Faith Healing at a Muslim Shrine in Gujarat, India

Faith Healing at a Muslim Shrine in Gujarat, India:

Exploring the Site, Subject, and Ghost

A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities

2019

SABAH M I SIDDIQUI

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

LIST OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ...... 5 LIST OF IMAGES ...... 5 ABSTRACT ...... 6 DECLARATION ...... 7 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ...... 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 9 THE AUTHOR ...... 11 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION ...... 12 GLOSSARY ...... 13 INTRODUCTION ...... 15 1.1 What is Faith Healing? ...... 15 1.2 Faith Healing in India ...... 17 1.3 Literature Review ...... 19 1.3.1 Anthropological approaches ...... 19 1.3.2 Psychological approaches ...... 22 1.3.3 Thematic approaches ...... 23 1.4 Rationale for the research ...... 29 1.5 Research Questions ...... 30 1.6 Plan of the thesis ...... 31 METHODOLOGY ...... 33 2.1 Introduction ...... 33 2.2 Setting the scene ...... 33 2.2.1 Introducing Mira Datar Dargah in Unava ...... 35 2.3 Methodology ...... 40 2.3.1 Modular approach to research ...... 40 2.3.2 Modules and Methods ...... 43 2.4 Ethical considerations ...... 48 2.5 Subjective considerations ...... 49 2.5.1 Note on voice of the researcher ...... 50

SECTION I – SITATION ...... 51 POSITIONALITY ...... 52 3.1 Introduction ...... 52 3.2 Dilemmas of the field ...... 52 3.3 Positionality ...... 55 3.4 A reverse conclusion: Equalising positions...... 59 HISTORY ...... 62 4.1 Introduction ...... 62 4.2 Starting fieldwork in Gujarat ...... 62 4.3 Islam in medieval Gujarat ...... 65 4.4 Dargahs and syncretism ...... 69 4.5 Communal conflict...... 71 4.6 Conclusion: Embodying conflict ...... 73 SITE ...... 76 5.1 Introduction ...... 76 5.2 The spatial turn ...... 77 5.3 The process of generating maps ...... 79 5.4 Types of topography ...... 82 5.5 Caste as master signifier ...... 86 5.6 Siting theory: Dalit Standpoint ...... 91 5.7 The value of syncretism ...... 95 5.8 Misplaced methods ...... 97 5.9 Conclusion ...... 99 SECTION II - SUBJECTIVATION ...... 101 NARRATIVE ...... 102 6.1 Introduction ...... 102 6.2 The narrative turn ...... 102 6.3 The process of generating narratives ...... 104 6.4 Troubling the subject ...... 107 Narrative 1 ...... 107 Narrative 2 ...... 113

Narrative 3 ...... 121 Narrative 4 ...... 128 Narrative 5 ...... 134 Narrative 6 ...... 140 6.5 Conclusion ...... 145 SUBJECT/GHOST ...... 146 7.1 Introduction ...... 146 7.2 Between faith healing and medicine ...... 146 7.3 The mainstream and the marginal ...... 147 7.4 The state of the State ...... 149 7.5 The shuffling symptom ...... 150 7.6 Between (not) seeing and (not) speaking ...... 153 7.7 Subject to Ghost ...... 156 7.8 Ghost as method ...... 158 7.9 Conclusion ...... 160 DISCUSSION ...... 162 8.1 Introduction ...... 162 8.2 Research summary ...... 162 The site ...... 164 The subject ...... 165 The ghost ...... 165 8.3 Other contributions to knowledge ...... 166 Between caste and religion ...... 166 Methodological contributions ...... 167 8.4 Limitations of the project ...... 168 8.5 Future directions for research ...... 169 8.6 Conclusion ...... 169 EPILOGUE ...... 171 9.1 Introduction: Why ghost? ...... 171 9.2 The Manifest: A Ghost Story ...... 172 REFERENCES ...... 183

APPENDIX I - UNIVERSITY RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL LETTER ...... 195 APPENDIX II – CONSENT FORM FOR WALKING INTERVIEWS (ENGLISH VERSION) ...... 196 APPENDIX III – CONSENT FORM FOR NARRATIVE INTERVIEWS (ENGLISH VERSION) ...... 200 APPENDIX IV – INTERVIEW TOPIC GUIDE ...... 204 APPENDIX V – SAMPLE TRANSCRIPT ...... 207 APPENDIX VI – MAPS ...... 217 APPENDIX VII – EXTRACT FROM FIELDWORK DIARY...... 233 APPENDIX VIII – PUBLIC SERVICES IN UNAVA ...... 240

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 - Maps and mapmakers ...... 80

Table 2 - Research subjects interviewed ...... 106

LIST OF IMAGES

Image 1 - Red threads to tie wishes .……………………………………………………34

Image 2 - When wishes are horses… …………………………………………………… 35

Image 3 – Map 15 ……………………………………………………………………………….82

Image 4 - Map 1 ………………………………………………………………………………… 83

Image 5- Map 3 …………………………………………………………………………………84

Image 6- Map 8 …………………………………………………………………………………85

WORD COUNT: 84,020

ABSTRACT

The thesis is an inquiry into the meaning and significance of faith healing at the 500 year old Mira Datar Dargah in the village of Unava in Gujarat, India. The Mira Datar Dargah was selected as the site of this study not only for its historical and cultural relevance, but also due to the government-supported mental health programme attached to it. This study asks questions related to the site of faith healing (shrine of Mira Datar in Unava), the subject (sawwali or devotee, caught between the shrine and the clinic), and the ghost (sign of something missing in accounts of subjectivity). Based on a qualitative paradigm and a postcolonial perspective, this study uses a modular approach to the research by looking at different aspects of the research as modules that benefit from different methodological input.

This thesis is organized in two sections. Section I – Sitation looks at how the site becomes an object of study. Through a historical treatment of the Muslim shrine as a syncretic space, a reflexive analysis of how the researcher comes to a cultural site that has become interpellated by the Global Mental Health movement, and a geographical exploration of the social space around the dargah within the larger ambit of the village through the analysis of sixteen maps generated in this study. Based on the organization of space around the shrine, this section theorizes caste as the master signifier in Indian society, and builds toward an analysis of boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Section II – Subjectivation takes a narrative approach to the subject of faith healing situated between discourses of faith and science. With the generation of six narratives by sawwalis, this section locates the shuffling symptom demonstrated by families at the shrine as having clinical significance for studies on faith healing. The narratives also depict the challenges research participants faced in speaking about their affliction, the nature and even the name of it, which is illustrative of the way ghosts escape from narratives by research subjects, which leads this section to propose the Ghost as method for critical research.

This exploratory study brings to critical psychology a new site in faith healing shrines, a subject theorized through caste identity, and the ghost deployed both as an internal critique of the subject, and as a method to investigate lacunae in the social sciences.

DECLARATION

No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.

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To my father, Mohammed Irfan Siddiqui

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research has been made possible by the contributions and support from so many quarters, the map of my gratitude is an atlas of its own. Here is an incomplete one…

My deepest gratitude to my supervisory team - Erica Burman, Rubina Jasani, and Ian Parker, for travelling with me for these years, working through my intransigent reasons that would change by the season, and believing more in me than I could believe of myself. The Discourse Unit and the Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix provided me with intellectual homes. The University of Manchester supported my work with the SEED Research Scholar Award from 2014 to 2017, which made this project feasible in the first place. Special thanks to Artemis Christinaki and Sally Schofield for mopping up my last-minute panic.

I am very grateful to the sawwalis, mujawars, and the people of the village in Unava. My unswerving gratitude to research participants in Unava who took out the time to respond to my strange question, and stayed with me through the chaos of research. Many thanks to Jahangir Ali Sayed and Musir Ali Sayed for showing me the work they do at the Mira Datar Dargah, Chandrakant Parmar and Wahab Ansari for accompanying and guiding me through fieldwork, Mayank and Asha Patel for making me feel at home. The staff of the Altruist was warm and welcoming to me in Unava. Conversations with Hina Saiyed, Bhavna Hemlani, Sushila Zala, Kalpesh Patel, Swaroop Dhruv, Gazala Paul, Hiren Gandhi, and Rita Kothari helped orient my understanding of Gujarati society.

I have survived and made it through the PhD because of the succour of friendship. I have made so many friends (and friendship networks) in institutions of learning; shout-out to my Pune (whatsapp) group, Kimberly Lacroix, Natasha Koshy, and Chantelle Cabral, my Delhi (feminist) group, Karuna Chandrashekar, Shifa Haq, Shraddha Chatterjee, and Akanksha Adya, my Bangalore (postcolonial) group, Ranjini Krishnan and Rakhi Ghoshal, my Manchester (‘Discourse Unplugged’) group, Laura Goodfellow, Luting Zhou, Nafeesa Nizami, and Eyal Clyne. This list would be incomplete without mentioning the conversations I had during this period of solitary study with Anat Greenstein, Annette Rimmer, Bhargavi Davar, China Mills, Denise Mawanda, Emilie Combaz, Emma Clyne, Hannah Berry, Halis Sakiz, Janhavi Dhamankar, Julian Williams, Juup Stelma, Kavita Bhanot, Khatidja Chantler, Khloud Al Khader, Nancy Leaver, Nuria Sadurni Balcells, Owen Dempsey, Persis Taraporevala, Radhika P, Sarah Sheaik, Shubhra Nagalia, Sumaiya Khanam, Suryia Nayak, Tasneem Raja, Terry Hanley, Tiffany Leung, Varun Vishwanathan, Vikas Deepak, Zahra Alijah, and Zehra Mehdi.

To my family, I owe much of my success. First of all to my parents Azra and Irfan Siddiqui, my grandmother Aziza Kazi, and my brother Amin Siddiqui for supporting my never-ending desire to study. In the UK, I found a family home in Swindon with Nadia Shaikh and Sachin Sameer Singh, and in High Wycombe with Rashida Kazi and Shubhana Kazi. My uncle, Najam Siddiqui, called me Dr. Sabah when I 9

was 12; perhaps he knew something about me that I did not. Also thanks to Jawad Khan and Talat Subhani for their support. This research would have been impossible without my mother. She is the sounding-board, proof-editor, tech-support, phone-doctor, ticket agent, patient listener, alarm clock, and cheering squad all rolled into one.

Finally, to remember Rohith Vemula, a PhD scholar I never met. His death on January 17, 2016… that line in his suicide note, “the value of a man reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility”… sharpened my focus on casteism in India and changed the course of this research.

THE AUTHOR

Sabah Siddiqui has received the MSc in Clinical Psychology from Christ University, Bangalore, Postgraduate Diploma in Culture Studies from Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, and MPhil in Psychotherapy and Clinical Thinking from Ambedkar University Delhi. She has been working on faith healing since 2010, and some of her previous research on the topic was published as Religion and Psychoanalysis in India: Critical Clinical Practice in 2016.

Relevant paper presentations:

 ‘Positioning the Subject of Critical Research’ at the British Psychological Society’s Psychology of Women and Equalities Section Annual Conference (July 11-13, 2018) at Cumberland Lode, UK.  ‘Psychoanalytic Narratives in Ethnographic Research’ (February 5, 2018) at the Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix seminar on Pathology Inside and Outside the Clinic at the University of Manchester, UK.  'A Turn to Ghost in Social Science Theorizing' at the International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP) Conference Tokyo 2017: Ethos of Theorizing (August 21-25, 2017) at Rikkyo University, Japan.  ‘Shuffling Illnesses and the Indian Family' at the British Psychological Society’s Psychology of Women Section Annual Conference (July 12-14, 2017) at Cumberland Lodge, UK.  'Between Neutrality and Disavowal: Being Muslim Psychotherapists in India' at the Islamic Psychoanalysis/Psychoanalytic Islam International Conference (June 26-27, 2017) at the University of Manchester,  'The Other of the Other: Psychoanalysis Needs Some New Terms!' at the Islamic Psychoanalysis/Psychoanalytic Islam International Conference (June 26-27, 2017) at the University of Manchester, UK.  ‘The Discourse of the Hysteric in the Temple’ (February 16, 2017) at the Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix seminar on Hysteria: In the University and in the Clinic at the University of Manchester, UK.  ‘Positioning Faith Healing in the Mental Health Care Sector of India’ at the INTAR India Conference 2016 on Trans-Cultural Dialogues about Mental Health, Extreme States and Alternatives for Recovery in Lavasa, India (November 26-28, 2016).  ‘The Subject of Science, Religion and State; Psychological practices in India’ (June 26, 2015) in the 15th International Society for Theoretical Psychology Conference at Coventry University, UK (June 25-30, 2015).  Panel discussant on the Feminist (In)Disciplines and Practices seminar (April 23, 2015) in the Putting Feminist Theory into Practice Seminar Series at University of Manchester.

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

For the sake of readability, words transliterated from Indian languages, and as references to both Islamic and Hindu names, sites, objects, activities, and festivals, are presented without the use of diacritics. Furthermore, to retain the sociolinguistic context of the research fieldwork conducted in rural Gujarat, India, transliterations from Hindi, Urdu, and Gujarati follow the vernacular enunciation instead of the official or scholarly spelling. In the absence of a unified systematic method of transliteration in the region, works cited by other authors may have a slightly different spelling, which will be indicated if necessary. All translations from Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Gujarati, Arabic, or Persian are my own, except where acknowledged. Words and terms that have been used repeatedly are not italicized after their first use since these are deployed conceptually in the thesis.

GLOSSARY

Baba: Old man, father, wise man, or healer spoken with either respect or affection.

Bala: Malevolent force, curse afflicting a person.

Barakah: Spiritual power of a Sufi saint to bless or heal, which can be passed on to the saint’s khadim. See: Khadim.

Basharat: Good omen, revelatory dream.

Buri nazar: Evil eye, malevolent gaze.

Dargah: Shrine constructed for a holy person in Sufi Islam. Related: Mazar: the grave around which the dargah is built.

Dava: Drugs, medicine.

Dua: Prayers, good wishes.

Hazri: The outward appearance of supernatural affliction in the behaviour and speech of a sawwalli (sometimes translated as trance or possession). See: Sawwalli.

Jinn: Being who exists in another dimension to the human realm in Islamic folklore.

Khadim: literally a servant; who serves a higher authority, holy person or saint by attending to either the person or their personal effects after death. See: Mujawar.

Loban: Natural incense burnt for its strong aromatic fumes during the salaami. See: Salaami.

Mujawar: Guardian of a dargah, usually belonging to the lineage of a Sufi saint, healer. See: Khadim.

OBC: Other Backward Castes constituted as socially and educationally disadvantaged groups or communities in addition to the list of SCs and STs protected under Article 340 of the Constitution of India. See: SC; ST.

Pir: Saint or mystic guide in Sufi Islam, informally referred to as Baba in Hindi. See: Baba.

Salaami: Salutations offered to the mazar of a saint, usually at dawn and dusk with an accompaniment of music and burning of loban. See: Mazar; Loban.

Sawwalli: Literally a questioning person; a pilgrim at a Sufi shrine with a supernatural affliction, in the female form with no masculine equivalent

SC: Scheduled Castes constituted as socially, educationally and economically disadvantaged caste groups who are protected under Article 341 of the Constitution of India, previously called “Untouchables” or “Depressed Classes”. Related: Dalit: Those previously called Untouchables, Depressed Classes, and Harijans have adopted the term “Dalit” for themselves.

ST: Scheduled Tribes constituted as socially, educationally and economically disadvantaged tribes or tribal communities who are protected under Article 342 of the Constitution of India.

Ziyarat: Visitation or pilgrimage to Islamic sites.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The Psy-disciplines have, from their inception in the nineteenth century, been required to categorize the normal against the abnormal, in terms of reaction times of animals and humans, in terms of intelligence or ability, in terms of acceptable behaviour of children and adults, or in terms of masculinity and femininity. Collectively referring to psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis, “the psy disciplines are the professional, expert arenas where consequential judgements are made about people’s mental health, behavior, cognitive capacities, personalities, and social functionality” (McAvoy, 2014: 1527). Concerned with dealing with unusual and irrational ways of functioning in society, the psy disciplines brought about the need for a clinical response to irrationality. Nevertheless, there are levels of irrationality, and if one is to follow the modern script, one level of irrationality is religious belief and faith healing.

This thesis looks at faith healing on its own terms by studying a Muslim shrine – the Mira Datar Dargah in Gujarat, India. This shrine is not only well-known for its healing traditions, that has been extensively studied by medical and cultural anthropologists, but also more recently for a mental health programme called the Dava-Dua programme that is managed by a charitable organization, the Altruist, in conjunction with the Ahmedabad Mental Hospital, and funded by the state government. The present study focusses on the shrine by situating it within its historical, political, and geographical location, and through the words of the devotees of the shrine explores the relation of the subject to both faith healing and medical cure. In the process, it comes in contact with the ghosts that trouble and disturb not only the afflicted who are seeking healing, but also the methods employed by the social sciences. This thesis will argue that an in- depth exploration of the site, the subject, and the ghost can contribute to a better understanding of faith healing in India.

1.1 What is Faith Healing?

Faith healing is commonly used to describe the use of religious belief or prayer for the treatment of an affliction that may have natural (physical or biological) or supernatural (spiritual or otherworldly) causes. The term ‘faith healing’ has no anchor, which is to say, it is not weighed down with a strict definition that lays out its exact characteristics, its links with and differences from other forms of treatments. There are several ways in which the nebulous group of healing treatments have been addressed, indigenous

healing, traditional healing, ritual healing, complementary and alternative medicine, non-orthodox medicine, and shamanism being a few.

However to resolve this definitional problematic is to present faith healing as positioned as a contrast to modern medical science. It is simpler to define medicine. Within this comparison, the defining characteristics of medical science is modern, evidence-based, secular, and regulated. This definition from the other side is useful to mark the contours of faith healing. Faith healing is not a science; it is non- modern steeped as it is in tradition and ritual practice; it cannot claim to be evidence-based through an objective and replicable process of research and testing; it is non-secular since it comes from a religious tradition; its practices are unregulated since it is not controlled by a detached body of professionals. This negative definition gestures to the difficulty of delineating the object of study. The contradistinctions between faith healing and medical science set up the problem for this study as well. It is, as if, faith healing is the negative of medical science.

Another distinction that often comes up often is that faith healing is a non-Western phenomenon. In a systematic review of non-orthodox medicine (in contrast to conventional medicine), Gureje et al. (2015) clearly differentiate traditional medicine (TM) from complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). They define TM as, “the sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practice of traditional medicine is based on theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health, and in the prevention, diagnosis, and improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness” (p. 168). Here they acknowledge that most of the literature under review on TM pertains to faith healing. CAM is the adopted practices of TM outside of its culture of origin. The difference between the two is that TM is identified with the indigenous population while CAM is identified as transplanted to a new location by old or new adherents.

“Traditional medicine is more widespread in low-income and middle-income countries than in high-income countries, although it tends to be popular and vibrant in minority cultures in high-income countries. Conversely, complementary and alternative medicine tends to be less culture specific and more widely used in high-income countries” (Gureje et al, 2015: 169). In the UK, the NHS website has its own page on CAM that defines it as, “Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) are treatments that fall outside of mainstream healthcare. These medicines and treatments range from acupuncture and homeopathy, to aromatherapy, meditation and colonic irrigation” (NHS, 2016).1

1 Nonetheless, in 2018, the NHS stopped providing homeopathy medication. A newspaper article by the Independent reported that, “A major taxpayer-funded centre for homeopathic, herbal and alternative medicines will no longer be providing these remedies on the NHS after health service chiefs said homeopathy was “at best, a placebo”. Policy changes by NHS commissioners in London will now end funding for those without robust evidence, in line with national guidance” (Matthews-King, 2018). 16

In India, the term indigenous or spiritual healing is often used.

“On the vast landscape of ‘healing’, a variety of spiritual healing centres have long existed in India, which address the psycho-spiritual needs of communities. Classical texts and other writings (Amarasingham, 1980; Kakar, 1982; Kapur, 1979, 2009) have always included spiritual healing centres within the bounds of mental health healing […] Most mental health professionals see such practices as ‘blind faith’, ‘superstition’, ‘cultural’ whimsy or simply irrational and insane”

Davar, 2014: 274-275

It is evident that “most mental health professionals” position indigenous healing in opposition to psychiatry; within the medical model of mental illness, not only would indigenous healing be seen as interfering in the treatments of the mentally ill, but it would be seen as irrational itself; “Doctors, and that certainly includes psychiatrists, think of themselves as clinicians whose diagnostic and treatment decisions are ‘evidence-based’; and that evidence is ‘scientific’. Other clinicians in the mental health disciplines of psychology, social work and nursing share that perspective” (Incayawar et al, 2009: 2).

The present study is looking at faith healing in its local setting at a dargah in rural India. Rather than positioning it as traditional, alternative, complementary, or non-orthodox medicine, faith healing is operationally defined as a loosely grouped set of treatment regimens for distress and affliction that rely on popular and folk versions of religion, wherein healing activates an expression of faith and belief in the treatment regimen.

1.2 Faith Healing in India

There are many faith healing systems in India coming from different religions and faith-based practices. “In [South] Asia, the following practices are experienced: Bhuta Vidya (see Rao, 1986), Ayurveda, Sahaja, Bhakti and Siddha (Bhugra & Bhui, 1998). Many Indian patients, for example, seek the healing method of Bhuta vidya, a magico-religious procedure, before seeking modern treatment.” (Moodley & Sutherland, 2010: 270). In the present study, the faith healing practices at dargahs will be explored. Dargahs are not particular to India or even South Asia, but are a feature of several Islamicate societies.

“Throughout the Islamic world, shrines of holy saints serve as localized, communally run entities to which other religious institutions such as mosques are often attached (Tyson, 1997). Practices closely attached with these shrines are rituals connected with healing, the production of talismans, and other ‘‘supernatural’’ phenomena. Examples of these shrines can be found in Pakistan, India, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Morocco, etc.”

