“Spirits and demons are only projections of man’s own emotional impulses”
Totem and Taboo, Freud (1913)
“Failure in Love, Evil-Eye of the Enemy, Lack of Progeny, Loss in Business, Alcoholism of Husband, Dispute of Property, Daughters Marriage, Neighbours’ Envy …..All Problems Solved! Contact the Famous Tantrik Mia Abu Hasan aka Bangali Baba! In Town Just for Ten Days”.
Pamphlets, wall writings and announcements on a megaphone like the above are fairly common not only in little moffusil towns and villages dotted across the Indian sub-continent, but in big metropolitan towns with glitzy malls, PVRs, MacDonalds and IT centres. The Drugs and Magic Remedies Act enacted doubtless as a result of the pernicious western influence lies in a corner, and from all accounts babas, tantriks, pirs are flourishing as people flock to seek solutions.
It is not just ignorant masses flocking, scientists can be found performing pujas at the time of eclipses pleading for Shani (Saturn) to release the moon. The radical science- teaching program started by a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Kishore-Bharti in Central India with the hope that the scientific temper inculcated in children would lead them to a questioning of social inequities, found that pre-dominantly the curiosity remained compartmentalized and did not result in a movement for egalitarian social change.
Nehru’s vision of modern India with his famous ‘dams are modern temples’ is reflected in the fundamental duty of every citizen to develop a scientific temper and spirit of enquiry under the Constitution. Dozens of engineering colleges, science institutes, IITs(Indian Institute of Technology), medical colleges, research bodies are scattered through the length and breadth of India along with temples, mosques, dargahs and gurudwaras. Mythology and History coalesce in Secular India. At times, archaeological evidence looks like a bit player in comparison to the power of myths and legends.
The Government of India planned to break Adam’s Bridge a chain of limestone shoals off the southeastern coast of India and northwestern coast of Sri Lanka in order to facilitate the passage of ships. There was a public outcry that Ramsetu – the bridge built by the followers of Lord Rama in the epic Ramayana for the armies to cross the sea to fight the Demon-King Ravana in Lanka – was going to be destroyed by the Government. The ‘Save the Ramsetu’ campaign claimed that pictures taken by NASA in USA showed an old man-made bridge between Rameswaram and Sri Lanka. A Public Interest Petition against the breaking of the limestone shoals was filed before the Supreme Court of India in 2007. The Court not only entertained the petition but granted a stay and directed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to examine the matter. The ASI filed an affidavit stating that there was no historical or scientific evidence of the existence of Lord Ram or Ramsetu as a man-made bridge. This lead to an uproar led by the main Opposition Party, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). The Government hurriedly withdrew the affidavits and in a further effort at damage control suspended two officials of the ASI to assuage feelings.
The controversy about the exact birth-place of Lord Rama (Ramjanmabhoomi), the rathyatra led by Advani the Leader of Opposition in a toyata in lieu of a horse drawn carriage, the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 and the subsequent communal riots and killings are well known. It is not so much in public memory that in 1993 the Central Government had referred the issue of the existence of Ram Mandir at the site of the Babri Masjid to the Supreme Court as a question of public importance requiring consideration by the Court. To its credit the Supreme Court declined to go into the matter and give an opinion and returned unanswered the Presidential Reference.
The demolition of Babri Masjid resulted in an upsurge of Hindu religious sentiment and catapulted the BJP into power at the Centre. Jagmohan, the tourism and culture minister in the BJP led government, launched and spent public money on a huge initiative involving the ASI in excavations and satellite tracking of extinct channels of flow and pools of water to prove the existence of the mythical Saraswati river. As per myth Saraswati, originating in the Himalayas is the ‘gupt’ – secret invisible third river which meets Ganga and Yamuna at the Triveni Sangam (confluence) at Prayag, present Varanisi. It was an attempt to counter the communist and pseudo-secularist historians and establish the truth that the river Saraswati, deified as Goddess of wisdom and learning, was the magical nerve centre of India’s original glorious civilization. After the change of government funding was stopped and the project abandoned by the Congress government.
