing. Moreover, it pre-
serves overarching systems of religious
conser vatism and non-secular political
representation through adherence to
religious category that demarcates
all systemic non-adherents as “ill”,
that too, ill beyond the pale of medical
diagnosis.
Healing Deities
It is important to talk a little about
these healing deities. Healing deities
are supposed, on ritual propitiation, to
“heal” their subjects sometimes of the
conditions and diseases that they them-
selves infl ict upon the latter in order to
discipline them as devotees, as is often
understood in the case of the smallpox
goddess, Shitala Devi (Kinsley 1986),
whose disease is considered a mark of
love and hence discipline. However,
these deities “catch” their subjects,
rather hegemonically, through the ritu-
als performed by them, and some
anthropological literature on healing
often deals with this catching (Clark-
Deces 2008), that takes place through
trance.1 These deities are then sup-
posed to heal or support their subjects
through all sorts of hardships either
physical or mental or to do with social
justice. This sort of anthropological
analysis has led to a rather orientalist
view of how “the natives’ religions
work best for them”. Worse still, it be-
comes extended to the view that nati-
ves do not need medical care but only
ritual care, constructing a view of
20
“natives” that is politically and aca- The rituals of “folk” deities are not
demically questionable. aimed at individualistic goals such as
conserving human dignity or human
Traditional Healing rights or “healing” persons; they are
This approach moreover has scary impli- aimed at conserving groups and socie-
cations for public health service sectors, ties that facilitate social enlistment
which might consider building tradition- (cf Basu 2010) and resource allocation.
al healing centres inside their hospitals They produce ritual performers as mem-
instead of planning for more beds. This bers of the society, of a gender, and sex
also has implications for religious groups with specific reproductive or sexual
that seek political representation within capacities, of clans, castes, as persons
electoral lobbies since not just hospitals with certain ascribed labour associated
but health as an arena for public engage- with their bodies, as mothers, wives,
ment becomes a site for politics. husbands or as different members with
The failure of public health sectors is resource ascriptions associated with
often pointed out when advocating the their social location and power. By
preservation of traditional healing. But superimposing an individualised “healer-
conserving traditional healing and uphold- client” relationship of alternative moder-
ing it as a viable alternative modernity is nity on the cross currents of power rela-
hardly going to improve the health sector. tionships between deities, mediums,
If anything, it would only lead to further upper caste clans and personal or collec-
decline of the health sector that would tive resources, the anthropological
suffer due to the lack of engagement. approach runs the danger of cementing
Human rights violation within health these very power relationships that not
sectors remain an undeniable fact and it is infrequently entail substantial violence,
only engagement with health structures especially in rural India.
that can rectify the situation by intro- What probably began as an anthropo-
ducing awareness about human rights. logical interest in cross-cultural sympto-
But it is human rights that are whittled matic similarities does little to delve into
away the moment one introduces cul- the dynamism of how these experiential
tural elements within healing, by mak- subjectivities are fused with social
ing the experience of healing relative stratification within Indian societies.
and subjective. Introducing the “cul- Preser ving the cultural dynamism of
tural” within healing in fact becomes these diagnoses would mean to fuse the
the ideal way of escaping the covenant society and its stratification itself, which
of maintaining universal human rights. from a anthropological point of view of
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Struggling against Gendered Precarity in Kathikudam, Kerala – Parvathy Binoy
Attukal Pongala: Youth Clubs, Neighbourhood: Performance of Religiosity – Darshana Sreedhar
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Home-Based Work and Issues of Gender and Space – Neethi P
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november 1, 2014 vol xlix nos 43 & 44 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

finding static and lifelong subjects for
research would be beneficial enough, but
from the point of view of “subjects”,
would mean to be constructed perpetu-
ally as “native” and neurotic (Freud 1918).
I call this a colonialist view even though
it valorises the colonised (in this case the
lower caste “healers” and the “lower”
cults – nobody would research high reli-
gion in India as “healing cults”) as those
having special powers because it creates
“healing cults” and “healers” as exotic,
autochthonous, aboriginal and primitive
and outside the ordinary, completely over-
looking the hegemony of caste, gender
and poverty operative within these cults.
Women in Trance
The anthropological position of alterna-
tive modernity further critiques western
medical traditions, modernisation and
modern medical service providers by
placing them within power relationships
with “local” cultures. This is the most
important dualism within this argument,
since many service providers within the
public health sector belong to the rural
areas and continue to practise in govern-
ment primary health centres (PHCs) in
rural areas. All villages in Maharashtra,
for example, have accredited social health
activists (ASHAs) and block facilitators,
who also belong to those villages; these
villages are not the isolated “native com-
munities” from the anthropologist’s im-
agination who respond best to ritual care.