Pirani et al., 2008: 377

The Indian dargah becomes significant for the present study followinging the events in the past two decades that have positioned it between religious devotion and evidence-based medicine. Dargahs came into prominence in India at the turn of the century with the Erwadi Dargah Tragedy. On August 6, 2001, the Erwadi Dargah in Tamil Nadu caught fire. At its periphery were hundreds of hutments set up over the years by private parties to provide for the hundreds of thousands who make their way through this shrine every year. In some hutments, people, who had been brought there for faith healing, had been kept locked or chained. On that day, 26 people lost their lives in the fire. In the aftermath of this tragedy, a mental health activist group in Delhi moved the court to take action in response to the human right violations of ill and helpless brought to or abandoned at religious sites. Within two months, on October 15, 2001, the Supreme Court of India had adjudicated to ‘conduct a survey on All India basis with a view to identify registered and unregistered asylums as also about the state of facilities available in such asylums for treating mentally challenged’. Through this mechanism of the court, a religious site was being identified as an asylum for the ’mentally challenged’. The phrasing of this court ruling is very significant because it usurps religious discourse into State-backed scientific discourse.

“The ruling, though never forcefully enforced likely because of the vast bureaucratic machinery needed to police the hundreds of religious healing sites frequented by millions in the country, became highly significant for the tone it set for it denied the social and religious context of these healing spaces (Bellamy, 2011) and imposed upon them the medico-legal, psychiatric frame dominant in the country’s official mental health structure.”

Sood, 2016: 769-770

While the effects of the ruling by the Supreme Court of India were felt all over India, it took its most subtle form in Gujarat. Two psychiatrists, Ravindra Bakre and Ajay Chauhan of the Mental Hospital of Ahmedabad, were propelled to action by the Supreme Court directive of 2001 and identified the Mira Datar Dargah in Unava, a village near Ahmedabad as a site for medical and legal intervention. They were of the opinion that mere talk with the healers at the shrine would not bring a solution to the problem and therefore they came up with an idea of situating psychiatric and psychological treatment alongside faith- based healing practices in Unava. This would protect the livelihoods of the mujawars, as well as the other stakeholders in the political economy of the town. At the same time, the Indian State could be reassured that it would be attending to patients suffering from mental illness that have the right to healthcare under the Indian Constitution. Thus, they launched the Dava-Dua programme in 2006 that was to provide psychiatric services free of cost to ‘mental patients’. The alliterative name of the programme presented itself as a collaboration between medicine (dava) from the doctors and prayers (dua) from the healers.

The initial plan was to involve the mujawars into the programme by providing basic training to identify mental health problems in the people who come to the shrine and refer them to the Dava-Dua programme. In 2007, its implementation was taken over by a Non-Profit Organization (NPO) the Altruist,

which runs it to the present day. The model proposed was that the healer would forward a person and/or family to the clinic, the psychiatrist would provide tests and medicines that would be taken back to the shrine for blessing, and the dual action of this programme would have the combined benefits of both treatments. Through negotiation with the mujawars of the dargah, members of the clinical team of the Altruist, headed by senior psychologist Chandrakant Parmar, were allowed to practise inside the premises of the dargah in 2008. The Altruist staff disclosed (in personal conversation) that by 2012 17,000 people had made their way from the dargah to the clinic2. Initially while the clinical team worked inside the premises of the dargah, by 2012 cooperation between the dargah and the Altruist was on the wane, and the Altruist had acquired office premises in the village centre opposite the post office. In 2015, at the time of fieldwork, the Altruist had constructed an office space with two rooms (a clinic and a waiting room that doubled up as a seminar room) right opposite the dargah. Although now face-to-face, the interaction between the shrine and the clinic has diminished incrementally since 2012. Nevertheless, the Dava-Dua programme in Unava is an experimental model, the first of its kind in India. It has been functioning for more than a decade, and is now considered ready to be upscaled with another Dava-Dua programme launched at Erwadi dargah in 2014.

1.3 Literature Review

1.3.1 Anthropological approaches

Faith healing or indigenous healing has been widely studied by cultural and medical anthropologists across the globe. In the Indian context, it has been studied as spirit possession or ritual healing. Frederick Smith states that, “From the period of the British ascendancy in South Asia until the early 21st century, the study of possession in South Asia was almost entirely conducted by anthropologists and other ethnographers who understood possession as a locally enculturated phenomenon” (Smith, 2011). His annotated bibliography lists classic or significant works on possession, trance, and ritual healing in India by Obeyesekere (1970, 2004), Claus (1979), Kakar (1982), Freed and Freed (1993), Kapadia (2000), Keller (2002), Sax (2002, 2009), Dwyer (2003), Flueckiger (2006), Pakaslahti (2008, 2009), and Bellamy (2011), amongst others.

Within medical anthropological scholarship, work on Indian dargahs constitutes a much smaller subset. Carla Bellamy (2011) writes in her ethnography of the Husain Tekri Sharif Dargah that, “In contemporary India, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs commonly seek healing and intercession at the thousands

2 Later I was to discover that these numbers were counted through the footfall method, i.e. each time a person came to their clinic it was counted in the tally, even those who came every fortnight or every month to get their prescriptions filled up. In the current phase of fieldwork, the number of patients who have sought services since its inception is less than 5000 people, with about 1500 clients who have stayed on. 19

of structures built in memory of Muslim individuals, chiefly Sufis and to a lesser extent, martyrs. The most common Hindi/Urdu term for these structures is dargah, a word derived from the Persian noun meaning both ‘portal’ and ‘court’” (p. 57). This description holds true for the Mira Datar Dargah as well.

The pull of the dargah for people from various religious communities is one of its most salient and well- studied characteristics. The dargah is deeply embedded within anthropological scholarship from the 1980s to the 2000s with a particular focus on Indian syncretism3. “Syncretism refers to the synthesis of different religious forms. In Indian context religious synthesis/syncretism has had a positive implication as a foundation and form of resistance to cultural dominance” (Das, 2006: 46). In a country like India where cultural, linguistic and religious pluralism has posed challenges to the construction of a core national subjectivity, syncretic shrines have been heralded for their ability to unite members hailing from different communities. There are scores of prominent Indian temples, dargahs, and churches that have seen the intermingling of religious subjects. Dargahs, in particular, have been studied for the possibilities of Hindu- Muslim unity that they may foster. Roy Burman writes, “According to Gaborieau, the cult of saints has been one of the religious steps which has promoted Hindu-Muslim syncretism in India. The proliferation of Sufism in fact became one of the important mechanisms of ensuring communal harmony between the Hindus and the Muslims” (Roy Burman, 1996: 1211).

When parts of India were conquered and ruled by Muslim invaders from Central Asia4, Sufism and strands of Shi’ism adapted to resident conditions in the Indian subcontinent creating the spread of Islamic practices that had a local flavour. Added to this, the veneration of Muslim saints and martyrs found an echo within Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain communities. Sociologists have seen this as contributing to the pluralism that existed in the region: “Since the late medieval period India witnessed a creative synthesis of Hindu and Islamic civilizations and thus grew a composite tradition, a pluralistic synthesis of the Indo- Islamic tradition including inter-faith convergence” (Das, 2006: 33). To a large extent, dargahs have been conceptualized in anthropological scholarship as liminal spaces where people of different faiths could not only co-exist side-by-side, but also tap into a cultural philosophy that found validation in more than one stream of religious or social practice5.

3 Syncretism is a concept with a long history. It can be traced back to an essay by Plutarch titled, ‘On Brotherly Love’. “Though quarrelling frequently, the Cretans quickly overcame their differences and joined in an alliance when faced with a common enemy. According to Plutarch, they called this synkretismos. Erasmus of Rotterdam took up the term in a generalized way in 1519, when he exhorted Melanchthon to behave peacefully toward the humanists. He derived the word from the Greek synkeránnymi, meaning “to mix together”.” (Schumann & Brakel, 2010: 779). 4 A brief history of Islam’s coming to India with a special focus on Gujarat, and the culture of dargah worship will be elaborated on in Chapter 4: History. 5 Carla Bellamy (2011), writing on the Husain Tekri, mentions that the dargah is both local and cosmopolitan, because it fuses Islamic ideas with stories and traditions of its Rajput environs. “The local aspect of shrines’ authority is further compounded by the culture of the region in which they are located. In the case of Husain Tekrī, I have suggested that Rajput hero narratives and the valorization of martyrs to the Goddess contained therein likely shape the culture of the shrines as well as Rajput perspectives on their efficacy and legitimacy”(Bellamy, 2011: 217). 20

The Mira Datar Dargah, the site for the present study, has had two internationally renowned medical anthropologists engage with it, and produce detailed ethnographies of it from the 1980s till the present: Beatrix Pfleiderer (1988, 2006) and Helene Basu (1998, 2009, 2014). Pfleiderer’s analysis of the dargah as a gendered space where sawwali-s (i.e. devotees of the shrine who have come for faith healing) perform according to their gender roles. This is heightened by the fact that most of the sawwalis who are performing hazri (or the trance that demonstrates that the powers of the shrine are at work) in public are women, with men being not only fewer in number, but also usually performing less violent displays of hazri. Pfleiderer paid particular attention to women at the dargah experiencing hazri. She writes “the ideology of the tomb [of Mira Datar] defines the boundaries of the women analogously to the Hindu or Muslim world picture in India, while the women overstep the boundary when they enter into trance. And they do this in public” (Pfleiderer, 2006: 221). Pfleiderer considers the performance of trance through the body of the woman as an act of necessary cunning in a patriarchal society.

While Pfleiderer has analysed the body of the sawwali, Basu approaches the healing system at the Mira Datar Dargah through the theoretical call of the voice, which she follows as a mediator between psychiatry and faith healing: “Psychiatric models comprehend the voice as a factor guiding the diagnosis of severe mental disorder, whereas models of trance employ the voice as a medium of healing” (Basu, 2014: 328). Basu deploys her analysis of the significance of voice as a mediator not only between ‘Eastern’ healing and ‘Western’ science, but also between other conceptual binaries, “At the intersection of language and the body, the voice is pure enunciation. While the materiality of the voice identifies us as individuals, marking us like our fingerprint, it is a fugitive incidence appearing in the act of hearing. The voice is performative, at once appealing, compelling and evoking emotions” (ibid.).

Pfleiderer and Basu’s finely detailed work has directed the attention of other anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists to this site, and the Mira Datar Dargah is arguably one of the better researched dargahs in India. The increased attention has not gone unnoticed on the ground; mujawars are familiar with researchers making their way to the site for purposes other than devotion. Many mujawars had copies of Pfleiderer’s book The Red Thread: Healing Possession at a Muslim Shrine in North India. It has been read and discussed in the shrine, and the researcher of this study was taken under the fold of the mujawar Sayed Jehangir Ali, with a request to present them with the book that would emerge out of the research. While the gaze of the ethnographer is upon this site, it is returned by the mujawars and sawwalis at the dargah. The mujawars do not find the amount of external observers who make their way there with their fieldwork diaries always comforting, and this is sometimes evident in hostile interactions the researcher has had6.

6 I have written on a hostile but illuminating encounter I had with a mujawar in a previous episode of fieldwork conducted in 2013 (Siddiqui, 2016). A mujawar I had approached for an interview reversed my gaze within his own. I was interviewing him but this was no private space, we were in the dargah and surrounded by a group of women who were under his wing. In a dramatic pronouncement, he said that he was able to perceive the shadow of a strong evil 21

1.3.2 Psychological approaches

Anthropological studies paved the way for psychiatrists and psychologists to enter faith healing sites and assess the practices conducted there through a medical gaze. Aided by a superficial resemblance of local customs and traditional knowledge to clinical and biomedical knowledge, in these analyses faith healing has been located according to the coordinates set by the psy-disciplines. Basu reports:

“Significant studies have been carried out by psychiatrists in India who took culture into account and applied anthropological methods of research; they found that religious healing may indeed have positive effects even upon psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and psychosis (Pakaslahti 1998; Raguram et al. 2002). In their accounts, narratives of sorcery and spirit possession give voice to cultural expressions of deeper, underlying forms of psychological distress and pathologies.”

Basu, 2010: 217

Clinical studies of faith healing sites have returned different and even contradictory findings. Raguram et al. (2002) conducted a study at the Muthusamy temple in the village of Velayuthampalayampudur, Tamil Nadu. It was the first study to use a standard clinical assessment (brief psychiatric rating scale) to evaluate the effectiveness of temple healing with a participant group of 31 people. They concluded that there was measurable improvement in the symptoms of people with psychotic illnesses who received no psychopharmacological or other somatic interventions during their stay in this temple. They attributed improvement to either “the cultural power of residency in the temple” (2002: 39) or “to the supportive, nonthreatening, and reassuring setting” (p. 40), and concluded that “healing temples thus may constitute a community resource for mentally ill people in cultures where they are recognized and valued. […] Access to local institutions providing such refuge—as in the case of the Muthuswamy temple—may even help to explain the better outcomes for schizophrenia reported in low income traditional societies” (ibid.).

A clinical study based in Vadodara, Gujarat involved interviews with general psychiatric patients and their families in the outpatient and inpatient departments of Dhiraj General Hospital and MINDS (a Massachussetts-based nonprofit group), their relatives, and unaffiliated community members in eight rural villages of Gujarat (Schoonover et al., 2014). The participants of this study either consulted only doctors (n=13), or doctors and traditional healers (n=17), or only healers (n=1). Schoonover et al. found that, “subjects who received treatment from both a doctor and a healer overwhelmingly asserted that they would recommend a doctor rather than a healer. Almost all who were treated with medication recognized an improvement in their condition” (2014: 100). They concluded that preference for doctor or traditional

spirit hovering around me. He furnished me with the directions to a pond behind the dargah where the sweetest smell, he promised, would make me feel refreshed. An onlooker laughed nervously, and informed me that this pond was actually the dirty sewage water of the village where only evil spirits could endure the stench. The mujawar clearly did not appreciate her intervention, and terminated the interview. 22

healer may be related to the outcomes of the care received7. Nonetheless, they acknowledge the importance of people’s spiritual beliefs in treatment, and collaboration between traditional healers and medical practitioners8.

However, faith healing or traditional medicine as it is called within medical literature is not only a South Asian phenomenon. With an influx of traditional medicine into the countries of the Global North, there is a growing interest in its sibling concept of complementary and alternative medicine. “A number of studies on alternative, complementary and traditional healing practices have concluded that many Euro- Americans have been increasingly using traditional healing practices alongside conventional or allopathic medicine in the last two decades” (Moodley & Sutherland, 2010: 267).

In the UK, Sembi & Dein (1998) reported on the studies that have been done on the use of traditional healers by Asian psychiatric patients in London (Karmi, 1985), Birmingham (Blakemore, 1982), Glasgow (Bhopal, 1986), Bradford (Aslam, 1979), and Leicester (Donaldson, 1986; Raschid & Jagger, 1992). More recently, Eneborg (2013) discussed the rise of new faith healing traditions in east London.

Nonetheless, despite the fact that within Europe and North America traditions of faith healing have existed and continue to exist that are either independent or concurrent to traditions in other parts of the world, faith healing is relegated to ‘the East’, the Global South, or LMIC (Low and Middle Income Countries). For instance, Willis et al. (2014) conducted a study in Scotland on the historical and contemporary relationships between faith, spirituality, counselling and psychotherapy, and report that, “Despite the role of religion in the institutional history of counselling and its importance in the lives of people key to that history, practitioners reported that these subjects were largely excluded from contemporary counselling discourses” (Willis et al., 2014: 526). This is typical in the fields of science and technology that erase or ignore the sociological and historical currents that have shaped scientific knowledge.

1.3.3 Thematic approaches

Path of convergence: Faith healing and Postcolonialism

In spite of evidence to the contrary, faith healing as an object of study is easy to slate as coming from Third World contexts. The east/west binary is old fodder for postcolonial scholarship, and medical

7 The authors do indicate that their study has a deficient representation of participants who could fully speak for traditional medicine: “The single patient who saw only a traditional healer and was satisfied with the results may represent a larger population of people that we were unable to access during this study” (Schoonover et al., 2014: 101). 8 Unsurprisingly they refer to the Dava-Dua programme as an ongoing example of this kind of collaboration. 23

anthropologist and historian Waltraud Ernst opines that it is time to rise above these scholarly contempts. She describes indigenous medicine as the Cinderella of the history of medicine.

“Following the dictum established by the rhetoric of British colonial medicine itself, indigenous ways of healing were often conceptualised as the ‘other’ to colonial medicine (or ‘western’, ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘biomedicine’). This tended to relegate indigenous ways of healing implicitly to a referential if not subordinate, or ‘subaltern’, position. Indigenous medicine became arguably also further reified in its marginalisation and ‘othered’ position by historians’ continued preoccupation with hegemony, control and discursive subjugation”

Ernst, 2010: xvi

Ernst believes that British scholarship on the history of medicine in South Asia was overrun by postcolonial, literary, deconstructionist, Fanonian or Foucauldian analyses that rendered opaque the problem of speaking about a genuine history of medicine in south Asia. Ernst points out that that in referring to indigenous medicine and colonial medicine, the former is referenced in relation to the latter which stymies any attempt to write “a social history of medicines in south Asia that is well grounded in both sophisticated theory and rich historical detail, and which moves beyond its current conceptual straightjacket of east/west dualities” (2007: 522).

While this may seem like a harsh assessment of Indian postcolonial historiography, there is a sense of intellectual fatigue in repeating binaries that seem to clutter scholarship when it comes to Global South. Representations of the south often come in response to the theories of the north. There is either an attempt by ‘the East’ to fit in or to repudiate the theories emanating from ‘the West’. At first glance this process of knowledge production is uneasy with itself, and the relation with the other is sometimes violent. However “postcoloniality is not born and nurtured in a panoptic distance from history. The postcolonial exists as an aftermath, as an after - after being worked over by colonialism” (Prakash, 1992: 8). This period, in which postcolonial scholarship has made muddy the fields of history, sociology and anthropology of South Asia, is not as long as the period of colonialism experienced by the ‘natives’ of these regions, and perhaps it is too soon to expect that writing on South Asia will speak for itself without the reference to the ‘West’.

In this research too, the problematics of linguistic representation take the spotlight. However the difficulty of representation is not only of how to represent the ‘East’ to the ‘West’, but also how to represent the ‘East’ within the ‘East’. Like any other nation-state India is not a singular entity; as of 2018, the Indian constitution recognizes 29 states and 7 union territories, 22 official languages each with hundreds of dialects, 6 major religions each divided within into sects, and 3000 castes each divided internally into sub- castes (and even sub-sub-castes). The question of representation is inescapable in India, even without the reference to the ‘West’. However postcolonialist theories in India open up the inquiry of representation in a way that is particularly Indian. Emerging out of a history of British, Portuguese, and French 24

colonialism, Indian postcolonialism has shaped for itself methods of knowledge production that are unique. Cultural analyses dominate the field, with an attention to region, class, caste, religion, and gender. The focus on the vernacular, and the problematic of speech in the adoption of the global lingua franca, English, are significant tropes in Indian postcolonialism. Questions of translation between languages constitute an epistemological position within Indian postcolonialism. Writings on subalternity topicalize the subjugated history of a figure outside of the circuits of both state and capital wherein the possibilities of (political) speech are foreclosed9. As such, Indian postcolonialism is a historical tradition in itself, and this study is mindful of the significance Indian postcolonialism places on positionality, language, translation, and representation such as those fleshed out in Siting Translation: History, Post-structuralism and the Colonial Context (1992) by Tejaswini Niranjana.

Niranjana writes, “Since the practices of subjection/subjectification implicit in the colonial enterprise operate not merely through the coercive machinery of the imperial state but also through the discourses of philosophy, history, anthropology, philology, linguistics, and literary interpretation, the colonial "subject" –constructed through technologies or practices of power/knowledge – is brought into being within multiple discourses and on multiple sites” (1992: 1-2). She contends that one such such site is translation, and explicates how translation contributed to the formation of the colonial subject as a joint project of imperialism and knowledge production in the human and social sciences. This relation to textuality is an abiding resource in the present research project that will look to translate the local idiom of the Mira Datar Dargah into a comprehensible text for an English-speaking international scholarship.

Path of collision: Faith healing and mental health

The Global Mental Health Movement (GMHM)10, is spearheaded by the Lancet and committed to providing mental health services. As part of its manifesto, the GMHM is invested in scaling up mental health care services. The GMHM is lobbying for the expansion of the volume of mental health services at the national and international level:

“We believe that scaling-up of services for people with mental disorders is the most important priority for global mental health. […] we argue that the overall volume of services provided to treat people with mental disorders needs to be substantially increased in every country—but especially

9 An account of how postcolonial historiography proceeds from a deployment of subalternity, to follow historian Gyan Prakash, is that the subaltern signifies the impossibility of autonomy. He writes, “The subaltern is a figure produced by historical discourses of domination, but it nevertheless provides a mode of reading history different from those inscribed in elite accounts. Reading colonial and nationalist archives against their grain and focusing on their blind- spots, silences and anxieties, these [Subaltern Studies] historians seek to uncover the subaltern's myths, cults, ideologies and revolts that colonial and nationalist elites sought to appropriate and conventional historiography has laid to waste by their deadly weapon of cause and effect” (1992: 9). 10 The Global Mental Health Movement and its significance for this study will come up again in Chapter 3: Positionality. 25

so in low-income and middle-income countries—so that the available care is proportionate to the magnitude of need.”

The Lancet, 2007: 1241

One way to ensure greater coverage is investing in more resources at the national level into the training of medical workforces. Another way is to use the existing resources regions have to deliver better mental health care services. In this latter route, faith healing and mental health are set up in a path of collision.

In fact, identifying the traditional healing centres as potential support or adjunct structures within mental health systems is not new. With the identification of traditional healers as auxiliary psychotherapists (Jilek, 1971), absorbing them into the mental health system becomes an obvious solution to the problem of medical workforce shortages; Incayawar points out that “In Africa, South America and some regions of Asia and the Pacific Islands, traditional healers are widely available, although their precise numbers are undetermined. Moreover, it is in precisely those places that bio-medically oriented mental health practitioners are scarce” (2009: 254).

Over the years, there have been several attempts to bring together medical science and faith healing. Gureje et al. (2015) identify three models for mental health services to work with traditional healers: the taskshifting model, the collaborative model, and the integrative model.

