DISCUSSION

july 12, 2014 vol xlIX no 28 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
170
Healing Shrines, Spirit
Possession, Agency of Women
A Rationalist Revisit
T V Venkateswaran
T V Venkateswaran (tvv123@gmail.com) is
with the Vigyan Prasar, New Delhi.
This response to Shubha
Ranganathan (The Rationalist
Movement against Quack
Healing: Critical Questions,
EPW, 4 January 2014) argues
that to characterise the activities
of organisations such as the
Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti
as mere benevolent paternalism
is misplaced.
W
hat is the place of quack heal-
ers and local healing practices
in the society? Faith healing
shrines such as the Mahanubhav temple
in Maharashtra are better seen as sites of
refuge rather than sites of superstition.
Further, practices such as trance and spirit
possessions provide alternative subject
positions and act as a powerful tool for
expressions of womens agency. Thus
these act as a socially acceptable form
of protest, argues Shubha Ranganathan
in her recent article in the pages of this
journal (The Rationalist Movement
against Quack Healing: Critical Questions,
EPW, 4 January 2014).
The alleviating role of these shrines has
been highlighted elsewhere too (Davar
and Lohokare 2009). Along the way
Ranganathan has taken up the cudgels
against the rationalist movement in gen-
eral and the Andhashraddha Nirmulan
Samiti (ANS) in particular saying that
anti-superstition venture to launch a
sweeping attack against all local healing
practices, including shrines that provide
shelter for those in distress would be
tantamount to throwing the baby out
with the bathwater, particularly in the
context where there are limited com-
munity options for women in distress.
She also questions whether the agenda
of social reform justies an aggressive
crusade against non-rational beliefs and
practices. The article raises several
questions pertinent to mental health-
care in contemporary Indian society,
role practices like spirit possession play
in regulation, maintenance and repro-
duction of local forms of sociality and
the relevance of reform and transforma-
tive agenda of rationalist movements.
Indeed a number of anthropological
studies have shown that possession
provides women with a culturally sanc-
tioned medium for articulating their dis-
tress, and have mentioned its role in al-
leviating social tension and expressing
individual distress and protest against
conditions of exploitation, lack of con-
trol, and moral dislocation (Lewis 1966;
Gomm 1975; Csordas 1983). Recent
works have moved beyond this to ex-
plore how such trance experiences are
constitutive of womens sense of selfhood
and are ways of apprehending alterna-
tive modes of being through the actions
of the spirits/possessed (Lambek 1989;
Peiderer 1988). Such instrumental and
strategic use of trance and possession
by socially disadvantaged and status de-
prived individuals focus public attention
on their plight and may achieve some
redress. However they are not social
transformative actions for the very
reason that such protests are socially
reproducing ones.
Human Rights Violations
The bulk of those who frequent these
healing temples is made up of women
who face major upheavals or conicts in
their family relationships, and are often
divorced, childless or whose husbands
have remarried. Usually these women
are traumatised, but do not exhibit seri-
ous mental illnesses. They are incited by
an unendurable familial situation and
the discourse of possession/trance pro-
vides them with surrogates to express
their emotions and feelings, akin to a
placebo, a process central to mental
healing. The communal atmosphere in
these shrines offers a therapy-manag-
ing group ambience while the rituals
performed there distract their attention
from the traumatic events in their lives.
Their belief in the curing powers of the
deity may give them a sense of power to
do something about it, thereby providing
a cure, or at the least providing mental
solace from the depression, anxiety
and paranoia. In addition, the healing
shrines provide a refuge, and in some
cases a permanent home to these bat-
tered women. While this is the brighter
side of the picture, on the other side are
the seriously mentally ill patients.
