On 5 June
2014 in Brussels, the Flemish skeptics’ society SKEPP hosted a lecture by Dinesh Mishra, an eye
doctor from the State Chattisgarh’s capital Raipur, since 1995
founder-president of the Andh Shraddha
Nirmulan Samiti, or “Committee for Eradication of Superstition” (and Social
Evils). He brought a positive message, testifying of a very necessary but
generally successful struggle against backwardness.
From his
profession, one might deduce that Dr. Mishra focuses on the instances of
medical superstition. Many illiterate people in the backward villages of
Chattisgarh forego taking their cases of illness to a far-away clinic but
instead go to the exorcist (baiga)
around the corner. These pretend to provide a cure by driving out the spirit
who has caused the disease. Moreover, they play a trick on their clients by
“proving” that they really have driven the spirit out by letting him bleed –
producing a blood-like substance by mixing a chemical with water. It is, thus,
needed to inform the common people of the irrationality at work behind this
ordinary trick but mostly behind the belief that diseases are caused by
spirits. What complicates matters is that even a “conversion” to real medicine
need not end the superstitious attitude, e.g. the unnecessary reliance on
antibiotics against all manner of ailments, causing the microbes’ increasing
immunity to antibiotics. Another danger is the tendency to relapse into bad
habits unless the commitment against superstition is regularly reinvigorated.
The most
important work Mishra’s association does, however, is protecting women against
allegations of witchcraft and the ensuing “punishments”. A video was shown of
testimonies by women who had suffered witchcraft allegations, or by murdered
women’s next of kin. It appears that in Chattisgarh and the surrounding states,
dozens of women are killed every year because they are suspected to have cursed
someone and caused a misfortune that befell him. Thus, a woman had taken a bath
in a kund, a bathing-pond. After
that, a group of visitors had taken a swim, and the villagers who took a bath
after that, contracted diarrhoea. Therefore, she was accused of having
bewitched the well and caused the epidemic. So, it is a matter of life and
death to expose and neutralize the superstitious assumptions behind these
witchcraft allegation. Fortunately, Dr. Mishra’s and similar associations can
claim quite a few successes where critical situations were prevented from
coming to the worst.
Perhaps due
to the limitations on his English, the doctor did not go into the wider
cultural background of this problem. I would like to contribute the observation
that the belief in witchcraft is not taken out just for the fun of persecuting
these women, but is present throughout these backward sections of society, even
among the affected women themselves. I have to emphasize this point against the
tendency among Western and secularist Indian commenters who take a very naîve
black-and-white view of this problem, as also against the skeptics’ typical
prejudice that unscientific “healers” are only deliberate deceivers. This is
not about wily charlatans versus hapless victims. Many of these exorcists
genuinely believe that their initiation and training has given them real power
to control disease-inducing spirits; deliberate deceivers are a small minority
compared to self-deluded people. And more to the point in this discussion: many
of the affected women, though entirely innocent of the misfortunes allegedly
caused by their spells, do indeed believe in witchcraft. As a social worker
once told me: if you give these illiterate people a little money, men will
spend it right away on drink – and women on witchcraft.
One very
commendable thing about Dr. Mishra’s work is that it is genuine. It is really
directed towards saving women’s lives and eradicating superstition, and not a
front for other agendas. It does not take money from foreign or internal
sponsors. In particular, when Indians declare themselves skeptics (“rationalists”),
they either really are, often as a corollary of their commitment to Marxism, or
they are agents of the Christian mission, resolved to turn the sceptical plank
against Hinduism: they highlight superstitions among the Hindu populace, link
these for the gullible Western public with Hinduism, and keep the Christian
superstitions out of view. These Christian superstitions are not just the
belief in a bleeding Mary statue, though India does have its share of these
too. Neither are they just the miracle healings staged during mass meetings by
Christian preachers such as the visiting American televangelist Benny Hinn. The
core itself of Christian belief, the Resurrection with its salvific effect on
sinning mankind, is very much an untenable belief, criticized no end by the skeptical
movement in the West. So, none of this improper use of skepticism for religious
agendas here.
Dr. Mishra
also had some Hindi booklets with him detailing different parts of his work.
One of them is indeed a reasoned plea against the belief that some particular
woman is guilty of some calamity by having pronounced a curse. Another is
against the belief that solar and lunar eclipses are events caused by a
heavenly monster. Already fifteen centuries ago, Indian astronomers gave the
scientific explanations of how sun-earth-moon alignments cause eclipses, yet
millions of villagers still treat eclipses like irregular events and bad omens.
There, he really gives a positive message to these unnecessarily panicky
people: take it easy, folks, there’s nothing to worry about!
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