More importantly, those who are really
placed within power relationships with
those experiencing symptoms or misfor-
tunes are not doctors or “healers” but
powerful clan and joint clan or caste
members (Clark-Deces 2008) of the con-
cerned person who “help” or force the
latter and his/her immediate family into
a specific recourse that suits the resource
allocation plan for their clan group. It is
not an individualistic relationship; it is
a complex and collective relationship.
Moreover, human rights are universal and
everybody has a right to good medical
care; introducing cultural components
into healing decreases the universality
of health rights and human rights, since it
decreases the quality of healthcare or
renders it non-quantifiable and makes
the reporting of human rights violation
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 1, 2014
subject to personal interpretation and
experience. Finally, Indians do not experi-
ence illness differently and rituals are not
enough for them. Medical care and service
provision in India needs to be engaged
with responsibly in order to better it.
Pitted against this anthropological
approach of let “the-natives-handle their-
own-problems-with-rituals-and-gods” is
the approach of rationalism of the
Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti in
Maharashtra that urges people towards
education and away from the often violent
relationships of entrapment within caste
and gender (Quack 2012). Their dis-
course discourages the lower castes,
especially women from going into trances,
as the rationalist movement understands
women’s trance as a form of attention
seeking. They understand that women
go into trances because they suffer from
gender and caste disempowerment.
Their hypothesis is that women negoti-
ate with gender and caste disempower-
ment temporarily by bringing deities
within their body in trances. This view is
however disputable.
The rationalist approach runs into
difficulties because it turns an unsympa-
thetic eye on the economic problems
of poor and lower caste mediums or
healers. Committing themselves to the
rationalist stand and leaving the ritual
“seva” or duty of traditional gods is often
associated with deep crisis, poverty and
misfortune for lower caste priests when
the possibilities they face when convert-
ing to a life of rationalism on the other
hand is urban poverty. Leaving the life
of rituals means to suddenly live without
the support of upper caste clans and their
patronage, which is something only the
younger generation is prepared to do.
The difficulty surrounding the acceptance
of the rationalist movement by priests
centres on the way in which the former
blames them or blames women in trance
for being superstitious or play actors,
even while remaining unsympathetic
about their relationships of dependence
on the rich and upper caste clans.
A large part of the anthropological
“exotic” is associated with trance that
has been viewed by some feminist theo-
reticians as empowering, since it involves
uninhibited body and hair swaying
vol xlix nos 43 & 44
COMMENTARY
movements to the beat of drums, some-
what akin to dancing. My research in
Maharashtra however suggests that
trance, which is almost always a lower
caste and female activity is a mark of
sexual and gendered labour for deities
and for the society which worships the
deity (cf also Bayly 1993). This labour is
always performed by lower caste wom-
en, who go into a trance when it is said
that they absorb the “heat” of the deity
released during rituals. This ritualised
display of sexual uninhibitedness marks
their sexual availability for upper caste
men and their ritual availability to women
as those for whom they can officiate as
priests and mediums. A person going
into a trance indicates her social posi-
tion of pliancy, labour, impurity, social
weakness and vulnerability that is in
turn socially mediated, negotiated and
validated by the deity’s cult. It is hardly
ever a position of the person’s empower-
ment and to think of it as empowerment
may be a result of analysis that views it
as an individualistic activity and not as
one that is sensitive to caste being a form
of gendered labour.
I would like to conclude my argument
about the political questions inherent
within conserving traditional healing.
The biases are obvious and have within
them inherent category fallacies:
(i) To conserve “traditional healing”, if
we indeed did understand all illness as
the experience of being social or political
misfits, we would have to be anti-change
and calcify Indian society, even at the
expense of ruining any possibility of ever
engaging with human rights and change
emerging from within that same society.
It would be better to engage with mod-
ernisation and develop its concept in a
further nuanced manner than simply
critique it as western or colonial, since
the desire to “conserve native tradition”
is equally orientalist and colonial.
(ii) To superimpose the individualistic
category of “healing” and “alternative
modernity” on complex caste and gen-
der dynamisms that take place between
dominant clans and the way they decide
resource allocations with the help of local
priests, mediums and helpers would be
to operate between bad translations in a
manner that only suits anthropologists
21
COMMENTARY
in keeping their subjects “intact” in lab-
oratory conditions. It overlooks political
movements, especially for human rights,
against caste and gender discrimination
emerging from within the imagined
“subject” or “community”.
Note
1 My own involvement with the Indo-Dutch-
Program-for-Alternative-Development (IDPAD)
project at Bapu Trust, Pune (2003-06) began with
a belief in the restorative benefits of tradition-
al healing. This position gradually changed
during my enduring research and commit-
ment to the issue of gender and caste within
the study of religion and public health
throughout my PhD and afterwards. I came to
see the enormous casteist and non-secular im-
plications of such a standpoint that conflated
categories with its different developmental
histories and meanings that ended with
22
constructing an orientalist world view about
an “other” that further intensified hegemony.
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EPW Economic & Political Weekly