1. Taskshifting model: Described as a model of co-option where mental service providers use the resources of traditional healing systems have developed such as community networks or relations of trust to deliver conventional psychiatric treatment. Gureje et al. state that, “Although taskshifting might expand the reach of psychiatric services in countries with few resources, this approach makes little use of healers’ unique skills and specific advantages, which should instead be acknowledged and built on” (p.173). 2. Collaborative model: The two systems retain their autonomous understanding and functioning, but cooperate by referring patients that may benefit by the other system. This model seems to be a common model employed by mental health services to work with traditional healers, and the authors state that “variants of the collaborative model have been practised with some success in Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and in New Zealand” (p.173) 3. Integrative model: “In a fully integrated model, traditional and conventional medicine healthcare services would be blended into a new hybrid system such that patients need not choose one over the other” (p. 173). The model may seem like the ideal solution if the patient is to be kept in mind, however it is difficult to imagine what this hybrid healthcare system would like.

The Indian mental health system’s route to traditional medicine and faith healing could be seen as planted within the taskshifting model. The Indian health system has to provide mental health care coverage to a

formidable population of 1.3 billion people, without adequate number of trained professionals like psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers11. The National Mental Health Program (NMHP) was launched in 1982 with an “explicit focus on integration and treatment of mental illness in primary health care, community participation in the development of services, and forging links between mental health and social development” (Jain & Jadhav, 2009: 61). Nonetheless, shortage of a trained professional workforce for mental health services has troubled the good intentions of the NMHP. In 2002, it was calculated that the Indian mental health system required 11,500 psychiatrists but had available 3,800 psychiatrists, 898 clinical psychologists out of the required 17,250, 850 psychiatric social workers of 23,000, and 1,500 psychiatric nurses of 3,000 (Khurana & Sharma, 2016: 2697)12. The same year, the Government of India re-strategised the NHMP.

“The 2002 policy initiatives departed rather significantly from the original NMHP, which had emphasized access to services and community participation with a focus on serious mental disorders (Government of India, 1982; WHO Expert Committee on Mental Health, 1975). The new policy favoured provision and distribution of psychotropic medication, and was supported by a steep budget increase of Indian Rupees 16.2 billion ($345 million U.S.).”

Jain and Jadhav, 2009: 64

To add to the problem, most trained and licensed professionals are concentrated in the large urban centres, such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkatta, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Guwahati, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bhopal, and Chandigarh.

In the rural spaces, the District Mental Health Program (DMHP) was proposed by the NMHP in 1996 with the intention of “making mental health care accessible to all by setting up psychiatric services in peripheral areas, training primary health care personnel and involving the community in promotion of mental health care. The programme has been envisaged mostly for rural areas wherein psychiatric facilities are not available at a close distance” (Waraich, et al, 2003: 161). In a review of the mental health policy of India, two prominent psychiatrists active in mental health advocacy, Pratima Murthy and Mohan Isaac, have appraised the DMHP as partially successful at the district level with better awareness of mental illness in implemented districts compared to non-implemented districts, but also write that, “several criticisms have been made of the DMHP which include inadequate leadership at the central, state, and

11 The shortage of a medical workforce for mental health care is not unique to India, and is reported in countries around the world. However, it is reported as acute in LMIC countries. “There is a wide disparity in the type and size of the mental health workforce throughout the world. The median number of psychiatrists varies from 0.06 per 100 000 population in low-income countries to nine per 100 000 in high-income countries. For psychiatric nurses, the median ranges from 0.1 per 100 000 in low income countries to 33.5 per 100 000 in high income countries” (Incayawar, 2009: 254). 12 Requirements are based on the norm of 1 psychiatrist per 100,000 populations, 1.5 clinical psychologists per 100,000 population, and two psychiatric social workers per 100,000 populations and one psychiatric nurse per 10 psychiatric beds as decided by the National Survey of Mental Health Resources carried out by the Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare during May and July 2002 (Khurana & Sharma, 2016). 27

district levels, political neglect, inaccessible funding, and various other administrative and programmatic problems” (Murthy & Isaac, 2016: 257).

While the NMHP and DMHP seeks to extend its reach to all districts by 2025, there is a matrix of ‘services’ already available throughout the nation: faith healing sites. After the Erwadi Dargah Tragedy and the Supreme Court verdict of 2001 that included dargahs within the ambit of mental health law as unlicensed asylums, it became apparent that the Indian state could extend its coverage of mental health services by converting the small religious sites that run rampant all over the country into lay service providers. This discursive shift in the conceptualization of faith healing sites from cultural phenomenon to medical intervention supports and sustains the Dava-Dua Programme at the Mira Datar Dargah in Gujarat. “The project aims to reduce potentially harmful methods of traditional healing, provide mental health care training to traditional healers, create awareness of mental illness in the community, and protect the rights of patients” (Schoonover et al., 2014: 102).

The State of things: Science and Faith healing

Why does the sawwali need religion when science can (or at least is actively trying to) explain everything from the ionic to the interstellar? Religion is permissible in the private, behind closed doors and under our clothes, but not in the public, where it becomes excessive and irrational. This distinction, inherited from Kant, between the private and public, between religion and politics is foundational for modern societies organized along the lines of statehood. The state is an ideological formation that presents itself as the cause and effect of a sovereign and bounded nation with the aim of the governance of a populace. Louis Althusser introduced the idea of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) as the mechanism through which the State carries out this function unconstrained by the notion of private and public. He provides the examples of religion, education, family, law, politics, trade unions, and culture that are “a certain number of realities, which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions” (Althusser, 1971: 97). An ISA comes to bear down on the subject through interpellation, i.e. a process through which ideology hails the subject into being. He writes that, “the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constituting' concrete individuals as subjects” (p. 116). An ISA does not function through repressive state power, but primarily through ideology, in a way proper to it, through the material practices, such that the subject misrecognizes the call (of ideology) as addressing it even before the fact of its constitution. Althusser gives particular attention to the Church of the Religious ISA as the historically significant ISA to the School of the Educational ISA that is the dominant ISA in the modern State. However, what is missing in this list of ISAs is science.

Science as an ISA can be demonstrated in the case of how scientific advancement is posited against faith healing. Citizenship of a nation state comes with (vague) notions of common values that the subjects of

that state must share, such as ‘we’ the people of this nation stand for progressive values, like developing scientific temper or fighting for human rights. Development is just such a social good that is allied to different ideas of progress: child development, scientific development, economic development, human development, developing and developed countries. Developed countries, however much they may be internally struggling, are still the standard for developing countries. A developing country like India must aspire to not only the economic model of a developed country but also the espousal of scientific development. In fact, it is there in the Indian Constitution! “Article 51A(h) of the Constitution of India urges every citizen ‘to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform’” (Venkateswaran, 2013). Such a directive from the State would make it appear that traditional and indigenous practices with dubious scientific relevance must pave the way for evidenced-based and empirically-supported medicine. As long as this nexus appears between State and Science, faith healing comes under a double attack of failing not only science, but the requirements for the desired citizen- subject of the Indian State.

The role of science in society has been studied by the interdisciplinary field of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, which attends to the way scientific knowledge not only contributes to the production of knowledge about the physical world, but also how that knowledge can be deployed to enact certain forms of subjectivity.13 This study locates the practices of faith healing as they are interpellated by the Indian State through the idea of psychiatry as scientific knowledge in comparison to faith healing as superstition and social folly.

1.4 Rationale for the research

The spark and the fuel behind this research is the contemporary moment in which India finds itself thinking about mental health service provision between dava and dua, prayers and pills. New laws and policies are currently being enacted that address how faith healing is to be conceptualized in the future. The national attention on faith healing is influenced by global preoccupations of disease burden and evidence-based medicine. This political scenario creates an academic urgency to respond to the palpable discursive shift in everyday speech on citizenship, modernity, and scientific temper in India. This research is motivated by postcolonialism, psychoanalytic and discourse analytic analyses to approach faith healing from the perspective of critical psychology, rather than relying on older, reactionary, or colonial methods of responding to a new discursive construction.

13 The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge or Science Studies looks to, “one; locate science within historical, social and cultural contexts and two, to examine how science reproduces existing social relations and cultural values through its language and its discourse” (Shah and Chadha, 2015: 257). 29

1.5 Research Questions

The aim of this resarch is to study faith healing in India on its own terms, and thus distinguish it from the ways it has been approached in legal, medical, and academic discourses. Thus this project will privilege local idioms and knowledges produced and reproduced in Mira Datar Dargah and its environs, not only to develop a theoretical understanding of faith healing that is attentive to sociocultural realities of the field, but also to produce new methods to look at the phenomenon under study.

To approach the overaching aim, this project will look at the following research questions:

1. How is the site, i.e. Mira Datar Dargah and the space surrounding it, discursively produced? 2. How is the subjectivity of the sawwali constituted at the dargah? 3. What is the significance of the ghost in the stories recounted by the sawwalis?

The Dava and Dua programme has maintained that the combination of faith healing and psychiatric treatment has been successful. Nonetheless how is it more successful?14 Why would the combination of religion and science work better than only the scientific15? Here is an unavoidable observation: the subject moving between dargah and clinic takes to both with ease. In fact, the ease with which the sawwali takes to both services is not reflected in the relations between the service groups. Ernst (2007) proposes that studies in medical anthropology have demonstrated that movement between treatment regimens is common and unremarkable, that:

“Patients are on the whole active subjects rather than merely passive objects that are subjugated by the prevalent medical discourse and suffering helplessly the treatments imposed on them by domineering medical experts. ‘Healer hopping’—namely patients’ strategies of consulting a number of healers in their pursuit of cure and a better quality of life—is common behaviour in many parts of the world”

Ernst, 2007: 519

While research has demonstrated that seeking multiple medical opinions is common and ordinary, the ordinariness of the situation does not explain the phenomenon. If seeking religious healing for a problem that can be scientifically treated is irrational, how do we understand the irrationality of the subject who takes to multiple treatments without self-contradiction? This is to say the problem is not the person, but theorization of pluralism being natural to the subject. Praises sung of pluralistic market of services or options for the consumer addresses the issue of alternatives being somehow more conducive to

14 The other question should be an empirical check: whether claims of success are actually true, and if they are, how long do the positive effects last? If there is an internal audit on the efficacy of the interventions in the Dava-Dua programme, this has not been made public. 15 While the efficiency of medical programmes are subjected to checks, how would one measure the efficiency of making wishes in the religious domain? 30

psychological well-being, without necessarily making any change to the market or to clinical practice. The idea of pluralism does not question what it means to the subject of multiple choices, what makes the subject turn to different treatment alternatives at the same time, without any protest or conflict. What happens when science, religion, and state are put to dialogue? When physics, metaphysics, and politics are not seen as functioning independently in society? Emerging out of these concerns, this study looks at faith healing by exploring the site and the subject to be found at the Mira Datar Dargah in Gujarat, India. However, there is the question of the ghost, which a focus on the subject seems to elide. The dargah treats people who are troubled by ghosts, and ghost stories make up much of the folklore around such sites. However, what is this ghost? How often does it come up in the stories and narratives of the subjects? What can the trope of the ghost contribute to our understanding of the topic of faith healing, in particular, and to knowledge in the social sciences, in general? Along with the site of the dargah and its setting in Unava, the subject interpellated by both faith healing and medical treatment, the ghost makes up the final research question.

1.6 Plan of the thesis

The thesis is divided into two sections, buttressed on one side by Chapter 2: Methodology and on the other side by Chapter 8: Conclusion. Chapter 2 introduces the Mira Datar Dargah and its rural setting in Gujarat. The description of the scene of fieldwork supports the next section on methodology that elaborates on how the field is approached and analysed. A qualitative research paradigm is adopted in this research, and a modular methodology deployed to approach the research problems. Modularity is discussed for its implications for this research project. The chapter concludes by explicating the reasons and justification for the use of the first person voice, that of the researcher, in the thesis.

Section I titled ‘Sitation’ has three chapters. Chapter 3 attends to the researcher-researched dynamic, and the researcher’s own position is analysed within the scene of fieldwork through the use of fieldnotes. Thus it on draws on the reflexivity of the researcher to develop an understanding of the field of study. Chapter 4 locates the dargah historically, going back more than a thousand years to Islam’s coming to ‘India’ before proceeding on the journey that brought Islam to medieval Gujarat, a sociological analysis of how dargahs as Muslim shrines came to be understood as syncretic spaces during that time, a tour of the communal conflict that has impacted Hindu-Muslims relations in the state post-Independence, and through this route demonstrate how Gujarat, and by extension India, has located the dargah as a Muslim shrine in need of reform. Chapter 5 depicts the geographical exploration of the village through the analysis of 16 maps of Unava generated through the research process. Through the maps, the chapter analyses the social use of space in the village and thus locates the dargah within the layout of the village for the local residents. This chapter topicalizes the ground-level caste politics that had been gestured at in 31

the earlier two chapters. Thus it lays out the theory for looking at the Indian identity politics from a Dalit Standpoint.

Section II titled Subjectivation is divided into two chapters. Chapter 6 presents six narratives generated through multiple interviews conducted over eight months; these are the narratives generated through a sustained interaction with three Muslim sawwalis and three Hindu sawwalis. Methodologically the narratives encapsulate both the data and its analysis. Thus, the narratives of each of the six participants is presented as individual stories of each of the six sawwalis. This is accompanied with the researcher’s notes of the experience of interviewing each participant. This chapter presents the voice of the subject in in close proximity to the voice of the researcher, and hence delineate the mediation of the voice of the researcher from that of the researched. This has been done to allow the voice of the subject to come through as much as possible in the narrative form. Chapter 7 reflects on the narratives of six sawwalis presented in the previous chapter. The salient features that connect different narratives are shored up to discover characteristics shared by the subjects of faith healing in contemporary India. The site of faith healing is revisited through the narratives of sawwalis. The chapter concludes by looking at the possibilities and limitations of the narrative method in qualitative research, and brings the subject and the ghost close to each other.

Chapter 8 brings back the research questions this study has worked with. The chapter summarizes the major contributions to knowledge, the limitations of the project, and suggests future directions for research on faith healing. Chapter 9 is an epilogue to the thesis. It brings the ghost to the fore through the use of a literary mode of a fictional ghost story,

CHAPTER 2

METHODOLOGY

2.1 Introduction

Research methodology is located at the intersection of the situational context and the desired outcome of the study. On one hand, the methodology must respond to the particularities and the peculiarities of the context, some which can be known at the outset, and some which only emerge during the process of the research (as evidenced by this study; see Chapter 5). On the other, the methodology influences what data is collected and how. Thus, the qualitative and quantitative paradigms of methodology already decides what counts as data, and thus how it must be collected. This study uses a qualitative research paradigm to engage critically with historic, geographic, and linguistic methods of interpellating the site and the subject of faith healing in India.

This chapter first elaborates on the situational context of the research with a general description of faith healing shrines in India before sharpening the focus on the Mira Datar Dargah in Unava, Gujarat, India. This is meant to open up the setting of the research and make it amenable to a research inquiry. In the second half of chapter, a methodology devised from modularity is explicated. The thesis comprises of two modules, one on the site of faith healing, the second on the subject of faith healing. Each module uses methods from different disciplinary orientations to open up a facet of the setting. The different modules, and the methods used in each module are mentioned in this chapter with the aim of clarifying how this thesis aims to answer the research questions set out at the outset.

2.2 Setting the scene

The faith healing sites in India observed during the process of research had one feature in common: they are nearly always, at all times of the year, at any time of the day, bustling with activity.

During festivals, shrines famous for miracles of faith healing are crowded to the point that injuries are common, as are incidents of sexual assault or theft. The presence of the police on a festival day while necessary, also contributes to the palpable levels of stress. Pilgrims at these sites are very often visibly stressed. Why wouldn’t they be? Most have travelled from far, in a journey that is not easy, and has cost them dearly. There is little time to waste as devotees are obligated to complete rituals and rites they deem essential for a successful pilgrimage, yet they are hampered by the presence of hundreds, if not 33

thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of other pilgrims who are equally focussed on the task at hand, which no one seems to be very clear about. Everybody is doing their own thing, but on top of each other. The space of the shrine is chaotic, and spirituality and compassion seem like unachievable aspirations on festival days. However, this must only look like that to the dispassionate ethnographer/researcher, who is being jostled and flung around by pilgrims; it is that single-minded focus that can convert the shrine into an experience of bliss. This description also means to point out that it is difficult to look away from the overwhelming scene of the shrine, but what one sees depends on the purpose of the visit.

To guide the pilgrims along are the priests or healers of the shrine. They are the knowledgeable ones who know which rituals need to be performed and how, so that the patron deities or saints of the shrine can be appeased. The healers are often the intermediaries that serve as the channel between a devotee and the object of veneration. Shrines are not egalitarian spaces, there were always areas that cannot be accessed by the ordinary devotee, and spaces for the priestly class were reserved with clear boundaries and demarcations. In most shrines, there are spaces women cannot enter no matter what their caste or role in its upkeep. The bigger the shrine, the larger is the number of its sanctified caretakers. Big shrines have an ordered hierarchy of priests/caretakers, the most important of whom had the most access to the sanctum sanctorum in the shrine. Caretakers have their own helpers. This appeared to be an all-male enterprise. Somewhere completely hidden from view are the women and the girls, whose invisible labour contributed to the upkeep of the shrine.

Image 1 - Red threads to tie wishes Bordering shrines are the shops, usually small and box-like, like the stamp on the envelope that contains the missive to god. From these shops, shopkeepers sell their wares, ordinary-looking offerings that become magically transformed in significance when they are used in rituals. There are the ubiquitous flowers; the incense or candles; the food offerings that range from raw items to prepared food; the red thread (photograph by the researcher displayed in Image 1) or locks with which people may tie their wish upon a shrine. Then they are the local artefacts that make sense only after one has seen the ritual. In Mira Datar Dargah, these are cloth animals – horses of all limbs, no head (Image 2) - that needed to be consecrated by a healer to ride up the wishes of devotees to heaven.

Image 2 - When wishes are horses… There are the keepsakes one can buy to take home, like framed pictures of devotional objects, devotional music CDs, little informational books of unknown scholarship, rosaries, and trinkets of all colours. Shopkeepers compete with each other to catch the attention of pilgrims. As do the keepers of the soup kitchens16 who offer to feed the poor in return for donations. Outside the soup kitchens are people waiting to be fed, to obtain a meal that is directed their way not by charity but by the grace of the deity or saint. Milling around are beggars everywhere; when one looks upon their destitution, even the most stricken leave the shrine feeling relieved at their good fortune.

The shrine can be situated near or within a village, town or even city, where local citizens live and conduct their lives quite apart from the events at the shrines. They may or may not be devotees at the shrine, their daily rhythm of life may or not be synchronized by the schedule of the shrine, the activities of the shrine may or may not be their main source of income, but they are not pilgrims. Some live in that region for long periods of time, some have made it their home, and therefore have a different relation to the shrine than the pilgrims who make their way in and out of the village or city. The shrine is not only made of the devotees and the priestly class. The shrine is also located within the micropolitics of its neighbourhood in relation to village/city in relation to the region in relation to the nation-state.

2.2.1 Introducing Mira Datar Dargah in Unava

The village of Unava is just a few kilometres from Unjha, Asia’s largest export market for cumin. It also exports isabgol, mustard seed, mustard oil, sesame seed, sesame oil, cotton, cotton seed oil, and several seasonal vegetables. This district is well-administered by the state government, with big land holdings primarily with the Patels. Unava is located on the busy and well-tended highway between Ahmedabad and Unjha, has a regular and sustained supply of electricity and water, the ONGC gas pipeline pumps gas directly to the house of those who can afford it, several telecom companies give villagers 3G internet connectivity. As of 2016, there were two primary health sub-centres17 attended by two ANMs (Auxiliary

16 The soup kitchen in the vernacular has been called dharamshala (Hindi), langar-house (Punjabi), or musafir-khana (Urdu). In Unava, none of these are used, and instead they are referred to as hotels. 17 The Primary Health Centre (PHC) is the first contact point between the village and the Government Medical Officer. PHCs were envisaged to provide an integrated curative and preventive health care to the rural population with emphasis on preventive and promotive aspects of health care. The PHCs are established and maintained by the State Governments under the Minimum Needs Programme (MNP)/ Basic Minimum Services Programme (BMS). It acts as a referral unit for 6 Sub Centres. The Sub-Centre is the most peripheral and first contact point between the primary health care system and the community. 35

Nurse-Midwife) and two MHWs (Multipurpose Health Worker) as stipulated by the State Government, and four private clinics. Unava also boasts of 12 ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activist) under the National Rural Health Mission18. For the school-going children, there are 14 Anganwadis established under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development19. Each Anganwadi in Unava has one Anganwadi Worker and one Anganwadi Helper, as stipulated by the ICDS. There are seven primary schools, two secondary schools, and two higher secondary schools. There is no college in Unava, but many college-going students of Unava make the half hour commute to Unjha every day. It would seem like this village is very well organized.

In the 2011 census, Unava was deemed to have a population of 12,901 people, but locals estimate that the numbers are much higher, perhaps closer to 20,000. The village is on the edge of becoming a town with its own municipality, and that would mean a big change to the villagers: it would mean that the government of the village would pass out of the hands of the local panchayat, and into the control of the municipality located outside of the direct control of the people of Unava. It also makes them wary of outsiders, who come to settle in their village and thus increase their numbers to over the limit of the village as mandated by the Indian government, just by being there. The 2011 census only lists one historical monument in Unava, that of the Mira Datar Dargah. It is the dargah that attracts people to come to Unava, and several of these outsiders wish to live on in the village. Many people I spoke to have lived here in rented rooms/houses or even on the streets of Unava for decades. Furthermore, while the shrine receives devotees from many religions, like many other dargahs in Gujarat, it does attract many Muslims to a village where the majority of the population are Hindus, and especially Patels, a mid-tier Hindu caste that has done well for itself since the Indian Independence in agriculture and trade. The kuldevi (ancestral deity of the community) of the Patels of North Gujarat is Umiya Devi, and her shrine is located in Unjha, less than half an hour away from Unava, another historical site. The district of Mehsana is understood as the stronghold of the Patels, collectively called the Patidar Samaj, but Unava sees many more Muslim visitors due to the existence of the dargah.

