Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India

Aghor Medicine

Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India

Ron Barrett

Foreword by Jonathan P. Parry

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley . Los Angeles . London University of California Press, one of the most distin- guished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by the author. Chapter 5 was previously published in different form as Ronald L. Barrett, “Self-Mortiﬁcation and the Stigma of Leprosy in Northern India,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 19, 2 (June 2005): 216–30. Copyright © 2005 by the American Anthropological Association. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2008 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barrett, Ron. Aghor medicine : pollution, death, and healing in northern India / Ron Barrett ; foreword by Jonathan P. Parry. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-25218-9 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-520-25219-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Medical anthropology—India—Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh). 2. Aghoris—Rituals. 3. Healing— Religious aspects—Aghoris. 4. Leprosy—Treatment— India—Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh). I. Title. GN296.5.I4B37 2008 306.4'6109542—dc22 2007007627 Manufactured in the United States of America 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10987654321 This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 50, a 100% recycled ﬁber of which 50% is de-inked post- consumer waste, processed chlorine-free. EcoBook 50 is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/astm d5634-01 (Permanence of Paper). For Baliram Pandey

Contents

List of Illustrations ix Foreword xi Jonathan P. Parry Note on Transliteration, Abbreviations, and Names xvii Acknowledgments xix

Introduction 1 1. The Cosmic Sink 29 2. Fire in the Well 57 3. The Reformation 84 4. The Wrong Side of the River 101 5. Dawam and Duwam 119 6. Death and Nondiscrimination 138 Conclusion 167

Notes 187 Glossary 195 References 199 Index 211

Illustrations

figures 1. Map of Banaras (Varanasi), India 2 2. Concrete skull and signboard, Kina Ram Ashram, 2000 3 3. Banaras bathing ghats 30 4. Statue of Baba Kina Ram, Krim Kund, 2000 32 5. Transportive schema of purification 42 6. Transformative schema of purification 46 7. Kamleshwar Baba worshipping at akhand dhuni, 2000 49 8. Man bathing grandson, Krim Kund, 2000 64 9. Man feeding vibhuti ash to grandson, Krim Kund, 2000 65 10. Baba Rajeshwar Ram (Burhau Baba), date unknown 86 11. Awadhut Bhagwan Ram (Sarkar Baba), Sonoma, California, 1992 92 12. Baba Siddhartha Gautama Ram (Gautam Baba) performing havan at akhand dhuni, 2000 99 13. Dr. H. N. Uppadhaya making Ayurvedic medicine, Aghor Guru Seva Peeth Ashram, 2001 130 14. Hari Baba and Pryadarshi Baba, Banaras, 2000 151 15. Purification and healing between Aghori healers and non-Aghori patients 183

ix x Illustrations tables 1. Lineage of Baba Kina Ram and his successors 85 2. Twelve top-selling medications manufactured by Kina Ram Ashram 127 Foreword

Jonathan P. Parry

Ron Barrett’s lucidly written and totally absorbing account of Aghor medicine is a landmark addition to the already considerable anthropological and Indological literature on the sacred north Indian pilgrimage city of Banaras. But it is also a major contribution to the sociology of Indian renunciatory traditions, describing the way in which these practices qualify and relativize the values of hierarchy and their place in a pluralistic system of healing practices. Thus, this book also has real sig- nificance for the field of medical anthropology. Barrett’s study is based on more than two years of field research in Banaras; before this period, he had worked there for some months as a trained nurse in a street clinic for leprosy patients and their families spon- sored by a nongovernmental organization. That experience crucially informs his text, and many of his most valuable and original insights are about the relationship between Aghori ascetics and leprosy patients. Also important is the fact that by the end of his fieldwork, he had become a disciple of the lineage. Participant observation is a difficult balancing act, and the dangers of toppling one way or another are serious. Barrett remains beautifully poised, writing with the insight and sympathy of an insider while maintaining the analytical detachment of an outside observer. His account is sufficiently reflexive to allow us to locate its author in relation to his subject, yet it scrupulously avoids the self- indulgent autobiographical parading that in some recent writings threatens to drown out the rather more interesting voices of the anthro- pologists’ informants. One of its great merits is that it shows how Aghori