DISCUSSION
Economic & Political Weekly EPW july 12, 2014 vol xlIX no 28
171
Dargahs (Su Islamic shrines) like
the one at Erwadi in southern Tamil
Nadu and the Khwaja Kabir dargah in
Nandre at Sangli in Maharashtra with
their alleged curing powers are the last
resort for most families who have a pa-
tient with serious mental illness. Given
up by the medical care system as hope-
less cases these seriously mentally ill
patients are brought by their families to
these healing shrines with alleged cura-
tive powers. What happens to them? In
his study on the Mahanubhav temples,
Skultans (1987) notes that these pa-
tients do not receive any form of treat-
ment or special ritual attention. If they
become violent or unmanageable dur-
ing their stay in the temple, the help of a
local psychiatrist is resorted to. Thus,
although these shrines have a reputa-
tion for curing the mentally ill, in fact
other than mild cases of trauma or de-
pression, the efcacy of cure is indeed
suspect. In many of these healing temples
the mentally ill patients are chained
and tightly bound and kept in conne-
ment. In fact the Mahanubhavs pride
themselves on the harsh treatment meted
out to the spirits (read patients) whereas
in other healing temples the spirits are
appeased and placated through luxury
gifts and fancy food. The appalling con-
ditions of living and violence perpetrated
in the name of treatment in many of
these centres are well known, vindicat-
ing the rationalists crusade against
human rights violations.
Minochas (1980: 219) argument that
treatment choice depends upon availa-
bility, accessibility and quality of care
provided by the diverse systems is
worth recalling. In fact the poor and
underprivileged lack resources and there
are no real choices before them other
than resorting to these healing shrines.
Given this reality, harnessing the tradi-
tional healing centres for providing
mental healthcare is but a pragmatic
imperative. The rationalists while dis-
missing belief in the supernatural curative
powers of such shrines are not demand-
ing their criminalisation but pointing to
the much needed reform and u pkeep of
these places.
Psychological problems are often seen
as personal rather than sociological, or
as having occurred as a consequence of
a set of undesirable choices. Insofar as
trauma is seen as personal, the cure
would point to nurturing behavioural
change, in which the patients are
expected to work on attitudes to adapt
themselves to society. Rationalist move-
ments need to recognise that the solida-
rity offered to the battered women by
the traditional healing centres or
through modern shelter homes is essen-
tial and important. However such highly
individualised narratives miss the larger
socio-economic picture.
The part played by domestic tragedy
in engendering trauma is great and thus
the aficted persons are not conned to
one social class, yet the question what
categories of person most frequently
succumb to spirit possession and gure
most prominently in possession cults
(Lewis 1966: 309) is pertinent here.
Anxious newly wed women, women who
fail to conceive, suffer recurrent miscar-
riages, do not bear a son after many years
of wedded life, whose married life seems
on the verge of collapse, and particularly
those in the shackles of patriarchy are
often the ones who are possessed by the
ghost. These ghosts appear not to
wander aimlessly through the Indian
village culture, but are seen only at times
of stress and seem to attack the soft spots
of the social order (Opler 1958). Basic
issues related to property rights, con-
sumption of resources, sexuality, poverty
and social construction of gender need
to be articulated adequately before we
forward plati tudes on the alleged heal-
ing power of such shrines.
Tradition and Inequity
Like the story of the mythical Gandhari
who voluntarily went around with a
blindfold because her husband was born
blind, womens responsibility for the
health and well-being of the family is
given a novel and literal interpretation
in these healing temples. Examining the
gathering of large number of women in
the Mahanubhav temples, Skultans (1987)
points out that women (usually mothers
or wives) accompany the sick and are
expected to go into trances as a means
of alleviation of the sick. Women see
this transformation into patienthood as
resulting from their devotion to their
families. Indeed, they pray that the
illness be transferred from their sons,
husband or daughters to themselves. It is
held that going into a trance will force
the afiction away from the original
patient to the caregiver woman (wife or
mother). Thus women cultivate trances
as a sacricial device to ensure the
health and well-being of the rest of the
family. Only the truly myopic would
miss the undertone of reinforcing the
traditional cultural stereotypes that
reproduce patriarchy. To be blind to the
role of unacceptable social norms, patri-
archy, caste, hierarchical social structures
and inequality in the engendering of the
stress, and celebrate the traditional
uncritically would be as diabolical as not
seeing the hidden hand of neo-liberalism
in the rampant farmers suicides and
offering them courses in the art of living!