The 2011 census gives the residents of the village as belonging to the castes (jati) of “Patel, Chaudhary, Muslim, Rajput, Barot, Thakur, Raval, Brahmin, Rabari, Vankar, Parmar, Sudhar, Prajapati, Naee, Panchal”. The Patels of Unava, comprising of several sub-castes like Kadva Patels and Leuva Patels, are in clear majority, statistically over-represented in all positions of power, be it the local panchayat or the Gujarat State government. In Unava, the second biggest community is comprised of Muslims, mostly Saiyed Muslims associated with the Dargah, but also Pathan Muslims whose number are greater in adjoining areas of the district than in Unava. From the census categorization, it is clear that Muslim

18 Selected from the village itself and accountable to it, the ASHA will be trained to work as an interface between the community and the public health system. According to NRHM, there should be one ASHA per 1000 people. 19 The ICDSs aim at the overall development of the children under six years, through anganwadi centres. It provides supplementary nutrition and referral health services to children under six years, pregnant women, lactating mothers, and also to teenage girls. It also provides pre-school education to children between the ages of 3 and 6 years. 36

groups are seen as ‘jati’, i.e. as a tribe or caste, rather than a religious identity. This is reflected in the way the people of the village live; every jati creates their own conclave and live bunched up with their ‘own people’. Thus, every clump of houses or street is marked in the imagination of the villagers as belonging to a certain jati, problematically translated here as ‘caste’ (we shall come back to this in later chapters). It is not very easy for an outsider to see the invisible demarcations, but signs start appearing if one knows where to look.

There is an invisible and unspoken boundary line that runs down the middle of it, down its central street in the market that houses the village post-office. On one side is the Muslim area with the Dargah, the shops and motels (called guest houses20) that cater to the pilgrims, and the houses of those primarily involved in the upkeep of the shrine and the business it generates. A great deal of this section of the village looks like it has come up hastily without proper planning. Many constructions are new or have been refurbished in recent times. However this side does have the police station. On the other side is the Hindu area with the old houses, the primary health centre, most of the schools, the dairy, the temples, a commercial water- purification plant, and its residents obviously depend on agriculture and animal husbandry for their income. The tarred streets are maintained. This area also has one of the sites connected to the Dargah, the smaller-sized Mamusahab’s Dargah, and many of the residents of this side of town drop in to give their respects at the Mamusahab dargah rather than the main shrine. The Dava-Dua office and clinic used to be situated on the central road, right next to the post office. However a new one was constructed in 2016 which faces the main dargah.

There is another invisible area demarcation. At the tail-end of the village, farthest away from the highway, there are the houses inhabited by people of ‘lower caste’. One such street is called Bhangi-vas comprising of the houses of those belonging to the Chamar and Vankar caste groups, as well as the non- Saiyed Muslims. These are at some distance from the bus-stop, and it is obvious that they are kept to one side, outside of view almost, which is typical of how segregation of lower castes works in most Indian spaces. The idea of untouchability21 still lingers in caste-conscious societies, although it is made punishable by law through the Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955. However, the entire village lives in segregated arrangements, and mixed housing arrangements are not common. This segregation is so commonplace in Gujarat that today to ask the question of ‘why?’ is a shocking matter. In personal conversations, outside of formalized structures like recorded interviews, the response to the question is

20 The equivalent words are ‘musafirkhana’ in Urdu or ‘dharamshala’ in Hindi, which are being supplanted by the term ‘guest house’, a sign of how this village has been buying into English language usage. 21 Untouchability has been defined by the Untouchability (Offences) Act of 1955 as suffering religious disability (not being allowed to enter or perform rituals in a place of public worship) and social disability (not being allowed the use of public spaces, the use of common utensils in a public space like restaurants, etc, the practice of a profession of their choice, access to water, access to public conveyance, own or construct residential premises in any locality, ) the observance of any social or religious custom, usage or ceremony, to take part in any religious procession, or the use of jewellery and finery. 37

that it is better to live with one’s own people; the one’s own is mostly one’s kutumb (Hindi word for family, but here it means sub-caste), then caste, then religion, and then nationality.

The Mira Datar Dargah is located in the Muslim section of the village. It holds the mazar (consecrated grave) of Sayyed Ali addressed by devotees as Sarkar or Baba (in this thesis, he will be referred to as ‘the saint’). Within the same complex is located another pilgrimage spot, Dadima ki chakki. Alongside are the quarters for resident-devotees. A small distance away is another pilgrimage spot which houses the grave of Mamujaan, uncle to Syed Ali and there is also the grave of Rastimaa, the saint’s birth-mother, where ziyarat (chanting) happens only late at night. The last ‘pilgrimage’ spot is the nalla, the open sewer, since the dirty water is considered an appropriate location to immerse and eliminate dirty spirits. Together these five spots make up the pilgrimage circuit. Most devotees, called sawwalis at the dargah, are most familiar with the main shrine of the Mira Datar Dargah, with fewer sawwalis making the full circuit of Mira Datar dargah, Mamusaheb dargah and Rastima Dargah.

“The dargah is probably the most well-known Muslim centre in Gujarat, where treating madness is synonymous with practices of counter-sorcery and exorcism.” (Basu, 2014: 326). The famous Mira Datar Dargah receives pilgrims who travel from all over Gujarat as well as neighbouring regions, but it is administered to by only one family of Saiyed Muslims, who belong to the lineage of the saint, Sayyed Ali (though the family today numbers in hundreds of members). The mujawar is not only the guardian of the shrine, but he intercedes with the saint on behalf of the sawwali; often mujawars describe their work as that of a lawyer (vakeel) at the court of Sayyed Ali. Here it is pertinent to mention that while the Census 2011 lists Muslim as a jati, there are two prominent Muslim groups in Unava –Saiyed and Pathan. Numerically Saiyeds, who would be an upper caste Muslim group, outnumber the Pathans in the village, but this is reversed at the district-level where Pathans far outnumber Saiyeds. Thus, the Mira Datar Dargah is understood not only a Muslim site, but also within Muslims as a Saiyed stronghold that can be attributed to the presence of Mira Datar Dargah itself. Despite its caste and religious affiliation, the dargah welcomes Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Classifying the dargah as a Muslim site immediately turns our attention to a contemporary problematic - Islam. Islam as a monotheistic religion with the second largest number of adherents worldwide is used in popular imagination as powering a civilizational message that clashes with the prevalent worldview of the ‘West’. Nonetheless, Islam is also seen as at loggerheads with the ‘East’, at least in the Indian subcontinent where it simultaneously constitutes, through its followers, the largest minority group in India, and at the same time the second largest Muslim population in the world. Muslims in India have a minority- status in the Indian nation-state, alongside being banded together into an undifferentiated mass of Muslims globally. This also creates a particular kind of Muslim, the Indian Muslim, caught between the universal assertions of an Islamic ummah (brotherhood) and the nationalist assertions of “India first”.

With India’s creation as a nation-state in 1947 on the basis of religious difference, the majority population conveniently projected a decisive other-ness on the Muslims who remained in India. An identity was being (and continues to be) devised that drew its authority from an ancient civilization, predating the birth of Islam or Christianity, which survived with its core characteristics intact into the present-day Hinduism and the scriptures compiled as the Vedas, Shastras and Smritis. Richard King in Orientalism and Religion (1999) uses a Foucauldian analysis of the ‘mystic East’ to demonstrate that Hinduism as religion is a hegemonic description co-created between colonial and nationalist discourses in the nineteenth century. King attempts to shore up the mutual imbrication of religion, culture and power as categories by doing a genealogy of Hinduism as an Indian religion.

“‘Hinduism’ seems first to have made an appearance in the early nineteenth century, and gradually gained provenance in the decades thereafter. Eighteenth-century references to the ‘religion of the Gentoos’ (e.g. Nathaniel Brassey Halhead (1776), A Code of Gentoo Laws) were gradually supplanted in the nineteenth century by references to ‘the religion of the Hindoos’ – a preference for the Persian as opposed to the Portuguese designation of the Indian people. However, it is not until the nineteenth century proper that the term ‘Hinduism’ became used as a signifier of a unified, all-embracing and independent religious entity in both Western and Indian circles.”

King, 1999: 101

T. N. Madan, reviewing this work, comments that “If Indology of a century ago homogenized India’s religious traditions in its preoccupation with a world religion that could aspire to be an interlocutor (and even instructor) of the West, today’s Hindutva22 too proceeds along a path of cultural hegemony employing the strategies of inclusion and exclusion within the country” (Madan, 2003). Moreover this analysis leaves out the concept of caste… the image of the Hindu is the caste Hindu (savarna), which leaves out of its calculations the “casteless” Dalit23 (avarna), the outcaste of Indian society.

22 Hindutva is politically motivated essentialism that is a legacy of an orientalism that has its origins in the European colonialisation of India dating back to the eighteenth century. 23 The website for the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights defines the term Dalit as follows, “The word “Dalit” comes from the Sanskrit root dal- and means “broken, ground-down, downtrodden, or oppressed.” Those previously known as Untouchables, Depressed Classes, and Harijans are today increasingly adopting the term “Dalit” as a name for themselves. “Dalit” refers to one’s caste rather than class; it applies to members of those menial castes which have born the stigma of “untouchability” because of the extreme impurity and pollution connected with their traditional occupations. Dalits are ‘outcastes’ falling outside the traditional four-fold caste system consisting of the hereditary Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra classes; they are considered impure and polluting and are therefore physically and socially excluded and isolated from the rest of society”. 39

2.3 Methodology

Based on qualitative research paradigm, this study uses a multimethod approach to situate the dargah in contemporary India, and to theorise the subject (sawwali) of the dargah. Since the research questions are connected but separate, different methods are needed to address aspects of the study. This study uses map-making to understand the relation of local citizens of Unava to the village and the dargah, participant observation to experience the daily life of the sawwali at the dargah, and interviews to generate narratives of the subjects at the intersections of faith healing and medicine. I contend that these methods constructed as modules, independent yet connected, generate a methodology by themselves, a modular methodology.

2.3.1 Modular approach to research

Modular methodology responds to complex social phenomena that require multiple layers of analysis and different levels of register. A modular methodology is an approach of disaggregation to critical research in the social sciences that uses different methods to respond to discrete units of analysis that comprise the whole of the study. The strength and the weakness of a disaggregated methodology, such as modularity, is the same: it disallows the emergence of a singular and definite conclusion that can be pinned down on the object of study or the subjects in the study. Since each module in the thesis opens up a certain question pertinent to the objective of the study, but does not transfer its intelligibility to the next module without an active work of interpretation, and the modules cannot get stacked up to become a pronouncement of truth.

Social science research is often derided for being elitist since it does not always transfer well outside the milieu of its construction. A complicated syntax and a dense vocabulary often makes this kind of research comprehensible only to a niche audience. On one hand, research conducted in and funded by universities (in particular) should be accessible to the public and useful for the specialist. Thus research should not be resting comfortably within the ivory towers of academia, dozing in the armchairs of philosophy. On the other hand, with the intention of being accessible and utilitarian, some research studies also easily lend themselves to being used out of contexts. Methodologies in the social sciences, be they qualitative or quantitative, can appear to provide a theoretical frame which combine the different findings in a study into something cohesive and actionable. This makes the research into a product that can be consumed, it can become a pedagogic resource in the university, or an actionable bit of data that can go on to direct policy or make recommendations for real life situations. There have been attempts in the past to defend against an easy appropriation of pedantic knowledge that we witness in the academic and policy circles. A notable example is the the ‘toolbox’ proposed by Michel Foucault. He proposed that a certain book, 40

method, or topic that he has developed could be deployed differently by his readers for a different agenda. “This approach led him to regard ‘‘theory’’ as a toolbox of more or less useful instruments, each conceptual tool designed as a means of working on specific problems and furthering certain inquiries” (Garland, 2014: 366). He treated his books that dealt with different social phenomenon as mere toolboxes, as ‘useful instruments’ that encouraged his readers to do their own work, rather than accept his work as pronouncements of truth24. Similarly, modularity, proposed in this project, is a method to deliberately construct knowledge in chunks or modules that require further inquiry and interpretation before it can be digested as a system of thought. Modules within a project can have different research aims and questions, can deploy diverse methods and approaches, and produce insights and knowledges that can be at variance with each other. A study based through a modular approach would need to tolerate a disaggregation in its methods and its findings. Thus the whole is necessarily greater than the sum of its parts.‘Modularity’ would need to be distinguished from ‘bricolage’, the term introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, to mean the activity of putting together ideas to create a whole piece of work. “Lévi- Strauss (1962/1966) used these concepts in his structuralist analysis of myths, portraying the production of myths as a form of bricolage” (Hammersley, 2008). This development of the term went on influence the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Deena Weinstein and Michael Weinstein, amongst others. The bricoleur is someone who puts things together, or repairs them, by piecing them to make an object work. Bricolage signifies analytic thinking and imagination with the drive to make things work together.

Outside of the frame originally intended by Lévi-Strauss, the bricoleur as a researcher is a ‘DIY-er’, a tinkerer, or an academic free spirit. It can be argued that most qualitative research require some amount of bricolage to adapt to a field that may not only be unknown to the researcher but also changing. This change may happen as a factor of time or political events, or even as the researcher interacts with the field in the way of the double hermeneutic, a dialogical exchange between the researcher and the researched.

“Weinstein and Weinstein (1991, p.161) describe the results of the bricoleur's method as an "emergent construction" that reconfigures itself, adding new methodological tools, new forms of representation and interpretation, in response to the unpredictable and unforeseeable needs of an ever changing research environment. This extended methodological framework provides the researcher with the opportunity to explore a more open, expansive terrain, to interpret and reinterpret data across the different textual and visual forms. Research work undertaken in this

24 This authorial sanction that challenged the pedagogic directive of social science research also came with what may be perceived as a disadvantage: “Within his work Foucault engaged in reinterpretation, self-criticism and the challenging of his own past arguments. Such a dynamic approach meant that it was never possible to be forced into trying to elucidate a ‘final truth’ about a subject. Yet, it also prevented the emergence of a fully developed theoretical model” (Hope, 2015: 357).

way inevitably tests the capacity of the methodology itself to move successfully beyond the boundaries of more formally documented and disseminated research practices.”

Yardley, 2008

The flexibility required to adapt to a shifting scenario is certainly important and even contributes to the reflexivity that is a hallmark of critical qualitative research. Bricolage implies that the methods employed must concede primacy to the field, rather than disciplinary knowledge and academic training of the researcher. It defetishizes the attachment to method. “Roland Barthes describes obsessional attitudes towards method as "greedy" and "demanding", and work which constantly proclaims its "will-to-method" as "ultimately sterile" if all the effort has been put into the method and nothing remains for the writing”, writes Yardley (2008). The ideal of a perfect research study is abandoned by the bricoleur researcher as always-already impossible to explore across methods and disciplines. In other words, a bricolage methodology puts together methods from different disciplinary locations to arrive at something cohesive that responds to the exigencies of the situation.

These are important consideration and incumbent on modular methodology as well. However beyond bricolage, modularity in this research project is guided by looking at the phenomenon in question from different perspectives. Each perspective constructs within the study a module, and by itself no module responds to the research aims and questions in their entirety, but each module constructs meaning regarding a particular aspect. The relation between modules is contiguous, and one module makes another more intelligible only by a deliberate act of interpretation. The modular methodology is a way of attending to the specificity of the field, an attention necessitated as a response to the thorniness of the problem, already glimpsed in the early stages of the research.

Thus, this study is not a psychological, ethnographic, or geographical expedition into the Mira Datar dargah and its devotees. Primarily, it carries out a postcolonial analysis, i.e. research that looks at questions of the politics of knowledge arising out of a history of colonialism and orientalism that has (re)produced modernist binaries such as the “savage”, “traditional” and “native” in contrast to the “enlightened”, “modern” and “cosmopolitan”, the basic form of which is “us” versus “them”25. It requires a methodology that is alive to the questions of representation of subjects caught between contrasting worldviews of science and religion, of the politics of knowledge in a research project studying a site located in the third world but published in the first world, and of the slippage of meaning in the daily ordinary acts of translation that shapes the interaction of a multilingual group. Rather than being based

25 Recently in conversation, a friend said that colonialism comes from ‘the colon’, where the colonialist tries to eat up and digest the other. I would say that the analogy must be developed further in the case of Indian postcolonialism: the colonial enterprise presents the digested bits of the other as the coloniser’s own production. The first is about appropriation, about the power of the coloniser to swallow the other, the second is about representation, about how the coloniser is forced to justify the swallowing. I believe the second analogy is how Indian postcolonialism has understood the concept of colonialism, especially in its psychoanalytic iterations. 42

within a disciplinary orientation (even a multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary orientation) with attendant methods that must be developed to respond to a field within a network of associations or citations, the modular approach to methodology in this research is magnetized towards postcolonialism. An easy transferability of knowledge to the global north, where it can be appropriated, repackaged and distributed away from the space from which it emerges, is precisely the challenge a modular methodology can work with, and is well-suited to a postcolonial epistemology.

In the fieldwork phase that lasted for eight months (between August 2015 and April 2016), the researcher lived in situ, in the village of Unava, and interacted with sawwalis, mujawars, and the people of the village on a daily basis. Participants were recruited to engage in different modules of the project. Thus, sawwalis seeking treatment at the Dargah (Chapter 6: Narrative), and long-term residents of Unava (Chapter 5: Site) were two groups that were directly approached to participate in the study. Alongside, the researcher maintained a fieldwork diary to note down observational data as a tool for thinking reflexively (Chapter 3: Positionality). The data generated from each of these interactions constitute what I am calling here a module. The fourth module is a historical account that locates the Muslim shrine in the social geography of the region (Chapter 4: History). The modular methodology developed through these intersecting modules draws on methodological insights from ethnographic positionality (Haraway 1986, Sedgwick 2002) history (Gayer and Jaffrelot 2012, Sheikh 2009), geography (Massey 2005, Bridger 2011), and narrative analysis (Squire, Andrews, and Tamboukou 2008, Squire 2005) to present a larger analysis of faith healing that a single module would be unable to do. In the next section, the methods used in the different modules will be elaborated.

2.3.2 Modules and Methods

As the thesis took shape, it appears that there were two parts to the thesis. In each part, different methods have been adopted and adapted to interact with the cultural and social context of the fieldsite. The two parts are Sitation and Subjectivation. In the following section, the two parts of the thesis will be elaborated on and the methods used within the each part discussed26.

1. Sitation

‘Sitation’ combines ‘site’ as material location and ‘citation’ as networked association. This portmanteau gestures towards the work of citation that makes a site an object of study. It is obvious that the dargah is a site with physical proportions, albeit expanding in size from its more humble origins five hundred years

26 Given how the research methodology is divided into methods with a module having more than one method, each method used will be explicated in greater detail in the chapter that it corresponds to. 43

back. Nonetheless, today it is an object of study cited in myriad symbolic ways, each with its own premise that can shift the foundations of the dargah (metaphorically). There is the dargah as a historical site, as a cultural zone, as a religious site, as a tourist spot, as a place of informal business transactions, as the property of a devalued minority group, as a site of faith healing and miracles, as an example of lay psychology and superstition, as a site in need of medical intervention, as a site in need of governmental intervention, as a site in need of human rights framework… to mention a few that came up in the course of this project. These associations create versions of the same site, and the version is expanded upon within a disciplinary format with prescribed methodological inputs. So historians look at history of the site through written or oral memory archives, anthropologists look at cultural phenomena through ethnography and participant observation, psychologists look at psychological abnormalities through psychometric tests or interviews. Nonetheless, it is the same site with different citational work.

Citations are powerful in that alluding to an object, be it physical or semiotic, they create a network of associations between the object of study and the text they bring to it. Sara Ahmed has written about how making citations in academic work is a political act:

“I would describe citation as a rather successful reproductive technology, a way of reproducing the world around certain bodies. These citational structures can form what we call disciplines. […] The reproduction of a discipline can be the reproduction of these techniques of selection, ways of making certain bodies and thematics core to the discipline, and others not even part.”

Ahmed, 2013

A citation is always political. It not only produces an object for investigation, but also reproduces it in a new way, either intentionally or unconsciously. Thus, in the 2002 decision of the Supreme Court of India to order an inquiry into dargahs as unregistered mental asylums, the citation changed the discourse on faith healing itself. Citing this decision, the language used to speak about dargahs in India saw a significant change.

[The] unfortunate victims were inmates of an unauthorised asylum being run in a dargah which attracted a lot of patients suffering from mental disorders owing to the miraculous curative powers attributed by the believers to its presiding saint. Moved by this terrible outrage, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India took suo moto notice of the incident in the form of a PIL (CWP No. 334 of 2001). Notices were issued to the Union of India and to the state of Tamil Nadu. Subsequently, the Hon’ble Court directed the Union of India, vide its order, dated 15 October 2001, to ‘conduct a survey on All India basis with a view to identify registered and unregistered asylums as also about the state of facilities available in such asylums for treating mentally challenged.

Agarwal, Goel, Ichhpujani, Salhan, & Shrivastava, 2004: 114

It is obvious that the reference to the dargah as a mental asylum, unregistered at that, changed the way the site would be seen. Muslim shrines all over the country came under the purview of this legal 44

intervention as sites that may have been providing inadequate care to those it called “mentally challenged”, and this citation put into motion the events that led up to the Dava And Dua programme at the Mira Datar dargah in 200627.

This study was bombarded by many such citations, not the least of which were works by other researchers, disciplinary excavations of a site that is alive and responding to the gaze upon it. As stated before, there are several anthropological explorations and psychological evaluations of the dargah, the work it does and what work needs to be done. Attending to the specificity of the ways in which the site can be cited was therefore important. This has been done in three ways in this thesis:

i. Positional: It has been done by positioning the Mira Datar Dargah in its iterations within academic speech through the figure of the researcher (that is, me). Thus, the researched has been positioned in respect to the researcher, and vice versa. ii. Historical: The Mira Datar dargah has been studied within historical time that saw its construction and its multiple sociological citations down the ages. iii. Geographical: It has also been done geographically, by mapping and analysing the physical space in which the Mira Datar Dargah stands, as well as the social space it occupies for the local population of Unava.