The assimilative power of Hinduism ensures no sharpening contradictions between the age of rationality and science and the magic world of, spirits, myths, superstitions and religion. NASA pictures, toyatas and satellite tracking go hand-in-hand with Ramsetu, Ramjanmabhoomi and Saraswati. In fact the age of science has made everything in India scientific. Astrology with planetary movements and their influences on human lives has always claimed to be a science. Efforts were made to obliterate the distinction between astronomy and astrology during the BJP era. Each and every form of therapy from the invisible healing rays of Reki travelling through space to the Sidha system of medicine with channels of energies flowing in veins offers a science. Vastu a system of architecture and design based on directional alignments, now is a vast science spanning interior decoration, sculpture, art and aesthetics. It has spawned a stable full of experts, consultants and professors contributing to our well being and happiness.
At the level of the individual newspapers abound with stories of people duped by offers by sadhus of turning brass into gold, along with the modern version of converting wads of black papers to dollars. Similarly, stories about young women being taken to ‘holy’men to be cured and being sexually harassed are legion and point to the deception and exploitation in the arena. However, it is the phenomenon of being cured of ailments by visiting pirs, dargahs, temples which offers an interesting interface of the frameworks of faith and science. As a student of psychotherapy, led by our professor who had assisted Sudhir Kakar in research for the insightful book ‘Shamans, Mystics and Doctors’ , a group of us visited the Balaji temple, near the town of Alwar in Rajasthan. The main deity of the temple is Balaji, commonly known as Hanuman in other parts and attracts a large numbers of people for the healing of psycho-somatic ailments as well as mental illnesses like dramatic alterations of personality and behavior, diagnosed in popular parlance as being possessed by “bhut-pret”(malignant evil spirits). Hanuman is associated with bravery, and there is local legend as to the divine healing powers of Balaji. The temple is famous for the exorcising of the evil spirits, a process brilliantly described by Kakar, and involves inflicting punishment to drive away the bhuta.
On reaching the temple we find a big board prominently displayed listing the directions of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The Commission has outlawed the chaining of people, the putting of weights and sundry other measures of this nature – traditionally used all over India to drive away evil spirits, as violations of human rights! Ambivalent about the development, we enter the temple. Our clothes, body language and behavior proclaim our metropolitan identity as we stand together as an alienated island from the masses, the very picture of inspectors from NHRC to check malpractices. Feeble attempts by a few of us at talking with people who have come for healing does not result in much conversation.
I change into the traditional north Indian dhoti for men and a saffron top and with long hair and beard blend into the atmosphere of Hindu religiosity. We go towards the house of the elder brother of the Mahant (head priest) a few kilometers away and discover that the ‘action’ has all moved out of the temple due to the intervention of the modern secular state in the shape of the NHRC guidelines. Groups of people singing bhajans (religious hymns) are all along the road. The patient group is predominantly comprised of swaying young to middle aged women in a trance. Around them are mostly men and a couple of older women singing bhajans accompanied by the manjira and dholak (folk percussion instruments). After a short distance, the group stops, generally near a peepul tree, believed to be the abode of bhuts and prets as well as of the female counterparts the chudails and dayans. Two of the women lie down and get more and more unbelievably heavy huge stones piled on their frail bodies to drive out the bhut. Some of the women are crying or laughing, others angry and hurling abuses. Women are being constantly egged on and in a sense to ‘let-go’ and enter into a trance. A part of myself is outraged that rather than empowering and changing their oppressive lives, the exorcism offers just a safety valve to vent pent up fury and hurl abuses against husbands and mother-in-laws, and then to again return to the same restrictive life. Another part realizes that intervention would serve no constructive purpose except invoke the ill-will, if not wrath of the community.
I am deliberately standing a bit apart from my psychology student gang which is looking as alienated as ever, to avoid identification with them and start talking to a young man. They are from a village near Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh. I am familiar with the culture and language having grown up in the town of Agra of Taj Mahal fame, which falls in the same region. The visit to Balaji is an annual occurrence. Each year the family members and the patients from neighbouring villages and some regulars get together hire a truck and come to Balaji. There are a number of dharamshalas to stay and cheap eating places around the temple for the large number of people who come to seek Balaji’s help. This particular group has a young hysterical man swaying too. Suddenly to my consternation the young man falls at my feet and keeps begging for forgiveness. The modern progressive secular within me who will not let younger nieces and nephews even touch his feet (hindu custom indicating respect for elders) rebels. However, my own cultural upbringing in a hindu household has sufficiently cued me, I lift the young man embrace and bless him.