xi xii Foreword philosophy, and the practices it informs, constitutes a profound reflection not only on existential conundrums common to humanity at large but also on some of the most central questions of social science. What, for example, are the roots of social inequality? Why are some people stig- matized? Barrett manages to de-exoticize that philosophy and practice without diminishing their intrinsic interest and distinctiveness. Strategi- cally, he does not discuss the antinomian practices with which the Aghori ascetic is most closely associated in the popular imagination until the end of the book. Aghori practices, one has to admit, are eye-catching—at least given a bald account of them. They supposedly include coprophagy and necrophagy and the consumption of other highly polluting substances, the use of skulls as food bowls, the offering of menstrual fluids to the sacred fire, the practice of meditation while seated on a corpse, pro- longed periods of ascetic austerities at the cremation ground, and the dispensation of blessings to lay householders by means of a beating. The logic behind them is the fundamental unity of divine creation and the need to deeply internalize an understanding of that unity to attain salvation. Aghori practice calls for devotees to realize their identity with the rest of the cosmos and to confront their mortality. The adept must aim to achieve a mental state of nondiscrimination that recognizes the divine as all-pervasive and omnipresent. In the ultimate scheme of things, the opposition between the pure and the impure, and hence between the Brahman and the Untouchable, is illusory. Caste, and other forms of social hierarchy, is thus radically relativized. Consistent with that fact— as Barrett informs us in chapter 1—the Aghor tradition developed as “an ideology of resistance to the pervasive social inequalities and power dynamics of Banaras during the British Raj.” The immediate end is a particular state of mind. The antinomian practices are a specific—but not exclusive—means to it. Though they provide a faster route to attain- ing that state than others, they make for a more dangerous path to travel, and madness and death threaten the adept whose ascetic discipline proves inadequate. In the exemplary case, however, they yield extraordinary and miraculous powers. By virtue of these powers, the Aghori is capable of acting in the world as a worker of wonders and as a healer of the most recalcitrant of human illnesses. In recent decades, however, the association between the Aghori ascetic and these extreme practices—of which my own earlier account (Parry 1982) had attempted to make some sense—has been deliberately down- played. The sect has undergone significant reform, and today the domi- Foreword xiii nant strand in its ideology focuses on social service to the truly disadvan- taged over the quest for individual salvation—or, perhaps better, stresses the first as a means of achieving the second. Barrett vividly brings the story up to date.1 Under the initial inspiration of the late Awadhut Bhag- wan Ram, lay Aghori disciples now run schools for street children and leprosy clinics; and some one hundred Aghori ashrams exist in various parts of northern India as well as one in California. In the popular imagination, the sect’s treatment of leprosy wounds has progressively dis- placed the perception that the Aghori’s preeminent ascetic austerity is the contemplation of corpses and the consumption of human flesh. Gone are the days when the now-eased-out boatmen and “untouchable” Dom funeral attendants from the ghats were the most regular visitors to the Kina Ram Ashram. These groups have been replaced by a much larger number of mainly middle-class and high-caste devotees. Indeed, the disciples of the lineage now include millionaires, nationally important dig- nitaries (including three state governors), and senior politicians (including one ex–prime minister of India). Clearly, the sect has progressively found its way into mainstream society. The paradoxical consequences of this evolution are predictable, though nonetheless interesting. The world renouncer has been drawn back into the world—for he must now increasingly rely on trusted lay followers to implement his worldly objectives (which, in practice, is apt to mean that he relies on members of his family). Moreover, Aghori social-service projects require material resources that only well-to-do devotees can furnish. This situation is a far cry from the old ideal of the Aghori who scavenges what nobody else wants and can therefore exist in complete independence from material entanglements with the householder. The emphasis on sevam (selfless service) has begun to subvert the renunciate’s asceticism. His disciples meanwhile must remain in society and must at least compromise with its expectations—by participating, for example, in the orthoprax rituals of the wider kinship group and by not too fla- grantly flouting the rules of caste interaction. Moreover, disciples now have a distinct propensity to unconsciously order themselves according to the old rules of precedence—a propensity that their preceptor himself may condone with equanimity. Though his followers may, as if by con- ditioned reflex, queue up for their food in strict order of worldly stand- ing, they now at least dine together. A small increment in equality is better than none. Some accommodation to the world may be necessary to change it and is unquestionably called for in the immediate interests of the Aghori’s new social mission. xiv Foreword

As the disciples represent reform, it has been more a matter of style than of substance. The fundamental philosophy that marks their path remains unchanged. Though all but a few old-style ascetics are now reluctant to own, or explicitly associate themselves with, the more extreme practices with which their sect is linked, all are equally reluctant to repudiate these rituals and to deny that they ever participated in them. Indeed, Barrett suggests that the ideas that these practices embody remain central to Aghori identity and that the Aghori’s cremation- ground austerities are the “bedrock” of their spiritual quest. If, as I see it, they dissociate themselves too radically from these practices, they are likely to lose not only their distinctiveness but also their reputation for the extraordinary supernatural powers that are the basis of their appeal to the laity. Reform, seemingly, cannot go too far without either produc- ing a more anodyne and conventional style of religiosity that is almost indistinguishable from that of numerous other sects or provoking a back- lash reassertion of “traditional” sectarian practices. Which of these two theoretical possibilities is more likely to win out is not yet clear. Ordinary householders tap the miraculous powers that the Aghori attain through austerities for all kinds of purposes, from pursuing bureaucratic advancement and examination success to seeking cures for psychiatric disorders. The commonest afflictions for which ashram visitors seek relief, however, are infertility and a group of dermatological disorders that are classified as kushth rog. These disorders include leprosy and leukoderma, which people see as subspecies of the same sick- ness (though they are biomedically unrelated). As Barrett brings out, both barrenness and kushth entail a kind of social death. Reproductive failure jeopardizes the continuity of the descent line and thus represents an egregious dereliction of duty to the ancestors. A barren wife is the epitome of inauspiciousness. Leprosy is the epitome of pollution and untouchability. The leprosy patient is the virtual prototype of the outcast and—socially speaking—the disease infects the patient’s family, which by extension suffers a “courtesy stigma” that can ruin the marriage prospects of all of its children. Cremation is symbolically constructed as a sacrificial offering of the self to the gods (Parry 1994). The corpse of a leper is, however, unfit for the sacrificial fire of the cremation ground (which is otherwise a great leveler and destroyer of sin) and must therefore be immersed in the Ganga River. By dressing the sores of the “leper,” the Aghori demonstrates that he is even less discriminating than fire and even more capable of absorbing sin and pollution.