2. Subjectivation

The subject in the instance of this study refers to the sawwali (the questioner) at the Mira Datar Dargah, the one who finds themself at the dargah for an affliction that can be looked at through the lens of science or religion. The sawwali has many choices and makes many choices. This study will document the choices the Subject makes, and what gets left outside the discourse of the Subject. However, the problem of this study is not only what of the subject but also what is a subject? Following on Judith Butler’s development of the subject, the subject is a materialization of power brought into being at the moment of being interpellated by ideology. The subject constituted by power is subjected or subordinated to it. This is the condition of the subject that it tries to resist, and in this resistance assumes the very thing it opposes: power. This looping relation to power is the process of subjectivation. Butler’s work on the subject, the Psychic Life of Power (1997), brings together Althusser, Foucault, and Freud, and is a turning point in critical theory as it brings together discourse analytic and psychoanalytic theories of the subject. She writes, “‘The subject’ is bandied about as if it were interchangeable with “the person” or “the individual”. The genealogy of the subject as a critical category, however, suggests that the subject, rather than be identified strictly with the individual, ought to be designated as a linguistic category, a

27 For a longer account of the events that transpired around the fire at Erwadi dargah, including the Supreme Court verdict and its aftermath, see Siddiqui, 2016, Davar & Lohokare, 2009. 45

placeholder, a structure in formation […]”. (Butler, 1997: 10). In Psychic Life of Power, which is the basis for theorizing the subject in this study, Butler clarifies categories around the subject by clearly demarcating widely used words like person, individual, subject, body, soul, psyche, identity, unconscious, and conscience (to name a few). In the process she holds both Foucault to account while also interrogating psychoanalysis through Freud and Lacan. She elaborates on the paradox inherent in the (hailing of) the subject:

i. Paradoxical dependency

Power is the necessary condition for the formation of the subject. Subordination takes place through language, as the effect of the authoritative voice that hails the subject (1997: 5). If power was considered undesirable for its mechanism of subordination of the subject, Foucault and Butler (via Althusser) turn this on its head by claiming that the subject intuits that without submission to power (i.e. subject to power) it cannot become an agent of its own power (i.e. the subject of power), and thus submits to subordination in exchange for becoming a subject. This is called the process of subjectivation. Butler brings to this a psychoanalytic sensibility when she writes that the subject attaches itself to those in power as a way to exist or as a method of survival, and thus subordination becomes a dependency of the subject. Thus the subject develops a passionate attachment to the very cause of its subordination, leaving it vulnerable to exploitation. Ambivalence to power is at the heart of the becoming of the subject.

ii. Paradox of referentiality

References to the subject appear to presuppose the existence of the subject, as if the subject exists prior to the work of power. In fact, Butler writes that we must refer to what does not exist (1997: 4). The presupposition of the subject comes along with the discursive demand to present a coherent subjectivity, both of which are not only premature but also purposive, since it pushes the subject to refer to itself in totalizing ways which only serves to deepen the alienation of the subject. This is transacted such that in approximating the normative ideal of becoming enlightened and reflexive (the subject of conscience), the subject must refer to itself in ways that inculcate the norm, i.e. neurotic repetition rather than be persisting in its alterity, persisting in one’s “own” being (p. 28). However the agency of the subject is not tethered to the conditions of its emergence once it has been formed through power. Butler writes: “The notion of power at work in subjection thus appears in two incommensurable temporal modalities: first, as what is for the subject always prior, outside of itself, and operative from the start, second as the willed effect of the subject. […] Part of this difficulty, I suggest, is that the subject is itself a site of ambivalence in which the subject emerges both as the effect of a prior power and as the condition of possibility for a radically conditioned form of agency.” Butler, 1997: 10-11 46

There are connections between the idea of the site in sitation, and the subject in subjectivation. Both point towards the process that develops when an object is referenced in speech, and transfigured into a multivalent linguistic category amenable to academic discourse. Butler even refers to the subject as a site:

“Individuals come to occupy the site of the subject (the subject simultaneously emerges as a “site”), and they enjoy intelligibility only to the extent that they are, as it were, first established in language. The subject is the linguistic occasion for the individual to achieve and reproduce intelligibility, the linguistic condition of its existence and agency. No individual becomes a subject without first becoming subjected or undergoing “subjectivation” (a translation of the French assujetisement).”

Butler, 1997: 11

In this study, the problem of sitation and the problem of subjectivation are approached as modules without trying to stitch one onto the other to achieve a singular coherent theory that is so seductive in academia.

In contrast to the ways the site of faith healing, Mira Datar Dargah has been studied, the subject of faith healing, the sawwali has been studied through the narratival approach; through a process of narrative- generation, the subject has been approached through biographical detail on how each came to become a sawwali, and life as a sawwali at the dargah. Each narrative is analysed for its narrative features, before commonalities are analysed that produce an understanding of the subject of faith healing. The narratives while allowing us to get a glimpse of the subject do not reveal enough about the ghost. The silence of the narratives of sawwalis on their ghosts opens up a new line of inquiry about the narrative approach to the subject and allows the development of the idea of “the ghost as method”.

Notes on Transcription

All the interviews were conducted in Hindi with words from other languages coming in to the speech of the participants. However these words were, for the most part, comprehensible to the researcher. The transcripts were translated into English, however some words have been retained from the original, denoted in narratives in square brackets: “[ ]” (see Chapter 6). This is because the word employed by the speaker was either in English originally, or the word in Hindi is being retained for its specificity (after being translated at the time it first appears in the transcript). In some cases, the word in the vernacular has

been retained alongside the translation in square brackets with a backslash: “[/ ]”. This is to provide the original word since the translation into English does not capture the full nuance of the word28.

2.4 Ethical considerations

This research project was submitted to the University of Manchester’s Research Ethics Committee (UREC) in the category of High Risk. This risk categorization was influenced by the fact that the research would be conducted in settings with vulnerable populations29 outside the university in a multiple of languages. The application received a favourable ethical opinion from the UREC Committee in August 2015, after which I embarked on fieldwork30.

UREC’s ethical guidelines regarding informed consent, confidentiality and safeguarding against harm, were followed throughout the project. The procedure for taking verbal consent was drawn up in advance in English, Hindi and Gujarati. In the end only the Hindi format was deployed in the course of fieldwork31. Utmost care was taken ensure that all participants gave gave their informed consent at the time of the first interview so that it was certain that they were participating in the research of their own choice. Moreover, taking ongoing consent was considered essential to respect their autonomy and decisions throughout the length of the fieldwork. To this end, the researcher would periodically remind them that their meetings and interviews were part of a research study, and that what they were sharing would be used in the research. Participants were also informed that the research process did not provide for any kind of therapeutic intervention, and neither was there any monetary exchange involved. This served as a deterrant in expectations that informants may have that are outside of the scope of the project or that they were trading their stories and information in exchange for medical or financial assistance. Data was anonymized to protect the identity of participants with pseudonyms given to those involved in the narrative interviews. To preserve confidentiality, the researcher took care not to share information between participants or with other stakeholders at the site (such as the maujwars or the clinicians). Furthermore, the researcher was mindful of respecting the local culture, traditions, and customs of the shrine and the village. This was performed by adapting her behaviour, dress, and comportment to her

28 An example of the transcription to translation process is available in Appendix V. 29 The selection of participants in the narrative group was based on them accessing the psychiatric services in addition to faith-based services at the dargah. With the inclusion of people possibly accessing psychiatric services, the risk category of the research project moved up. This was influenced by the fact that although the questions being asked were related to everyday current life events in the experience of the participants, and were neither focussed on trauma, nor violence, an individual’s affective response cannot be foretold. The ethics application submitted was an acknowledgement that any kind of questioning for research participants may lead them to recall life events that have caused them some pain, even if interview questions were designed to avoid inducing discomfort or pain. A copy of the interview topic schedule is available in the Appendix IV. 30 A copy of the UREC Approval Letter is available in Appendix I. 31 Copies of the Informed Consent and Participant Information Sheet (English version) for research participants for narrative interviews and walking interviews are available in Appendix II and III. 48

surroundings, since she did not wish to cause thoughtless and unnecessary offence to the members of the community that had opened its doors for her during this time. A fieldwork diary was kept by the researcher during the period of fieldwork to record not only the observations of the site, but also the perceptions and associations that the researcher was making during this time. The fieldwork diary was used as a methodological tool to promote self-reflexivity in the researcher, and maintain the integrity and rigour of the research.

The above-mentioned ethical guidelines were considered necessary but not sufficient. The ethical considerations incumbent on this project extended beyond the guidelines to the problematics of researching in postcolonial contexts in rural India, and having to take on board the difficulty of representation across several registers. Here the problem and ways of addressing are both available within postcolonialial scholarship. Indian Postcolonialism has constructed within its epistemology an ethical responsibility for the researcher through the questions of representation and translation (Spivak, 2012, 1999), which is not only incumbent on what is being studied but also how it is being studied. It requires a thinking through of the categories of caste, class, gender, sexuality, and language, with an added dimension of positioning these categories in the manner they have been cited historically and geographically. The ethical burden of postcolonial epistemology is in/of represention. Representation involves not only representing the intersectional subject positions of research participants, but representing this knowledge to the world. In the Indian context, this ethics is purposive labour. This thesis takes on board this labour of representation as its ethics-in-action.

2.5 Subjective considerations

As a qualitative research project, this inquiry employed methods that encouraged an immersion in the field over eight months, and a deeper relation to be fostered between the researcher and the participants. Here the subjectivity of the researcher, the familiar self-referentiality that lends me a coherent identity to project to the world, was also the prism through which I approached the field. The two subjective positions that were most significant during my stay in Unava were (i) my identity as a Muslim researcher investigating a Muslim shrine in a Hindu dominated region, and (ii) my professional credentials as a psychotherapist trained to think psychoanalytically and scientifically. These identities, one inherited, the other acquired, not only mediated my response to the themes of religion and science, dua and dava, but also were the points through which others connected to me. I will describe the reciprocal dynamics of how I was constituted in the field in the next chapter (Chapter 3: Positionality).

Nonetheless, the personal characteristics that make me recognizable to myself and to others were not always only the lens through which I approached the field; sometimes these were also the challenges I had to face and overcome in the process of research. Within the turbulent political scene of Gujarat,

exensive planning was required for a female researcher to be travelling solo and living independently. The challenge was heightened since I had to make the shift from an urban metropolitan centre to a rural setting with more strictly gender-defined roles. This required me to adapt to my surroundings and adopt a more conventional cis-gendered femininity than I was given to. I would avoid being outside of the house aftter dark or occupying public spaces unaccompanied by an older person to lend me respectability. These behaviours had a direct impact on my ability to negotiate the space and time of fieldwork.

2.5.1 Note on voice of the researcher

This thesis will employ occasionally the first person voice of the researcher. There are two main reasons to employ the first voice. The first is that the first person voice keeps the writing close to the author. The tone is kept intentionally personal, and allows the researcher to record the emotional components of doing fieldwork. The researcher can use more affective language in the first person voice to get across the embodied experience of being in the field and interacting with research participants, or being in the archive and interacting with textual material. The other reason is that the use of the “I” of the researcher disallows the potential of academic speech to speak for everybody (or nobody), or speak from anywhere (or nowhere as Donna Haraway [1988] would say). The first person voice in academic writing pins down the author and fosters a greater responsibility towards the language deployed in the research.

At this juncture, it is pertinent to listen to the word of caution voiced by feminist geographer, Liz Bondi on the use of the first person singular voice in research as a way to explore what the feelings of the researcher bring to the study. She writes,

“Turning to one’s own experience may avoid some of the pitfalls of speaking of, with and through the voices of others, but it raises as many methodological difficulties as it resolves. Rose (1997: 311) has criticised (feminist) researchers’ efforts to make themselves ‘transparent’ to their research participants and to their readers as yet another ‘god-trick’ (or ‘goddess-trick’), insisting instead on the fallibilities of all the knowledges we produce.”

Bondi, 2014

Keeping in mind that even if the personal is the political, the personal does not situate the political to be unquestionably beyond reproach, that it is not beyond critique for its singular perspective, and that “claims to knowledge based on introspection and first-person testimony are no different from those grounded more externally” (Bondi, 2014), this study carries my attempt to make sense of the wor(l)d, and so I place myself firmly within the text. I am not the subject of this research, neither is this study autobiographical. Nevertheless I am one of the subjects to be found in its writing. Here is an attempt to acknowledge it.

SECTION I – SITATION

Comprises of: Chapter 3 – Positionality Chapter 4 – History Chapter 5 – Site

CHAPTER 3

POSITIONALITY

3.1 Introduction

Qualitative research attends to the subjective aspects of research. This subjectivity can be studied with respect to the research participant, the researcher and the process of meaning-making they employ. Thus, qualitative research is invested in fleshing out the processes of generating knowledge, which becomes both the method and the result of this paradigm of research. Within this paradigm, meaning is thus inextricably tied to the conditions of its emergence, and the question of the truth in/of knowledge is also qualitative: “truth depends on its own production, emerging in the process by which we discover something. Truth is intimately bound up with the conditions in which the knowledge is produced and the position from which the researcher is examining the phenomenon in question” (Parker, 2004: 16). This is to say that any qualitative research details both the process of research and the position of the researcher in the process as a way of qualifying its ‘truth’.

This chapter will look at positionalities, that of the researched, the research participants vis-à-vis their life- worlds, that of the researcher, who enters the field as a subject of knowledge, but also as an agent of it, and finally the position of the site of research at the socio-political moment that the researcher catches it in. Thus this chapter elaborates on my position as the researcher. This is followed up by looking at an incident during fieldwork that briefly equalized the positions between the researcher and the researched, which is when I fell ill and was rendered into a sawwali myself.

3.2 Dilemmas of the field

Fieldwork begins before the researcher leaves the cosy environs of the university; within the university the researcher is also operating within a field. Thus there are at least two fields. One is the disciplinary field one belongs to in the course of study, i.e. the field of knowledge determined by disciplinary boundaries, appropriate methodologies and expected output. The other is the field in which one will conduct the research for the purpose of an assignment, project, or thesis. In other words, when I go to my actual fieldsite I am positioned as many things that are in wait for me before I even reach, which I ‘discover’ on the ground during fieldwork.

“As Bourdieu would put it, the first is the [researcher]’s own field of research – that is, the organization of the discipline and its assumptions, constraints and rewards attached to various kinds of analysis; and the second is the settings s/he studies, the web of relationships in which s/he gets embedded, the obligations and the mutual expectations that develop between the researcher and the researched.”

Jasani, 2007: 41

Donna Haraway’s epochal paper on Situated Knowledges is as relevant today as it was 30 years back, when she wrote, “I am arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people's lives. I am arguing for the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity” (Haraway, 1988: 589). A feminist politics of location, positioning and situating complicates the notion of ethics in critical research. Haraway on feminist epistemology writes that, “Positioning implies responsibility for our enabling practices. It follows that politics and ethics grounds struggles for and contests over what may count as rational knowledge. That is, admitted or not, politics and ethics ground struggles over knowledge projects in the exact, natural, social and human sciences. Otherwise rationality is simply impossible, an optical illusion projected from nowhere comprehensively” (p.587). Partial knowledge is the condition for a mutual exchange between the researcher and the researched. To look at situated knowledges in the Harawayan project is “to relinquish fantasies about being able to view the world from above as if we have access to something akin to a god’s eye view. None of us can step outside our own immersion in the human world, and our knowledge is therefore always situated and perspectival, framed by the particular positions we occupy” (Bondi & Fewell, 2016: 26).

One way to situate knowledge would be to locate the position of the researcher in the research.

“The position of the researcher is the structurally-constituted research subjectivity that has enabled some things to happen in the research and perhaps closed down other things. To talk about the ‘position of the researcher’ is not at all to wallow in one’s own bad (or good) feelings about what happened in the research, to spill your guts about what you felt, but to explore how that particular form of subjectivity came to be the way it was by virtue of the particular institutional relationships that were drawn up and recreated and so to make it intelligible and accountable.”

Parker, 2004: 30-31

To bring the ‘structurally-constituted research subjectivity’ of the researcher to the table is more than an admission of the personal idiosyncrasies of the researcher, it is a way to think about the problem at hand since the researcher is positioned vis-à-vis the researched on one hand, and in respect to the social, economic and political conditions that make the research possible, and within which the research will be conducted.

Reflexivity is a vital component of critical social science research for it draws in the researcher as a subject within the field of study who changes the field by being in it, and in the process is changed as well. It “refers to the two-way character of influence that pervades social research. Reflexivity acknowledges the intermingling of the subjective worlds of the researchers and those of the others in whom they are interested, and reflexive analysis seeks to understand this not from the outside but by reflecting upon what happens in our engagements with other people’s subjective worlds” (Bondi & Fewell, 2016: 27). Furthermore, reflexivity in research is important to locate the subject positions of the researcher and the researched, especially since the power differential between the two mediates not only the quality of the relationship, but also what is produced through it.

The socio-political environment, which is alarmingly pushing to a far-right position of India as ‘Hindu rashtra’ or Hindu nation, places the Dargah in a vulnerable position. Indeed the mujawar associated with my research project, Jehangir Saiyed, asked me not to write something that made life for them (him, the other faith healers and the Muslims of that region) at risk. He said that many researchers have made their way to this Dargah, and they have used it for their research, and sometimes they have even made fun of its practices. He asked to be fair in my reporting, because as he pointed out, I am a Muslim. This put me in a difficult position. Would I be fairer than other researchers because I am a Muslim? There are two sub- questions questions here: One, can one be fair-er than someone else? Are there gradations in being fair and just? Two, is one fair because one happens to share some common significant variable with the research participants? Is some common ground required to be able to report without bias? Would this not also be a bias?

The other dilemma his words put me in was that he was inviting an identification in me with him so as to ally our work together. As a researcher, who are my allies? My discipline as the field of knowledge with its boundaries and methodologies? My university imposing safeguards in the way of ethics and risk assessment protocols? My funders (in this case, the University of Manchester) who make my research possible? My fellow Indians who share my questions around the place of shrines in the country at present? My fellow Muslims who share my feelings of persecution by a fascist populist government? The gatekeepers to my fieldsite who allow me entry at the dargah? My research participants who tell me their stories and problems? And who in this list that I have enumerated are not the objects of my inquiry, from scientists and academicians, in particular psychology and anthropology, to the Ethics Board at the university, or to the khadims at the dargah?

I could understand, communicate, and even share the concerns of stakeholders located in different vantage points. Having too many identifications with too many stakeholders can seem like a problem, however this is not different from non-research settings; subjects do not (often) have only one singular way of defining themselves in relation to other social actors, or stick to one discourse to understand a social reality. As a subject being exercised by several discourses, the multiple identifications I had served 54

to make me more reflexive about my research practices. Nonetheless, I bring a certain research sensibility to this project, which is informed by critical psychology.

3.3 Positionality

This research project is imbricated in the global mental health agenda to provide evidenced-based medicine to the mentally ill. Thus, an easy reading of this research would be to ask if this site of faith healings is engaged in providing treatment services to a population of mentally ill persons. This line of questioning can seek to develop ways of regulating these sociocultural practices seen at the shrine through a scientific methodology. The discourse of the psy-disciplines that are concerned with what is normal and what is abnormal, as well as how to regulate both the normal and the abnormal is bearing down on these sites. Thus, these sites become new spaces for critical psychology that is interested in “the systematic examination of how some varieties of psychological action and experience are privileged over others, how dominant accounts of ‘psychology’ operate ideologically and in the service of power” (Parker, 2007: 2). Critical psychology is a theoretical and methodological resource that borrows analyses from critical theory such as discourse analysis, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, Marxism, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies to study and resist the hegemonic hold and constraining spread of psychological discourses in the present.

Critical psychology has faced within the last decade a new problematic in Global Mental Health (GMH), which despite titular claims to the global have a stronger impact on the Global South. GMH is a new movement in mental health service provision that can be differentiated from the globalizing impulse of psychiatry that has been critiqued by critical psychology or transcultural psychiatry. The term ‘global mental health’ is itself of new coinage:

“Neither the World Development Report (World Bank, 1993), the book on World Mental Health (Desjarlais, Eisenberg, Good, & Kleinman, 1995), nor the World Health Report 2001 (World Health Organization [WHO], 2001) contain the phrase “global mental health.” Only from 2001 onwards does “world” mental health turn into “global” mental health (e.g., in the WHO Mental Health Gap Action Programme [2008]). It helps to distinguish Global Mental Health—in capital letters and with the abbreviation “GMH”—from broader issues in transcultural psychiatry and the globalization of Western psychiatry.”

Ecks, 2016: 808

GMH is the rubric that the Lancet Global Mental Health Group have created for this new movement in mental health service provision that argues that “a basic, evidence-based package of services32 for core mental disorders should be scaled up33, and that protection of the human rights of people with mental disorders and their families should be strengthened” (The Lancet, 2007: 1241). The construction of this global problem came about with the understanding of how little of national and international funding across the world has been allocated to mental health disorders, demonstrated by the Global Burden of Disease study conducted by the WHO and the World Bank:

“The landmark Global Burden of Disease study […] found that four of the ten leading causes of disability through the world, for persons age five and older, are mental disorders. Together, mental disorders (including suicide) account for 15.4% of the overall burden of disease from all causes; second only to cardiovascular conditions (18.6%) and slightly more than the burden associated with all forms of cancer (15%). Respiratory conditions (4.8%) and even infectious and parasitic diseases (2.8%) are far behind. However, despite the worldwide public health importance of psychiatric disorders and their associated higher rates of disability, they are undertreated compared with physical illnesses in high-, low- and middle-income countries alike.”

Incayawar, 2009: 252

The Lancet group have been pushing to bring more attention to mental health in global health fund allocation, with a special focus on the Global South, and in 2017 they have completed a decade of activism in the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH):

“In 2007, The Lancet published a groundbreaking Series on global mental health that ended with a call to action to scale up services for people with mental health problems guided by the twin principles of the right to evidence-based care and the right to dignity. This Series helped catalyse a movement that has raised the profile of mental health in public policies and promoted research, capacity building, and delivery of mental health care worldwide.”