Beyond the Traditional
The traditional is often uncritically
and unconditionally celebrated (almost
romantically even) as antithesis of
modern and hence is expected to cre-
ate an alternative to neo-liberal capital-
ism. However as the case studies of Ong
in Malaysia (1998) and Morsy in Egypt
(1991) show neo-liberal capitalism co-
opts the traditional and modern into
its service. In their studies set in the ex-
port zones of these two countries, they
describe how in their thwarted desire
for attaining high production targets,
the multinational-driven sweatshops
producing computer chips and modern
industrial products conne young women
workers to the work bench, even regu-
lating their use of toilets and at times
intrusively questioning their female
problems. Experienced as moral disor-
ders, symbolised by lth and dangerous
sexuality in these settings, women work-
ers seek remedies. While some workers
called for increased discipline, others
argued for Islamic classes in the factory
premises to regulate interactions (includ-
ing dating) between male and female
workers. Some socially acceptable ways
of rebelling against authority such as spirit
possession are thus mustered as muted
opposition to the inequitable inhuman
treatment that violate moral boundaries.
DISCUSSION
july 12, 2014 vol xlIX no 28 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
172
The spirit imagery gives symbolic ex-
pression to the workers fears and pro-
tests against the social conditions in
these factories. However, these inchoate
signs of moral and social chaos were
routinely recast by the management into
an idiom of mental sickness and were
used to isolate the more vocal protesters.
On the other hand traditional exor-
cism was sponsored by the management
to purify the workplace and thus nul-
lify the expressed grounds of the work-
ers protest. Global capitalism will show
no qualms about deploying the tradi-
tional as much as it would muster the
modern to its ends. However much
one tries the traditional socially accept-
able forms of resistance would only go
so far, and ultimately for the ameliora-
tion of working conditions one would
have to necessarily resort to modern
forms (even if they are not socially ac-
ceptable) of organisation and protest
like the trade unions.
Beyond Localised Dissent
Rationalist movements do not claim to
speak for women; although they speak
about women and with them. Insofar as
our subjective experiences are so to
say theory-laden (and hence guided par-
tially by the world views we hold; how-
ever incomplete, and fragmented these
world views are) natural experiences
would be guided only by those world
views that we have access to from
our immediate environment. The world
view that we learn from our immediate
environment in most cases in India reeks
of inequity, exudes casteism and xeno-
phobia and stinks of patriarchy. In this
context there is a particular role for the
enlightenment project of presenting a
rational world view as a humane, liber-
ating and alternative framework before
women (and other sections of society).
Therefore to characterise the activities
of organisations such as the ANS as mere
benevolent paternalism is quite mis-
placed. All social organisations including
the ANS should self introspect on male
domination but that does not preclude
them from acting as vertical agencies
enabling women (or other categories of
disadvantaged sections) beyond localised
protest. It needs to be kept in mind that
the dominant classes (including ab-
stracts like patriarchy) are well fortied
with local customs, social structures,
and norms tilted in their favour and the
struggle against these cannot be localised.
It thus requires verticals.
Just as not all those who argue for the
role of the traditional, place for tradi-
tional healing practices or utility of heal-
ing shrines in providing comfort and
care to the distressed are not all right-
wing religious fundamentalists, so ra-
tionalists who stand by science and pub-
lic reason are not all apologists for the
state or for the state science. I have
elsewhere elaborated on how the elites
and the dominant have abducted the
rhetoric of scientic temper to their
purposes of domination and marginali-
sation (Venkateswaran 2012). This is not
to say that we must abandon the project
of scientic temper but that we must re-
claim it from the dominant. The rational-
ist movement and the peoples science
movements in this country have general-
ly been critical and reexive. The path to
progress is certainly not technocratic but
what we need is a politics imbued with
science and public reason.
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