We again start walking as a group, as I feel increasingly at ease and contemplate joining in the singing of the bhajans, the group stops near a tap. It is searingly hot, welcoming the break I bend to wash my face and drink water. The hysterical young man is next to me and as I straighten directs a young women in a trance to lie at my feet. The swaying woman promptly lies down with her forehead on my feet. Instinctively I pull my foot away, feel extremely uncomfortable as it is a woman, wonder where this is going and am un-nerved at the prospect of a number of women falling at my feet. I slowly manage to extricate myself from the group, aware that too abrupt a departure may well precipitate some reaction, and walk back. Am wondering who did I represent for the young man? Who was he seeing looking at me? His Father/ grandfather whose forgiveness he must seek. What was the young man projecting on to me –omniscience and omnipotence-lying at my feet and looking up to what may appear to him to be a towering figure with long white hair and beard! Maybe to him it may have appeared to be Mahakal Bhairav, the deity at Balaji, who doles out the punishment to the bhut.
The incident gives a glimpse at an experiential level of the psychological processes at play which may offer an explanation within a rational framework for the cure and improved emotional health of those seeking the help of pirs, babas and gurus. Far more people suffering from mental illnesses are helped by the traditional healing methods in India than by the tiny number of clinical psychologists in the arena. Clearly there is a kind of regression of an adult to an earlier state. This could make for a receptivity and child-like faith which would contribute to the therapeutic success of the suggested course of action– tying an amulet to ward of evil, putting rice grains in a certain pattern or forming certain sacred words or verses in a vessel and drinking water from it or a myriad similar things. Along with feelings of being ‘little me’ would be projection of great power, strength, wisdom on to the pir, baba or guru. This would imbue the actions like putting the hand on the head of the supplicant with great mystical power contributing to feeling better. At times blessings may expiate feelings of guilt for perceived transgressions committed by the individual. Akin partly to the process in a psychoanalytic setting, along with projection may be a degree of identification with the Baba contributing to improved emotional health of the suffering soul.
Individual cases of hysteria like the bulk of patients at Balaji apart, India sees periodic outbreaks of mass hysteria. In 1995, a devotee offering milk on the morning of September 21st to the idol of Ganesha in a temple in South Delhi reported that the deity drank the milk. The word spread like lightening and deities all over north India in temples were reported to be drinking milk. Thousands of people thronged to temples resulting in mile long queues and huge traffic jams. The news crossed international borders and deities in temples in Britain, Nepal and Canada were reported to be drinking milk. Scientists talking of capillary action and surface tension cut no ice and people testified to having observed the occurrence. In a similar instance in 2001 mass panic spread in Delhi about a monkey man wearing a helmet with glowing red eyes attacking people, reportedly sighted by dozens of people. The police even circulated a description of the monkey man in efforts to catch him.
Quite apart from such occasional phenomenon, Sathya Sai Baba who passed away in April had a huge following which devoutly believed that the Baba produced not only vibhuti (ash) but watches and other objects out of thin air for his devotees. Freud looked upon belief in such ‘omnipotence of thought’ as akin to the immense belief of primitive man in the power of his wishes: “The basic reason why what he sets about by magical means comes to pass is, after all, simply that he wills it” (Freud 1913, p.83). Explaining that the emphasis is upon ‘his’ wish, Freud proceeds to link it with infantile narcissism of a child which initially satisfies itself in a hallucinatory manner.
Like a Pandora’s box, the cocktail of magic, spirit, rationality and logic throws up strange entities in India. In a recent interview , Justice P.N. Bhagwati ex-Chief Justice of India and pioneer of judicial activism and public interest litigation, a staunch devotee of the late Sai Baba states: “As a professional, each time I would sit down to write a judgment at 5 o clock in the morning, I was only writing what my God dictated. Bhagwan held my hand as I put pen to paper”.