Patel, Saxena, Frankish, & Boyce, 2016

However GMH for all its talk of equality and parity is not without its critics. China Mills in Decolonizing Global Mental Health: the Psychiatrization of the Majority World (2013) points out the timing of this agenda of parity is significant. She writes, “The MGMH frames distress as an illness like any other, calling for global equality in access to psychiatric medications. However, there is a growing body of research from the global North that documents the harmful effects of long-term use of psychiatric medication and questions the usefulness of psychiatric models” (China Mills, 2013: 4). Indian mental health activists have

32 While package of services may seem self-explanatory, the authors do not define it further, other than in the terms of its costs, as “package of service interventions or components that can form the backbone of a national mental health system that provides effective interventions and human rights protection” (The Lancet, 2007: 1247). 33 The Lancet GMH Series authors define scaling up as, “we argue that the overall volume of services provided to treat people with mental disorders needs to be substantially increased in every country—but especially so in low- income and middle-income countries—so that the available care is proportionate to the magnitude of need. We refer to this process as scaling-up” (2007: 1241). 56

pointed out how psychiatry in the region, from medical practice to legal ramifications, has not only been influenced by colonialism, but continues to perpetuate it. Bhargavi Davar, a vociferous critic of mainstream psychiatry as well as MGHM writes,

“The GMH Movement is yet another epistemic variant, providing a charged and euphoric atmosphere in contemporary India with its rhetoric of ‘burden of mental disorders’, ‘filling the treatment gap’ and the ‘right to mental health care’ as a basic human right. In all the written literature, the GMH movement has remained silent on the colonial basis of mental health practices in India, or on the question of community choices and alternatives. This absence, I argue, permits penal practices that have, through late colonial history and post Independence in India, entrenched themselves as ‘medical’.”

Davar, 2014: 277

If on one hand, the field of mental health, and the disciplines of psychiatry and psychology are guilty of perpetuating colonial ideas from the past in the Global South, they are also susceptible to paper over contemporary nuance of particular local contexts. This critique of the psy-disciplines applies equally to the MGMH that has not articulated a clear policy on how it means to respond to vernacular epistemologies; “while ensuring the ethical and proper care of those with mental health needs must remain the foremost GMH priority, the movement may, at the same time, need to adopt a culturally nuanced perspective to distinguish malpractices that occur in some traditional healing sites (which may be just as common in some psychiatric settings across the world) from the overarching therapeutic philosophies that guide these folk healing traditions” (Sood, 2016: 777)

GMH is beset with the same problems as a universalizing discourse which forms the critique that critical psychologists have had of mainstream psychiatry and psychology.

“The GMH movement glosses over local affective ecologies and sidesteps the naming of crucial culture-specific vectors that mediate and shape social suffering (Jadhav et al. 2015). For example, the treatment of ‘manual scavengers’ (divers into sewage manholes and handlers of human faeces who drink to cope with work in the ‘sea of filth’) as people with alcohol abuse problems who are subject to therapeutic strategies such as cognitive behavioural therapy and alcohol aversion medication, does not get anywhere near addressing the humiliation and damage to subjectivity involved in this deeply stigmatizing work.”

Jadhav, Mosse, & Dostaler, 2016: 2

These analyses of GMH provide a critical perspective to this research project. It would be very easy for a research on faith healing to psychologize both the site as providing psychotherapeutic services, and the subject receiving its treatment as suffering from a psychological disorder. Given the trajectory of how faith healing and healers came to be seen as imbricated in the mental health service provision, it has been assumed by the majority of my interlocutors that my research is looking to explain how faith healing works

psychologically. I have come across this expectation in academic discussions very often, a belief that faith healing must have a masked but proper explanation that fits within received wisdom from scientific psychology. When I am identified by clinicians, mujawars, and sawwalis as a psychologist, I encounter a suspicion that I must be having an agenda (positive or negative) to bring faith healing into the fold of some regulated control of a professional cadre, even if that is only at the level of theory. Sometimes this suspicion of the other persuades me to imagine that it is what I must achieve as well. However, this would be a paranoid reading of the project, and of my own research aims. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2002) has theorized the paranoid reading through Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein’s very different accounts of paranoia. If for Freud, paranoia was an ego position arising out of a defensive reaction to homosexuality, i.e. against the suspicion of same-sex desire in oneself, for Klein, paranoia was reconceptualized within the ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ as an ego position in relation to the object of affects by projecting suspicion and envy against the other. Sedgwick uses the Kleinian reading to move from the ‘paranoid position’ to the ‘paranoid reading’ to signify critical reading practices that encompass a relation to knowledge developed through a hermeneutics of suspicion34.

Research produced through a paranoid reading will look for hidden interpretative clues within the field of study, and look to defend against the dangers of a site that may appear different, but must be inherently the same. Sedwick proposes that paranoia does not like surprise; “The first imperative of paranoia is There must be no bad surprises, and indeed, the aversion to surprise seems to be what cements the intimacy between paranoia and knowledge per se, including both epistemophilia and scepticism” (ibid.). This was certainly one way of doing this research on faith healing, and I would contend that most psychological accounts of faith healing are influenced by paranoid reading practices. Nonetheless, even Sedgwick opines that the paranoid reading, despite how productive it has been scholastically in the twentieth (and twenty-first) century, is not the only way to do critical research. She writes, “They represent a way, among other ways, of seeking, finding, and organizing knowledge. Paranoia knows some things well and others poorly” (Sedgwick, 2002: 130). Thus, this project too has paranoid moments, and sometimes, especially in a field marked by discourses of psychologization and psychiatriazation, even comes back to a paranoid position. Nonetheless, part of the self-reflexive work performed within this research is to identify those moments, and work with them. As a consequence, this thesis documents the many methodological shifts that were involved in the project, it describes these moves that were made sometimes by charging ahead, sometimes by going in reverse, and thus the surprises that produced this work.

34 The hermeneutics of suspicion was coined by Paul Ricoeur to link the work of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud on the production of knowledge through an act of reading or interpretation based on suspicion. 58

3.4 A reverse conclusion: Equalising positions

In November 2015, misfortune befell my fieldwork that in hindsight produced an excellent learning experience: I fell ill. It started as moderate pain in my back, severe fatigue, and an internal feeling of feverishness. With the receding monsoons, it was the season of mosquito-borne dengue fever in the country, which in some cases can be fatal. Within a couple of days I had a suspicion that my symptoms appeared to be following the early stages of dengue fever. I visited the local doctor in the village. However I made the mistake of telling the doctor what I thought I had contracted. Nearly every doctor I have consulted has gotten extremely annoyed if I come in with a self-diagnosis, and this doctor laughed off my suspicions too. I was prescribed blood tests and a test to check for malaria. The following day tests came back with inconclusive results. The doctor diagnosed me with kidney infection, and supplied me with a combination of antibiotics. For the next five days I took the antibiotics while my symptoms continued to intensify. By this time, I could not sit up straight with the pain in my back, and normal daily activities were becoming strenuous. Eight days after developing my first symptoms, I packed a handbag that I could barely lift, and made the six hour journey by road and air to collapse in my parents’ house. The next day, I visited my family doctor who admitted me immediately into a hospital to check the high fever I was showing. The following day I was diagnosed with atypical viral fever, and treated for a strain of dengue fever that had mutated enough to not show up on diagnostic tests. Five days later, I was discharged from the hospital, and then my parents nursed me back to health for another ten days before I went back to my fieldsite.

My period of convalescence had made me feel like a child dependent on my parents, but its most evil effects was that it had broken the rhythm of fieldwork I had been building in the previous two months. I returned to the village with misgivings… I still had not fully recovered since recovery from dengue fever is a long and arduous process lasting many months, for the first time in my life I was fearful of mosquitoes that were swarming all over the place, and to my surprise I found that people in the village did not believe me when I said that I had been absent due to having contracted dengue fever. In conversation with an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) of the Primary Health Centre, I was informed that Gujarat had been declared dengue-free that year. So despite my symptoms, local medical practitioners found it difficult to believe that I had contracted dengue fever if I had been living in Unava.

Here was another example of the global and the local dimensions of research coming out in the very fever that had been heating up my bones. The regional medical policy made it so that I would not even be tested for dengue fever, part of the effort of the state to project that all is well in Gujarat to the rest of the country, and thus further push ‘the Gujarat model’ as the best solution for the development of India. However, that was not my experience: all was not well! It was only because of the advantage of having the purchasing power of buying a flight ticket and private hospital care that I went against the medical advice of the local doctor. I was also emboldened by my contempt of doctors who cannot even 59

condescend to listen to their patients. As an educated consumer (of medicine) who reads the backs of drug strips and the little pamphlets that come with medicines, I think of myself as somebody who can understand and converse in medical speech, a privilege doctors deny me. Added to this is my university education involving critical analyses of Global Mental Health where I critique medical practices for their power and knowledge dynamics. For these reasons, I could disregard the medical advice I got to seek a second opinion.

It was less easy to ignore what my research participants thought of my sudden onset of illness and subsequent disappearance. In a setting where the caprice of nature and the spirits can write destiny, my illness was considered noteworthy. Several people from the village asked me if I had done something to anger the saint or had disrespected the shrine. They had their suspicions of me already as an outsider who swoops in with a ton of questions, and then mysteriously disappears because of “an illness” that I could have treated just like them: by supplicating at the shrine. It made me realize that I was no longer an outsider who could do as I wished. In other words, I had become part of the field I was studying. While I was still a doctoral researcher, I was also a sawwali. It was then that I paid my homage at the shrine… I asked the mujawar to lay a chaddar (sheet/cover) on the grave of the saint for my speedy recovery as I made perambulations around the shrine. At the end, the rose petals laid on the shrine were put in my hand, and I ate some and distributed the rest amongst my friends and fellow sawwalis amongst the heady fumes of the loban (incense).

Two months later after resuming fieldwork that my hair started falling out in clumps again; it was another bout of viral fever. However, it is not me alone suffering with fever this time around. Mosquito-borne viral fever had been spreading through the village. The doctor’s clinic was packed full of feverish patients, and the pharmacy was selling pills containing paracetamol and caffeine, as well as antibiotics over-the- counter. I discovered why everybody was so nonchalant about the viral fever; the mustard crop was being harvested and the deadly mosquito colonies nestled below the pretty yellow blossoms had been displaced. ”Season-change”, my kindly landlord told me when I asked about the viral fever epidemic, “happens every year”. “’Happens every year’ does not mean ‘season-change’”, I muttered bitterly to him. These bouts of recurring fever tied to crop cycles and seasonal conditions are so commonplace to the local people that it was not even worth mentioning to newcomers, like myself. Locals would pop their pills and continue with their daily work, and fever and fatigue were no excuse to stop working when it happens every year. However, we were all in it together, my research collaborators, participants and I. In the absence of a public health campaign targeted at a seasonal health risk, the time of harvest passed in a haze of fever in the village. Illness is a great equalizer.

Nevertheless, this lesson from the time of fieldwork is not very special in a site like the dargah. The dargah is a witness to how illness and affliction bring people of different classes, religions, and castes together. In times of distress, the cries of those affected sound similar. At the dargah, everyone removes 60

their footwear at the gate, people of varying status bend their head and ask for deliverance and relief, they breathe the fumes of the loban that flows without reserve over each of us. Momentarily it looks like this site has equalized the positions between people. The following chapters will study how enduring social structures continue to uphold the system in place amidst the camaraderie witnessed in shrines.

CHAPTER 4

HISTORY

4.1 Introduction

This chapter provides a historical context to the study of a Muslim shrine in Gujarat. The most basic of these questions pertain to both the site and the practices we observe at the site: how old is the Mira Datar Dargah? What is the history of its origins? How long has it been a site of faith healing? What is the place of a Muslim shrine in present-day Gujarat? Has the communal conflict that the region (and the country as a whole) has seen escalating since independence in 1947 made an impact on the shrine and the lives of the people who live here? How is this history important for this research project?

To trace the historical significance of this shrine, this chapter will begin from the present moment, that is, from starting fieldwork in August 2015 for this research. The historical consequence and connotations of religious identities made itself apparent right from the start of fieldwork. From the contemporary moment, this chapter will makes its way into the past with a brief description of the history of Muslim shrines in the region of Gujarat. It will look at the emergence of Islam in Gujarat dating back to the seventh century, and the establishment of the Gujarat Sultanate in the fifteenth century. It was with the patronage of the Gujarat sultans that the Mira Datar Dargah was built in the sixteenth century. From there on, the chapter will look at the way Sufi shrines like the Mira Datar Dargah have been historically perceived as spaces of religious cosmopolitanism and syncretism in India, before coming to the early rifts in Hindu-Muslim coexistence in pre-Independent India, and how this communal divide has worsened in the recent past. The chapter will conclude by framing the embodied experience of conducting fieldwork within this historical context.

4.2 Starting fieldwork in Gujarat

My first foray into fieldwork in August 2015 was short: two days. On my first day of fieldwork I found I had walked into an explosive situation, the ongoing agitation between the Patidars and the state of Gujarat. The Patidar Samaj consists of the many sub-castes among the Patels of Gujarat, a dominant caste group in this region with access to land, money, and government favour. However in 2015 the Patels rose up in revolt against the BJP, a party they have helped vote into power again and again, demanding reservation for Patels in government posts. When a dominant group wants the status of an economically

disadvantaged group, it is apparent that the affirmative action policies of the Indian State are bearing fruit. Socially and economically disadvantaged groups (Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Backward Caste, Other Backward Caste) are getting a small share of the pie, and however small, the dominant groups are experiencing the loss, as if it this loss was theft by the lower castes, as if it was betrayal from the government made of their peers.

When I set out I hadn’t known there was anything afoot. The conflict was ongoing and the rest of the country watched, the majority not knowing what was happening in Gujarat. I found out only after I had reached Ahmedabad, after I bought the ticket for a State Transport bus to Unava village, and after the bus sped off in the developing gloom of the evening. Half an hour into the journey, the bus conductor looked at my ticket and said that the bus won’t be passing through the village, and he would drop me off on the highway outside the village. He was uninterested in answering any of my questions, having pegged me as non-Gujarati from my use of Hindi to communicate. He told me it was dangerous, and they could not risk the lives of all the passengers to take me to my destination, but would feign incomprehension when I asked him what the danger was or how could the ticket office sells tickets for a destination that the bus would no longer be passing. Fellow passengers told me that the Patidars had taken to the streets when their leader Hardik Patel was arrested. The protestors were stopping traffic, burning vehicles on the street, and pelting stones at travellers who defied their bandh (literally “stop” or “closed”). For non-Patidars travellers, the situation was grim. I tried to use mobile internet to look for news, but there was none. Then the internet stopped working. No news outlet was reporting anything on the situation. I later found out that in times of civil unrest, the state government would issue a temporary ban on news reporting and internet services so as to contain the spread of violence.

In the bus, I was frightened and uncertain as what to do next. Travelling with the bus to the last stop was an option, but then the challenge would be finding accommodation in an even more remote village with perhaps an even larger Patidar population. The other option was getting off the bus immediately to catch the last bus back to Ahmedabad in the dead of the night. Finally I did what women must do to survive in rural India: plead and beg to the man in power for some brotherly help and compassion. The bus conductor eventually decided to drop me off half a kilometre away from the village. It was already past sundown, and I was dropped off on a dark road without streetlights and therefore zero visibility, armed only with the direction to keep walking in a straight line till I saw the lights from the highway motels (and by inference, to walk in the opposite direction if I saw vigilantes on the road whose passions were running high). So that is what I did; I walked in almost complete darkness clutching onto my backpack in a cold sweat till I saw the sign of a motel, the one I had called ahead to book. In fact, I passed no body other than the cows making their way home in the dark, and heard nothing other than the rustling of the fields, and it did nothing to calm my nerves.

I stayed two days, spoke to the mujawar, Jehangir Ali Saiyyed, whose support I had sought at the dargah months before embarking on fieldwork. The mujawar told me to leave and wait for two weeks, and contact him before making any further plans in Gujarat. I then found my way back to Ahmedabad, took a hastily booked flight back to Maharashtra where people did not even know what was happening in Gujarat. I had learnt my lesson, but many of the people I met in Gujarat would repeat it to me, sometimes with pity, sometimes with condescension, “this is Gujarat, you cannot saunter in here as you please”. My Indian passport was not enough there, going to Gujarat was like going to another country. I was warned in Ahmedabad that in the villages of Gujarat, as a Muslim woman, I had better take care. I put this down as the urban fear of the rural. Also as a Muslim woman in Gujarat, I was always on alert, be it city, town or village.

Were the warnings scare-mongering? Was there a reason to be alert? Is it difficult being Muslim in Gujarat? On my return to Unava for my second attempt at fieldwork, I thought so. After many months of fieldwork, the fear was in my bones, but I was no longer conscious of it. I could read Gujarati having learnt the alphabet, I would observe, speak and write for my research, cover my head and/or upper body as appropriate, eat the “pure veg” food I was served, and return to my room by evening. I had assimilated a bit, learnt my place in Gujarati society. My ‘foreign’ PhD was insignificant, as was I. I heard the Muslims speaking praises about Gujarat, about its state infrastructure and job opportunities, but in a while the ghosts of the past would emerge in the memories of the riots of 200235. Every rickshaw ride in Ahmedabad would yield stories of 2002 and its aftermath. Conversely, in Unava, there was a stoic silence on the matter, as if 2002 never happened. In fact, initially I heard stories from non-Muslims about the violence on Muslims in the Gujarat riots of 2002. Over time, I heard some Muslims speak about their own experiences of 2002. They affected me, and my sense of personhood in my temporary residence in Gujarat. The Hindu-Muslim division is a visceral experience of living in Gujarat post-2002… the Godhra

35 The Gujarat riots of 2002 (also called the Godhra riots) to the casual observer started on February 27th, 2002 with the arson attack on the Sabarmati Express at the Godhra railway station. The train was returning from Ayodhya after activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (called karsevaks) had partly demolished the Babri Masjid, a Muslim mosque built by Babur in the sixteenth century reputedly built over the site of the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. When the train was waiting at the Godhra station, an altercation broke out between the Hindu travellers and the Muslim vendors. The S6 train compartment was set on fire allegedly by Muslims and it saw the death of 58 karsevaks. The next day, mass communal riots broke out in Ahmedabad and spread to the rest of Gujarat. These riots targeted the Muslim residents all over the region; Muslims were tracked through electoral records or property holdings, people were maimed or killed, and their properties sacked and burnt. At a time of crisis that lasted almost three months, the police and army were seen to be paralysed into inaction, if not caught on record to be assisting civilian rioters. As Asghar Ali Engineer writes in The Gujarat Carnage (2003) that “violence unleashed with the imperfectly hidden complicity of the state machinery and the ruling party was not controlled even more than 60 days after it broke out. The whole police force with some honourable exceptions was communalised or abdicated its duty. The administrative apparatus was no different. An honest and anguished officer such as Harsh Mander from the Madhya Pradesh cadre of the IAS resigned in sheer disgust when he saw his colleagues in Gujarat surrendering to the dictates of the ruling apparatus without any compunction” (2003: 1). In the same volume, Harsh Mander gives voice to what was also the complaint of the Muslim citizens of India, “No riot can continue beyond a few hours without the active connivance of the local police and magistracy. The blood of hundreds of innocents is on the hands of the police and civil authorities of Gujarat, and by their sharing in a conspiracy of silence, on the entire higher bureaucracy of the country” (2003: 42). The Gujarat riots of 2002 was not a communal conflict between Hindus and Muslims, but a civil society conflict when minority communities realised that their civil rights as citizen-subjects of the country did not stand up to the test. 64

riots were a flashpoint in a long history of more than a thousand years of Muslim presence in the region of Gujarat in India. The next sections will look at this history briefly.

4.3 Islam in medieval Gujarat

Samira Sheikh’s Forging a Region: Sultan, Traders, and Pilgrims in Gujarat 1200-1500 (2009) has been very significant for this project to historically locate the Muslim shrine of Mira Datar Dargah. She writes that the region has been continuously settled for almost four millennia. Islam came to a settled region and made inroads in medieval India by integrating its religious message with the customs and observances of local populations. Sheikh writes that the first denominations to get a foothold in Gujarat were Isma’ili Muslims. According to her, these early proselytisers arrived via both sea and land trade routes as early as the seventh century. By the tenth century, their proselytising mission (da’wa) to convert locals to Islam had made a small presence in the region, and conversion hinged on an acceptance of extant practices of the time. Sheikh writes, “Convert communities in Gujarat were often not required to relinquish their former dietary and marriage practices, and were encouraged to keep their Isma’ili affiliations secret. As a result these conversions fitted into former practices” (2009: 53).

Sunni Islam adapted to the Indian subcontinent differently from the method of Isma’ili assimilation. T. N. Madan in Modern Myths, Locked Minds: Secularism and Fundamentalism in India (2009) traces the coming of (Sunni) Islam as a political force to the Indian subcontinent to 712 AD when Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sind for the Ummayyad caliphate. Madan writes that bin Qasim reached a compromise between religious orthodoxy of early Islam and the political expediency of laying down an administrative structure within an already well-established social system; he extended the status of zimmi (protected class) to the Hindus:

“The Hindus who did not embrace Islam were treated as non-citizens of the caliphate, in it but not of it. […] Muhammad [bin Qasim] felt obliged to confirm the privileges of upper caste Hindus, particularly the Brahmans [sic], who traditionally received tribute from lower classes. In conformity with the practice of the Umayyad caliphate, he did not discard the existing administrative structure (see Ahmad 1964: 101), and ruled through Hindu village headmen (rais), chieftains (dihqans) and prefects whose work was overseen by Muslim governors.”

Madan, 1998: 110

Through this mechanism of allying with the ruling elite of the region, who happened to be high caste Brahmins and Buddhists, for the sake of political expediency, the Hindu caste system was accepted by orthodox Islam.

However the term Gujarat was yet to be coined during the historical period being referenced here. The Gujarat we speak of today, i.e. the modern state of Gujarat, comes into being in 1960 in the then newly- founded nation-state of India. Sheikh writes that the work of the nationalist, K.M. Munshi (1887-1971), contributed to the development of an idea of Gujarat built around language, geography, and history36.

