From Harmless Charlatanry to dangerous Superstition

My friend is not the only one who is stuck in between medicine and superstition. Here in India, there are so many people who know that they have to go and see a doctor when they are ill but they nevertheless would not skip the ceremonies and rituals that their religion and tradition thought to be right. Not only that – they even go to quite obvious charlatans who pretend to cure their diseases in miraculous ways. As I already said, their big problem is that they still don’t only rely on such methods, they need the doctor, too! There are so many examples of this that I thought I give you another one.

When I was a teenage boy, we were living in town. In the area where we lived, there was a man who was popular for being able to cure jaundice. He was not a doctor, not a pharmacist or of any similar profession. He was a Sadhu, a religious man who was believed to have reached such a high level of consciousness that his methods could save a jaundice patient.

When one of our neighbours fell ill with jaundice, I accompanied him to the Sadhu to seek treatment. The procedure was quite simple: The Sadhu gave our neighbor pieces of something that looked like tree bark, told him to sit down and place this bark on his head, slightly bending forward. The Sadhu took a jug in his hand and poured water over the head of our neighbor and of course over the herbs that were lying on top of it. The water in the jug was clear but once it touched the bark, it started flowing further in a deeply yellow colour over our neighbour’s face. The Sadhu immediately explained that this yellow colour was the jaundice leaving the body. Obviously the patient was amazed and hopeful that it would help!

I was already in that time, as a teenager, doubting the magical powers of this Sadhu, wondering what kind of herb or bark that had been – I was sure it was a chemical reaction of that thing and the water which made the water turn yellow. It may seem ridiculous to many readers but people believed this man and he was very popular for his ‘treatment’!

Needless to say however that our neighbor still went to the regular doctor… no trust in his superstition, no trust in the doctor either!

There are so many such people who claim to treat all kinds of diseases with magic-like methods. And there are many others who go to them to get treated on top of the medical treatment they are already receiving. They undergo surgery to have kidney stones, cancer cells and other parts of their body removed but additionally they ask a magician to do some tricks and create the illusion he had cured them.

This is on a relatively harmless level but when you go into the villages, in more rural parts of India, you will find that there is much more superstitious belief which even gets dangerous. People pay exorcists to get out the ghosts and spirits that have befallen loved ones – even if they are just suffering from a normal disease. These methods range from simply strange to cruel and thus highly dangerous for the victim. This is called ‘Tantra’ in India – and it brings you back in medieval times. People even in these times kill women who are accused of witchcraft.

Of course our neighbor or my friend would never believe that someone is a witch and should be killed. They are superstitious but on another level, not as much and still a little bit connected to the modern, progressing world. Nevertheless I believe that by their behavior they contribute to these extreme forms of superstition. They won’t let it die but keep on visiting charlatans, holding superstition alive!