He affirmed that Gujarat emerged as a culturally cohesive region in the Solanki (Caulukya) period circa 1100. The golden age of the Solankis was followed by the ‘Muslim’ and ‘British’ periods, which he saw as predominantly painful episodes that needed to be swept away from popular memory in order to regain pride in Gujarati identity. Thus, he had three criteria to justify the existence of the modern state of Gujarat: a modern linguistic area, a clearly delimited topographical area bounded by natural features such as rivers and mountains, and as, the clinching argument, the assertion that the political and cultural unity of Gujarat was wrought about eight hundred years ago by the Caulukyas.

Sheikh, 2009: 2

It would seem that Munshi selects for the history of modern Gujarat the period of dynasty rule of the Chaulukyas (transcribed by Sheikh as Caulukya) that corresponds to the last Hindu kings who carved a unified political entity in this region. The Chaulukyas had established a prosperous rule in what was then known as Gurjardesh, an important centre of trade and culture (Yagnik & Sheth, 2011: 4).

“Caulukyas gradually extended a contested form of political control over most of the territory of modern Gujarat including Saurashtra and Kachchh. They patronized a variegated intellectual elite, most prominently Jains who produced a large body of biographical, ritual, and aesthetic texts in Sanskrit and Apabramsa. Although Caulukya patronage of Apabhramsa texts did not lead to the elaboration of a vernacular polity – regional political statements were expressed in Sanskrit and Apabhramsa, both transregional languages – nevertheless the dominions of the Caulukyas came to be identified as the land of the Gurjaras37, Gurjaradesa”

Sheikh, 2009: 3-4

It is the idea of Gurjardesh (transcribed by Sheikh as Gurjaradesa) that persists as Gujarat today.

The Chaulukya kings built many important trade routes and trading towns during their approximately 250

36 There are other accounts of when the land of Gujarat came to be historically identified with the speakers of Gujarati. For instance, Rita Kothari writes, “‘Koni koni chhe Gujarat’ is a poem by Narmadashankar Lalshankar Dave, popularly known as Narmad, who is understood to have introduced the notion of Gujarat in the 19th century, by identifying the region of Gujarati-speaking people. In the poem ‘Koni koni chhe Gujarat’ Narmad wrote that Gujarat belongs to people from different religions and also to those who belong to other parts of the country or globe” (Kothari, 2014). 37 The term “Gurjara” gives pause to the historical narrative, since Gurjara does not signify the people of historical Gujarat. Rather it is a name of a tribe, and denotes a specific caste position. Sheikh also ponders the use of the term in her work. She writes, “The term Gurjara as a prefix to describe the territories occupied by Gujarat was not widely used until the rule of Caulukyas. It is not clear why they should have adopted the Gurjara clan name to describe their territories, although one possibility is that they saw themselves as the successors of the [Gurjara] Pratiharas”(2009: 26). 66

year rule. There are historical records that the Chalukyas built a city called Karnavati on the banks of the river Sabarmati. Yagnik and Sheth write that, “In 1304-05 the Jain Acharya Merutunga wrote the Prabanddhchintamani in which he mentions the establishment of Karnavati by the Chaulukya king Karnadev in 1094 CE following his victory over Asha Bhil, the ruler of Ashapalli” (2011: 3). The foundations of Karnavati are believed to lie in the environs of present-day Ahmedabad, largest city of Gujarat. It is around this time the transition of power from the Caulukyas to Muslim invaders from the north can be traced. By the eleventh century invaders from Central Asia had established a military and administrative base in Delhi, and were making forays into Gurjaradesh to gain control over its lucrative trade routes. According to Sheikh, Chaulukya control was waning; there was an attack by Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad of the Turkish Ghurid dynasty in 1197, in the mid-thirteenth century they were edged out by their former subsidiaries, the Vaghelas, and finally the Caulukyas were driven out by Alauddin Khalji of the Delhi Sultanate in 130738. Within a century, the Delhi Sultanate’s power over the region would come to an end: “Timur’s sack of Delhi in 1398-9 had left the sultans in no position to control their regional governors. After a period of negotiation and uncertainty in Delhi, the last governor of Gujarat, Zafar Khan, declared sovereignty [over Gujarat] in 1407” (Sheikh, 2010: 6). With Zafar Khan39 and his son Tatar Khan, the Gujarat Sultanate40 was founded.

With Zafar Khan’s grandson, Ahmed Khan, starts a new chapter in the history of Gujarat. Yagnik and Sheth write in Ahmedabad: From Royal City to Megacity that Ahmed Khan ascended the throne as Ahmed Shah at Patan in early January 1411 (2011: 8). Ahmed Shah laid the foundation for a fortified and walled city that is known till today as Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad with a history of 600 years has seen its fortunes change, but it has remained one of the most significant sites in the region. It saw the Gujarat Sultanate being taken over by the Mughal expansion when Akbar annexed Gujarat in 1572-73, and when the Mughal Empire declined, Marathas from neighbouring regions sacked the region for sixty years in the eighteenth century, before Ahmedabad was passed into the hands of the British imperialists in the early nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, M.K. Gandhi returned to Ahmedabad and it became one of the centres of the freedom struggle that ended with Indian independence from the British Raj in 1947.

38 Sheikh writes that by “the time Ala al-Din Khalji’s generals conquered parts of north Gujarat in 1297, Muslims had lived in Gujarat for six hundred years” (2009: 53). 39 The ardent drive of Zafar Khan (or Muzaffar Shah I) to Islamicise Gujarat in the Sunni tradition can be seen as a symptom of his own history: “Most historians, medieval and modern, suggest that Zafar Khan belonged to the Tank branch of the Khatri community of Punjab. His father and uncle joined the service of Firuz Shah Tughluq when he was still prince and during this period they adopted Islam. […] As a noble’s son Zafar Khan too joined the royal court and after holding a series of powerful posts became governor of Gujarat. His military campaigns in Gujarat indicate that he systematically tried to establish his identity as a devout Muslim. In the early years of his governorship he attacked Junagadh and ravaged Prabhas Patan; he despoiled the Somnath temple, built a temple nearby and appointed a number of Muslim preachers there to spread Islam” (Yagnik and Sheth, 2011: 8). 40 It would seem that the word Gujarat is the Persian equivalent of the Chaulukya deployment of Gurjaratta: “The Caulukyas’ use of ‘Gurjara-bhumi’ and Gurjaratta’ for their dominions outlasted them. These became the standard terms used by administrators to refer to the entire region, occasionally including the provinces of Saurashtra and Kachchh. In the Persian records of the Delhi sultanate, the terms Gujarat and Nahrwala (for Anhilvade Patan, the Caulukya capital) are both used” (Sheikh, 2009: 27). 67

Significantly, the city attained a cosmopolitan character within the first hundred years after its foundation. The expansion of the Gujarat kingdom, accompanied by political stability and promotion of agriculture and manufacturing sectors by the early sultans, attracted Sufis, scholars, soldiers and merchants from many parts of central and West Asia. […] Though the Gujarat Sultanate passed through troubled times in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, the incorporation of Gujarat into the Mughal empire in the next quarter opened up new avenues for the city. By the early seventeenth century, the entry of European trading companies put the city on the world map as a thriving commercial and manufacturing centre. The Mughal emperors’ liberal approach, till the rule of Aurangzeb, led to the development of devotional Bhakti traditions and encouraged new religious orders among the Hindu and Jain sections of society. Parallel to powerful sectarian and fundamentalist views, cries for the unity of religions and social harmony also emerged in the city.

Yagnik and Sheth, 2010: 20-21

The story of Ahmedabad is significant for my research project because it not only shows how Islam comes to Gujarat, but also demonstrates that the cosmopolitanism of this capital city of the Gujarat Sultanate41 gave license to coexistence between Hindus and Muslims42. Trade and industry have been abiding considerations for rulers of Gujarat in every era, and with the advent of Muslim rulers this focus did not change. Sheikh writes, “The sultanate ostensibly inaugurated a period of orthodox Sunni observance presided over by rival Sufi orders, but there is little evidence that Sunni beliefs penetrated widely outside court or urban circles. Nor is there much evidence of conversion to Sunni Islam […].” (2010: 7). With the establishment of the Gujarat sultanate, there was an addition to the religious pluralism already underway under the Chaulukya period in the way of Shaivite, Vaishnavite, Jain and Bhakti practices. Rather than orthodox Sunni Islam, there was a spread of Ismaili and Sufi practices that found ways to adapt Islamic thought with local custom. Yagnik and Sheth write, “Following the political upheaval in West Asia caused by the Mongol invasions, a large number of Muslim theologians, scholars and some eminent Sufi saints came to Gujarat from Iran and West Asia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Gujarat was regarded as a safe haven and the Sultans welcomed theologians as they enhanced their reputation as good Muslim kings” (2005: 51).

One such site with a Sufi connection is the Mira Datar Dargah. The Mira Datar Dargah dates back to the Gujarat Sultanate. According to the oral tradition in Unava, the dargah was built during the reign of Mahmud Begadha (1458-1511), the most prominent member of the dynasty. In the local legend, Mahmud Begadha’s

41 Today it is not Ahmedabad that is the capital of the state of Gujarat, but Gandhinagar, which is located approximately 23 km north of Ahmedabad. 42 Hindu-Muslim coexistence did not mean equality in the time of Gujarat Sultanate. Ahmed Shah’s cosmopolitanism signified that Hindus could continue living as they had, but with the payment of jiziya, a tax to be paid by all non- Muslim subjects to Muslim kings. Yagnik and Sheth write, “the forceful imposition of jiziya was a watershed in the social history of Gujarat. Even though Muslims had been a constituent element of society since the seventh century and a large number of mosques were already part of the landscape, for the first time, the state distinguished between its citizens along the lines of religion” (2005: 49-50). At the same time, Ahmed Shah and his successors would appoint Hindus to senior positions in their administration (ibid.). So while non-Muslim subjects were taxed, economic relations between Hindu and Muslims not only existed, but flourished. 68

enlisted the services of young Sayyed Ali in the battle against the evil Medini Rai of Mandu/Mandavgad in Malwa, and when the young man died in combat, his body was brought back to Unava for burial43. However according to Sheikh, this battle against Medini Rai was not conducted by Mahmud Begadha, but by his son Muzaffar Shah II:

“The next Persian chronicle to be commissioned at the Gujarat court was the Ta’rikh-i Muzaffar Shahi by a poet named Qani’ who wrote in the reign of Muzaffar Shah II (1511-26). The author of this short chronicle was a native of Kashan whose full name was Mir Sayyid ‘Ali. The work itself, ‘the most ornate, florid, and verbose of all chronicles’, describes only one campaign of Muzaffar Shah II: his attack on Malwa to rescue Mahmud Shah II from besieging Purbiya Rajputs led by Medini Rai.”

(Sheikh, 2009: 12).

While there is some confusion about the exact time, the dargah claims a history of about 500 years emerging from the martyrdom of Sayyed Ali in an epic battle of good versus evil. While ‘good’ triumphed and Sayyed Ali won the battle, he also lost his life in that cause. This type of origin story for dargahs is not uncommon. Sheikh writes, “The shrines of ghazis, holy warriors from invading Muslim armies who died in battle often became sites of healing, and attracted a wide range of pilgrims of all denominations. […] Perhaps the most prominent of these is the shrine of Mira Datar Pir in Unava in north Gujarat. The tomb of one of Muzaffar Shah’s generals who died in the fifteenth century, this soon became a site for the healing of mental illness and infertility” (2009: 157-158). The dargah puts the village of Unava on the pilgrimage trail that criss-cross the length and breadth of the country. Historic sites like Mira Datar Dargah have been and continue to be part of the political economy of South Asia.

4.4 Dargahs and syncretism

The history of Mira Datar Dargah demonstrates the coming together of religious premise and royal sanction. The religious premise was the compromise formation made by Islamic theologians between ‘religious orthodoxy and political expediency’ (Madan, 1998). The result of the compromise formation developed by medieval Sunni rulers with the high caste ruling elite of medieval India is that today there is a deeply entrenched caste system within South Asian Muslims. Gayer and Jaffrelot write in their introduction to Muslims in Indian cities (2012),

“The Muslim community [in India] does not form a homogenous whole in caste and class terms. According to its variants of the caste system, the Ashraf (‘nobles’)- descending from people originating from Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, Central Asia…) or from

43 For a longer account of the myth of Mira Datar Dargah, see Siddiqui, 2016: 83-84. 69

converts hailing from Hindu upper castes (generally of Kshatriya status)- represent the elite groups whereas the Ajlaf (‘commoners’) are mostly descendants of converts from Hindu lower castes. Although Hindu Dalits did not convert en masse to Islam, some of them did so in order to escape the Hindu hierarchies, and their descendants are presently known as Arzal (‘despicable’).”

Gayer and Jaffrelot, 2012: 7

Nonetheless, Gayer and Jaffrelot note that the caste system prevalent amongst Indian Muslims is less ideologically rigid than the Hindu caste system. This can be attributed to the lack of scriptural sanction for a division of Indian Muslims into Ashraf, Ajlaf, and Arzal. The authors refer to Satish Saberwal’s essay ‘On the Making of Muslims in India Historically’ (2005):

“Satish Saberwal assumes that it has become as acute as the upper caste vs. OBC (Other Backward Caste) opposition one may find among the Hindus. For him, this is due to the absence of a scripturally reinforced criterion of purity and pollutions’, as social separations were not as humiliating for the ajlaf as their analogues were for lower-caste Hindus; and Muslim society was somewhat more open socially then the Hindu space’. Indeed sites of religious power and reform that are not perceived or known for their progressive views appear to be socially inclusive”

Gayer and Jaffrelot, 2012: 8

It can be argued that one such site is the Indian dargah. The cosmopolitanism of the dargah it can be argued that was a feature of such spaces half a millennium back continues till today. While Sufi spaces such as the dargah flourished, revivalist Islamic movements in the Indian subcontinent were uncomfortable with what they perceived as a dilution of Sunni Islamic orthodoxy. Thus, dargahs existed as in-between spaces between Islamic orthodoxy and religious cosmopolitanism on one hand, and Islamic thought and local practice, on the other44. This is what Carla Bellamy calls the Powerful Ephemeral in an ‘ambiguously Islamic place’ (2011). Present-day scholarship on dargahs in South Asia continue to extoll the virtues of its syncretism, and yet the Indian polity is rapidly changing.

44 Nonetheless, this fusion of orthodoxy and cosmopolitanism is not easy, and is increasingly coming under threat. To look at a more recent case, on February 16, 2017, a suicide bombing took place at a very prominent dargah in Pakistan, the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Dargah. Al Jazeera reported this event as, “In Pakistan's deadliest attack in more than two years, a suicide bomber has struck a crowded Sufi shrine, killing at least 75 people including women and children. Hundreds of others were also wounded in Thursday's attack as they performed a ritual at the famous Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in Sehwan in the southern Sindh province. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group claimed responsibility for the blast via its Amaq propaganda website” (Al Jazeera, February 17, 2017). The perceived threat of dargah worship to Salafi Islam is an abiding concern in Muslim-majority spaces. In the Indian subcontinent, the Islamic reformist school, Tablighi Jamaat is strictly opposed to dargah worship or pir worship which they would term as ‘shirk’ or ‘bidaah’ in Arabic, i.e. an attachment to false idols. 70

4.5 Communal conflict

2002 was a flashpoint in Indian history. On February 27, a group of people, purportedly Muslim, attacked the Sabarmati Express train coming back from Ayodhya near the Godhra railway station, and 58 people in the S6 compartment of the train were burnt to death in the fire. Many of the passengers on that train were kar sevaks, supporters of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), who were coming back after a political demonstration involving laying down of a ceremonial foundation for the Ram Lalla Mandir (a Hindu temple for the god Ram in his infancy) in the site of the Babri Masjid, a 500 year old Muslim mosque in Ayodhya with a long contested history dating back to at least 1949. What followed the burning of the train shocked the entire country, and it led to the absolute collapse of everyday life in Gujarat for months to follow:

It led to massive violence – carnage – in the state of Gujarat. Muslim citizens of the state were butchered, maimed, raped, and rendered destitute with total destruction of their economic assets and livelihood wherewithal in an orgy of violence that lasted for almost two months. The carnage in Gujarat is not shocking in its inhuman brutality but also the facts of its planned and organised character as well as the openly communal role played by the state government and it’s administrative and law enforcement machinery.

Pendse, 2003: xii

In the riots where Muslim houses were marked and destroyed, Muslims sought refuge in dargahs and mosques. The dargah provided a temporary sanctuary to not only Muslims but people from various communities. The Mira Datar Dargah was no exception, and it sheltered Muslims, Jains, and Hindus. Pilgrims from outside the state, and the homeless also took refuge within the gates of the dargah.

It is not that post-Independent India has not witnessed enormous sectarian conflict in different regions of the country (Kashmir and the north-east states being too better-known conflict zones)45. The authors suggest that sectarian conflict escalates when administrative authority weakens. However when conflict is engineered by the ruling class to manage administrative problems, communalism is encouraged to take root. Indian historians have written reams on the Divide-and-Rule policy of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent that can be dated to at least 1757 that made differential concessions to Hindus and

45 Sectarian conflict is not new to this region. Yagnik and Sheth (2010: 67-70) trace the earliest Hindu-Muslim riot in Gujarat to 1714 as recorded in Mirat-i Ahmadi and Siyar-ul-Mutakherin. They point out that with the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal empire was weakened with a succession of coronations till the accession of Muhammad Shah in 1720. In Gujarat this signified that trade suffered, and the Mughal governors had to fend off Maratha incursions and raids. They suggest that the bigger picture is important when looking towards the communal conflicts between Hindus and Muslims: “[…] Such conflict situations were often a complex interplay of financial, religious and political factors which precipitated into violence, an aspect which is rarely analysed and presented, making Hindu-Muslim friction appear as the result of unbridled religious passion of Hindus or Muslims. In actuality, Hindus and Muslims had, and continue to have, financial interactions […]. Such business confrontations took on a religious character or were played out on festival occasions with one or the other community performing symbolic rituals offensive to the rival community. Timely action or deliberate inaction on the part of the local person in authority either contained matters or led to their escalation until the central authority intervened” (Yagnik and Sheth, 2010: 69- 70). 71

Muslims, and pitted the interests of one against those of the other. The Divide-and-Rule policy is a political legacy used in post-independent India to manipulate vote banks and electoral victories to the detriment of community-living of its citizens. Ghanshyam Shah writes that “Gujarat had seen riots under the British and after Independence. These riots were the result of local issues. But between 1962 and 1969, Gujarat saw a chain of events leading up to the violence” (Shah, 2017). The major riots that Gujarat saw in 1969, 1980, 1992, 2002 had a different tone; anti-Muslim sentiment was deployed to build a consolidated Hindu identity for the state.

Nonetheless, the Gujarat riots of 2002 tore the social fabric in India; the absolute hijack of State machinery during and after an event was so violent, it has been called a ‘genocide’ or ‘carnage’. It foretold a new direction in the development of post-independence India. In Ahmedabad, rapid ghettoization was evident with displaced Muslims seeking refuge in either refugee camps or relocating to areas outside of the walled city. Group identities were stitched all the more firmly in a state that was already caste- conscious. The ‘ambiguous Islamic spaces’ like dargahs were not spared either. Many mosques and dargahs were destroyed in the riots, but not only was the physical site of Muslim religious sites damaged, but the place they occupy in popular understanding were also impacted in the period of reconstruction that was to follow.

In ‘Violence, Reconstruction and Islamic Reform’ (2008), Rubina Jasani documents how the participation of Islamic organizations in relief and rehabilitation work after the Gujarat riots of 2002 impacted religious practices of Muslims in Gujarat. She found that Indian Islamic organizations such as the Tabligh Jamaat, the Jamat-e-Islami, and the Jamiaat-e-Ulema-e-Hind arrived promptly to the aid of Muslims displaced in the riots, however their support was conditional on accepting the type of puritanical or reform Islam that each organization espoused. Funds were approportioned for the repair of old mosques and the construction of new ones, while the rebuilding of dargahs was given less significance.

“Queries related to the rebuilding of shrines were avoided, with, ‘We cannot do everything; there are almost 100,000 people who don’t have a roof over their heads. It is for somebody else to do… that do you want us to build, dargahs or houses for homeless people?’ It also appeared that the state was supporting Islamist organisations in their agenda of not rebuilding shrines. The fact that flat roads had been built, with state resources, on the sites of destroyed shrines, implies that the state was complicit in the agenda of Islamist organizations.”

Jasani, 2008: 443

Jasani concludes that through the intervention of organizations trying to purify or reform Islam in India at a crisis period of Gujarati Muslims, dargahs were reinscribed as spaces that are not-Muslim-enough by Muslim communities under the influence of reform Islamism.

At the same time, there has been an identification of a dargah with Islam proper in Hindu majority communities. Carolyn Heitmeyer in Religion as practice, Religion as Identity (2011) writes that in the wake of the Gujrat riots of 2002, the process of reification of religious identities is threatened by the very ambiguity of the Sufi dargah in Gujarat. “As the Hindutva movement has gained strength and popularity in Gujarat, popular notions of the difference between these two communities have become more pronounced and divergent. The attacks on dargahs in Gujarat, including on the Mustak Ali Baba dargah in Mahemdabad during the 2002 violence in the State, indicates an increasing trend to identify dargahs, along with mosques, as representatives of the Muslim ‘tradition’, a domain distinct and in essential opposition to Hinduism (several reports indicate that in many instances makeshift Hanuman temples were erected in place of destroyed dargahs and mosques)” (Heitmeyer, 2011: 499). Yet Heitmeyer concludes that despite the ongoing reification of religious identity in many parts of the State, it nevertheless remains the case that many Gujaratis continue to adhere to religious practices and beliefs which defy strict Hindu/Muslim binaries.

These different accounts of how the dargah is sited/cited today goes to show how contested this space of ‘healing’ has become for both Muslims and Hindus. Between being not-Muslim-enough for Islamist organizations to being a bit too-Muslim for Hindutva organizations, the dargahs are uncomfortably located in a space without contemporary political favour. Certainly, smaller dargahs have been destroyed, and attendance at bigger dargahs has fallen. However as Heitmeyer points out, it is not that dargahs have yet been abandoned by its devotees. The Mira Datar Dargah was bustling and busy in 2015 during my stay there, but I experienced a palpable level of strain at the dargah, a kind of loud silence that ultimately invaded my research.

4.6 Conclusion: Embodying conflict

The fraught history of communal violence in Gujarat recounted above was not openly spoken about by the people I met in the course of fieldwork. In fact, Muslims in Unava were very cautious, and would evade the topic if I brought up the Gujarat riots of 2002 in conversation. It may seem that the shadow of 2002 never fell on this village. It was my Hindu informants who would tell me, even without being prompted, about how the violence had made its way into the district and the village. There are chilling stories of masked men with torches and naked swords, of an attempt to burn down the Mamusaheb dargah (half a kilometre from the main shrine), of how the main shrine was the refuge of pilgrims belonging to all communities in those fraught times. The aftermath of the riots saw Muslims being forced out of their houses in Unjha five kilometres away, of school and college dropout rates rising amongst Muslim families, of the ghettoization that is strikingly apparent in Ahmedabad being replicated all across Gujarat, including Unava. Here I do not mean to narrate those stories. I am only pointing out how that 73

environment of explosive silence from the minority community, and the awkward admissions of the majority community, made fieldwork on a topic like ‘healing’ all the more complicated. I found the silence oppressive because safe boundaries in speech could not be mutually negotiated. Community sensitivities were inflamed in the region;past trauma from an earlier period of violence had not been spoken about or acknowledged; community ties had not been repaired or restored; the work of community healing had not happened. It was difficult for me to gauge what speech would give offense, which words would trigger a past trauma, which topics could upset the fragile balance of power between me and my interlocutors.

I had not gone to Gujarat to study communal conflict. In fact, as I have written earlier, dargahs are thought to be syncretic spaces that promote communal harmony, and so I had selected a ‘safe zone’ in Gujarat to situate my study in. There are two problems to this formulation. One is that this Muslim dargah is located within a larger space of the village, which is dominated in both numbers and power by Hindus. I will come back to this later in the thesis (see Chapter 5: Site). The second is that I have a Muslim name, and my religious, caste and gender identity mediated my relations with everybody not in the village, not only the regional state of Gujarat, but in India as a whole.

I carry my identities like a scarf around my neck visible for everyone to see, more visible than it is to me as I navigate my way through the country. Women in India who dress in the traditional clothes of shalwar- kameez often accompany it with a dupatta (a long scarf). This dupatta is a sign of modesty for women, without an equivalent in men. However, in my stay in the village the dupatta meant something more. I was renting a room in the better-maintained region of Unava, that is the Hindu Patel area. Every day I would traverse the village to speak with the sawwalis in the main dargah, Mira Datar Dargah. As I mentioned before, that was the Muslim side of town. In the dargah, as is common at prayer time, I would cover my hair by drawing my dupatta over my head. Twice a day I would make the journey between the two areas. I noticed sometime in my second month that my dupatta would be arranged differently in one area of town compared to the other. On the Muslim side, it was wound around my neck so that I could easily pull it over my hair. On the Hindu side, it would be draped on both shoulders so that it covered my chest. I could not remember rearranging my dupatta though. My hands did it quietly, unconsciously. The eerie silence of Gujarat on communal difference echoed all around us, and as if ghostly fingers were at work, the drape of my dupatta shifted as I negotiated the space of the village.

The communal conflict in Gujarat engendered in me a conflict about my own identity. In the dargah, it was easy to be identified as a fellow-believer, another Muslim. In my rented accommodation, it was easier not to be identified as “one of them”, a dirty Muslim. I would draw out from my repertoire a performance of one or the other kind. However I resented both. I did not feel comforted to catch myself in a mirror and see my dupatta rearranged in a style fitting with the area of town. I did not feel triumphant about adapting to both styles, both performances. I did not feel that either represented me, and I struggled with a profound splitting of the relatively stable sense of identity I had before embarking on fieldwork. It was at 74

these times I realized that my role as an ethnographer and discursive researcher was not an intellectual experience that could be keep apart from the embodiment of being a particular kind of subject at a certain point of time in a specific geographical location.

CHAPTER 5

SITE

5.1 Introduction

In earlier research on faith healing, I had sited the work of faith healing and the practices of the dargah as between a sawwali and a mujawar, that is the sufferer and the healer, which is the dominant method on studying religious shrines and faith healing in anthropology and mental health scholarship. Nonetheless, the Mira Datar Dargah is located in one corner of the village of Unava. As explored in earlier chapters, the practices taking place in the dargah are not separate or isolated from politics at the village, regional, or national level. It was for this reason that I will attend to the site as it is located within the imagination of the local people of Unava, be they devotees at the shrine or not. It is important to think of the space in which the dargah is located, and the space of which silently determines the everyday functioning of this place of healing. This chapter tries to locate the Mira Datar Dargah within the larger context of the village of Unava.

This spatial turn in the research design required the selection of research participants who were either born or have lived in Unava for at least 18 years, and ask them to become part of the study by taking a walk around the village with the researcher, at the end of which they would draw a map of the village and explain the route we had undertaken on the map. Thus, this method had two parts: 1) walking interview, and 2) map-making.46 The method of a walking interview was to use a ‘mobile method’ to engage the embodied experience of the subject. As Butz and Cook write, “Movement is a fleeting, materially- embedded, embodied, and experiential phenomenon, which cannot adequately be represented using conventional cognition-oriented methods. Authors assert that accessing “the more intangible and ephemeral meanings of mobility” (Spinney, 2009, p. 826) requires moving with research subjects: participating kinaesthetically in their movement experiences, eliciting their commentary in specific mobility contexts, and observing practices and spaces that would be inaccessible via verbal or textual representation alone” (Butz & Cook, 2017: 245). “As a spatialised and embodied research tool, walking interviews enable insights into the dynamic emotional, affectual and physical relations of power- differentiated people within the everyday fabric of urban life” (Warren, 2017: 789). While this method has mostly been used in cities and urban spaces, in this research, this method was to be taken to a rural

46 In a test run before embarking on locating participants for this segment of the research, I had calculated that it took an hour and a half to walk the entire village from end to end. However I did not mean to ask research participants to walk the entire length and breadth of the village, but only to walk the areas most familiar to them, and mark that out on a map of the entire village they would then draw for the purpose of research. Thus at the end of the walking interview, I was to provide them with a blank sheet of A4 size drawing paper, a pencil, eraser and sharpener. 76

setting in India based on a prior knowledge of the village as sufficiently equipped with the basic road infrastructure to carry out this method.

However when this was put into action, it became apparent that it was not going to work. The walks that were part of the original methodology were going to be difficult to transact, the reasons for which will be explored at the end of the chapter. Instead the research plan was modified to only ask potential participants to draw a map of Unava. Thus, the next section elaborates on the process of map-making, and analyses the maps drawn and collected from 16 participants who were residents of the village and knew the geography of the area well. The maps are presented and analysed according to the way each is rendered.47

The features of the maps depict how the space of the village is organized along the lines of caste- hierarchy, and the significance of caste is thus fleshed out for the modern Indian subject from a ‘Dalit Standpoint’. This chapter queries the significance of the literature of syncretism of Muslim dargahs in view of the Dalit Standpoint, which is concerned with the social stratification of Indian society on the basis of caste. Finally this chapter concludes by presenting the methodological challenges of mapping social space in the village of Unava, and consider what the failure to use the method of walking interviews can contribute to an understanding of not only the village, but India in general.

5.2 The spatial turn

Space is that ubiquitous presence all around us that structures our relations as also our differences, but the concept of it is left unnoticed in our analyses, even though we today refer to it all the time: when we speak of and about the first world/third world, global north/global south, west/east, urban/rural, city/village. Doreen Massey indicates this is the sleight-of-hand manoeuvres globalization carries out in terms of the conceptualization of space and time: “turning geography into history, space into time. This has social and political effects. It says that Mozambique and Nicaragua are not really different from ‘us’. We are not to imagine them as having their own trajectories, their own particular histories, and the potential of their own, perhaps different, futures. They are not recognized as coeval others. They are merely at an earlier stage in the one and only narrative it is possible to tell. That cosmology of ‘only one narrative’ obliterates the multiplicities, the contemporaneous heterogeneities of space. It reduces simultaneous coexistence to place in the historical queue” (Massey, 2005: 5). This is to say that even in these terms, although we are making references to distribution of space we are not analysing space and the processes of spatialization. Thus what often happens is that these terms are mapped onto time, such that one side of

47 Scanned copies of the sixteen maps are available in Appendix VI. 77

the interdependent binary comes to belong to the present moment while the other is stuck in the past; one becomes progressive, the other becomes regressive; one becomes modern, the other non-modern; one developed, the other undeveloped. So an Indian rural town may appear to be situated so far away from the space in which this thesis is written and discussed (for the most part) that what happens there may seem like messages from the past, and it may appear that the practices being described here are more contemporary. This is a category mistake48, and it behoves us to take a step back from thinking of things ‘in space’, and moving to things ‘of space’ (Massey, 2005).

The use of both walking interviews and map-making in qualitative research can be placed within the ‘spatial turn’ in critical theory. The spatial turn has been attributed to Henri Lefebvre's mammoth treatise titled much more briefly as the Production of Space (1974). In it, Lefebvre is conceptualizing space through a historical materialist perspective that begins with a short analysis of how space has been deployed as a concept historically, from its early use in Greek philosophy to how it was taken up in mathematical analyses, and which after the Cartesian moment (that he calls the Western Logos) acquired the status of a “mental thing” (1991: 3). The jump from mental space that includes mathematical and linguistic abstractions to the social space of its usage is left unanalysed in linguistics and psychoanalysis, and the lacuna his work needs to address is “the yawning gap that separates this linguistic mental space from that social space wherein language becomes practice” (1991: 5). In his work, Lefebvre clearly differentiates between three kinds of (abstract49) space: physical, social and mental. His intellectual and political interests lay in theorizing social space, which is what is being referred to in the turn to space, and thus also keeping the other significations of space tantalizingly close. He begins with a simple statement: “(Social) space is a (social) product” (1991: 26). Thus space is not something to be assumed a priori, as always-already there; neither a surface, nor a place; it is not fixed, nor finished. Space is produced through a mode of production, “every society - and hence every mode of production with its subvariants - i.e. all those societies which exemplify the general concept - produces a space, its own space” (1991: 31).

It is around the same time that maps were used as methodological resources in qualitative research to understand space. Boria & Rossetto (2017) have traced the use of maps back to the work of John Brian Harley: “Harley proposed a specific methodology for the evaluation of maps, and in particular early maps (Harley 1968). […] As Harley (2001, 112) put it, “Compilation, generalization, classification, formation into hierarchies, and standardization of geographic data, far from being mere neutral activities, involve power-

48 This is not to dispute the significance of conceptualisations of time, or to fix the primacy of one over the other. As Lefebvre puts it, “the past leaves its traces; time has its own script. Yet this space is always, now and formerly, a present space, given as an immediate whole, complete with its associations and connections in their actuality. Thus production process and product present themselves as two inseparable aspects, not as two separable ideas” (Lefebvre, 1991: 37). 49 He first distinguishes between absolute space (where the split between nature and man hasn't been instituted) and abstract space ("a geometric, visual and phallic space that went beyond spatiality by becoming the production of a homogenous and pathogenic political 'medium' at once aberrational and norm-bound, coercive and rationalized: the 'medium' of the state, of power and its strategies" [1974: 377]). It would seem the modern world has access to only abstract space, which can then be further interrogated. 78

knowledge relations at work.” Even though his analysis is focused on early maps, we can see how this methodological framework is (still) relevant for the analyses of maps and mapmakers of all epochs and genres” (2017: 33).

Typically mapmaking in research is used as a method to generate representations of physical, social or cognitive space as experienced by research subjects. “In the fields of geography, planning, child development and psychology, sociology, anthropology, and education, maps have been used to document and analyze socio- and psychogeographic notions of place, social relationships, and/or cognitive processes” (Powell, 2010: 539-540). Thus map-making in qualitative research allows us to move “from the controlled lab environment to real users in place” (Suchan & Brewer, 2000: 147), and has been used by feminist geographers as a methodological resource with the aim of “creating ‘feminist cartographies’, practicing ‘feminist visualization’, and developing new mapping alternatives to mainstream cartographic and GIS [Geographic Information Systems] representations” (Pavlovskaya & Martin, 2007: 584). This has contributed to the use of map-making with subjects who are not cartographers, i.e non- experts in map-making.

5.3 The process of generating maps

Adapting the method of map-making to ‘real users in place’ during the reality of fieldwork was not without unforeseen difficulties. All potential participants required of me a description of what I meant by ‘map’, and three people I approached declined on the basis that they would not be able to complete the task. I was not prepared for the fact that the map was an idea that was not immediately intelligible to the people I was encountering. I was afraid I would be priming them if I was to tell them what I thought they should do, but I did respond to their enquiries while being as non-directive as possible. This is what I told them in Hindi, “I would like you to draw Unava village (gam) - as you know it - on this piece of paper”. Several of these participants drew the map in my presence, but for three I had to write or draw under their direction. Some participants were reluctant to do this exercise in my presence. They would insist that because they were pressed for time, they would hand over the materials, that I had supplied them with, the next day. In these cases, I would meet them the next day or they would drop off the materials at my residence. At the end of my fieldwork, despite my standard instructions to all participants, I was surprised to have found collected many different kinds of maps.

I was able to generate with my participants 16 maps that fit within the criteria of my research: eight drawn by men and women each. The castes represented in my group were Brahmin (2), Chamar (1), Chaudhary (1), Jain (1), Patel (3), Pathan (1), Prajapati (1), Rabari (1), Saiyed (3), Sindhi (1), and Valmiki (1). Out of the 16 participants, 12 had completed Secondary School education, and eight had completed Higher

Secondary School Education, two had Graduate degrees, and one had a postgraduate degree. Four had not completed a Secondary School level certification, and had less than a Seventh Standard of Education in the State Board of school education. Out of the 16 participants, eight were unmarried and between the ages of 18 and 30. This relatively high representation of young adults can be attributed to the fact that more people older than 30 were reluctant to participate in the study. Two participants annotated their maps in English, I annotated two others in English and one in Hindi on the request of my participants (none of whom had completed school education), eight were annotated in Gujarati, and one in Hindi and English. The salient features of the maps and the participants who drew the maps are listed as a table below.

Table 1 - Maps and mapmakers

MAP CHARACTERISTICS PARTICIPANT DEMOGRAPHICS

No. LANGUAGE RESEARCHER SEX CASTE MARRIED EDUCATION ASSISTED

1 English Yes Male Patel Yes HSC 2 Gujarati No Female Saiyed No <7TH Std. 3 English No Male Rabari No HSC 4 Gujarati No Female Patel Yes SSC 5 Gujarati No Male Prajapati Yes BSc 6 Gujarati No Female Brahmin Yes BA (cont.) 7 Gujarati No Male Patel No HSC 8 Gujarati No Female Chamar No HSC (cont.) 9 Gujarati No Male Jain Yes HSC 10 English Yes Female Pathan Yes <7TH Std. 11 Gujarati No Male Brahmin No HSC 12 Gujarati No Female Saiyed No <7TH Std. 13 Gujarati No Male Chaudary No HSC (cont.) 14 Gujarati No Female Sindhi Yes HSC 15 Hindi Yes Male Valmiki Yes <7TH Std.

Hindi+ 16 No Female Saiyed No MA, LLB English

I had not taken into account how challenging the experience of picking up a writing tool would be for some people. My expectations had already been challenged when I realized that for most of my 80

participants, a map was not a self-evident category, and they were reluctant to “just draw” what they thought of the village, with or without words. However, the anxiety I met with when offering a pencil and paper to some participants demonstrated to me the privilege of holding a writing tool, of marking a blank sheet of paper with my thoughts, and of expecting the other to understand it in the way of my thinking. These small tasks wrought into students and scholars after years, if not decades, of education were broken into so many little moments of indecision and helplessness between my participants and me as I held the pencil on their behalf. Out of the three maps I annotated, I also drew two maps on the direction of the participants who were averse to picking up a pencil.

Nonetheless, with all this variation, the maps had some similarities. Excluding one map (Map no. 8), they were not drawn aligned to north-south orientations. In the most instance, these were mental maps of the routes people take to navigate their everyday life in the village (Map no. 7 and 8 bring clearly attempts at cartographic maps rather than mental maps). In most cases, the centre of the map featured an important landmark such as the bazaar, the post office, the dargah or a temple. In fact, out of the 16 maps, a Hindu temple was drawn 13 times, the bazaar was indicated 11 times, the Mira Datar dargah 11 times, the Mamusaheb dargah 9 times. By looking at each map, it is apparent that each participant included the religious site allied to their caste/religion, and sometimes a site of another caste/religion. Most annotated their illustrations in Gujarati, but some wrote in English and Hindi too. The annotations are extremely useful, because the maps are in most cases unlike a cartographic map of Unava. Areas where people of other castes live are compressed or left blank, and some maps only represent a couple of streets of the village, i.e. those that are significant to the mapmaker.

While several participants drew their maps through the use of the path they take through the village, the streets were themselves not important. There is no distinction made in the maps between bigger streets and small by-lanes. Most of the streets did not seem to have official names. Participants drew the street to use it to mark either landmarks, such as ‘police station’ or ‘SBI bank ’, or areas classified by the caste of people who live there, like ‘Bhangivas’ or ‘Rabarivas’50. However, the more developed Patel-dominated areas have specific names, such as ‘Amikunj Society’ or ‘Ambica Society’. These areas are known to everybody as belonging to the Patels and there is no need to announce it in the name itself. The Saiyed Muslims call places by names that were not always intelligible to other villagers such as ‘Kabristan Colony’ or ‘Azad Chowk’; these have words that are more familiar to Urdu-speakers, though also comprehensible to Hindi and Gujarati speakers. I found out that these names were not official names, when I called the market square as Azad Chowk much to the mystification of my Patel interlocutor! It also demonstrated to me how powerful language is as a marker, even in the field of geography.

50 Vas signifies residence in Gujarati. Thus, Rabari-vas is where the people of the Rabari caste reside. 81

The maps as data demonstrate how caste and gendered identities were symbolized. This could be through the selection of landmarks in the village, in the number of interconnections between sites, in terms of the size of illustrations or annotations, and even where a landmark is drawn on the sheet of paper. Participants would draw a map with the shrines they and the people of their caste (‘their’ people) would patronize. The shrines of their patronage would be drawn prominently, either located in the centre of the map, or as having the most number of connections to other landmarks in the village, or as being drawn comparatively larger than other landmarks.

5.4 Types of topography

The maps generated through this process in the period between August 2015 and April 2016 can be divided into three types: linear maps, illustrated maps, and charted maps.

1. Linear maps: Linear maps linked landmarks, which include general, religious, and personal landmarks. General landmarks point to the bazaar, the post office, the dairy, the bus stop, and schools. Religious landmarks involved religious sites such as the dargahs and temples of different Hindu denominations. Personal landmarks included the house of the mapmaker and those of their relatives. Line drawings showed routes or paths the participant wanted to show between two landmarks, one of which was usually their house. There are nine maps that were organized through line drawings (Map no. 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15).

Image 3 - Map 15

The linear maps were usually the least geographically accurate, since landmarks were not drawn according to their location in the village, but in relation to the significance these had for the mapmaker. In addition, landmarks of no significance to the drawer are absent in these maps, and thus sometimes it happens that there is no indication of a landmark existing at all. However they are rich in detail about the lived inhabiting of space in the village, the commissions and the elisions both demonstrate how a participant imagined an outsider like me needed to know about their life in the village.

A smaller subset of the group drew circuit maps (Map no. 1 and 12). The circuit map has a starting point that is the house to the next stop in their daily routine, and so on. These maps also show nothing of scale, direction or geography, but are adequate to trace the real-time circuit that these participants made in their daily lives.

Image 4 - Map 1

These type of maps conveyed a great deal to me as an outsider trying to familiarize myself with the geography of the land. These maps are based on familiar landmarks, and easy to learn and to communicate. The maps also showed me how to be polite in a casteist and gendered society. The route on the map was the way to make the journey for those belonging to a certain caste or gender, and if I suggested another path to someone I was accompanying, it would cause consternation and anxiety. It impresses me how the circuit maps proved to be the most helpful in deciphering and negotiating social boundaries.

2. Illustrated maps: Illustrated maps included landmarks with text as well as drawings or illustrations. Five maps included illustrations that imbued a three dimensional effect to the maps (Map 3, 5, 6, 9 and 16). Thus, it was possible to see the map “pop up” in contrast to the linear maps, which depicted through line drawings had a two dimensional effect on paper. Illustrated maps supplied some more data about the locality, however in the case of all four maps, the area depicted was detailed but small in size. It was, as if, these illustrated maps had a personal expression to them that restricted the size of the map to the immediate locality of the mapmaker.

It was interesting to see how different mapmakers used picture illustrations in their maps; some drew trees, cows, or wells; those who made drawings of built structures made sure to draw religious structures like Hindu or Jain temples with a triangular flag. The picture illustrations were very revealing since they are gloriously off-scale. For example, a young man from the Rabari caste (a caste-group involved in cow-rearing and the dairy industry) drew cows that were bigger than the houses (Map no. 3).

Image 5 - Map 3

The size of the picture illustrations indicated to me the significance of the detail for my participant. For most participants, the size of the religious sites they frequent were the largest in size. A woman belonging to the Saiyed family associated with the Mira Datar dargah drew the dargah, its minarets, with details of its architectural design on her map (Map no. 16).

3. Charted maps:

Charted maps were drawing up “objective” maps that depicted the geographical bounds of the village. Two participants drew charted maps, each depicting the village with streets and localities, and included more than 30 annotations (Map no. 7 and 8). One of the participants, a bright young Dalit woman who was then in the third year of the Bachelor of Arts degree, had picked up the pencil very easily, and she had told me that she had drawn a map for a college assignment in the past. The other participant, a man from the Patel caste who had started but not completed graduate studies, had revealed that he had seen a google map of Unava on his smartphone. In addition, he had his own motorcycle that he would ride around the village. The ability to draw charted maps may be directly related to the familiarity these two participants had with the idea behind the task.

Charted maps demonstrate the mapmaker’s ability to have a perspective of the whole village, as if looking at it from the top. These maps mark the roads leading out of the village, and thus also depict the boundaries of the village. However here too the subjective factors of the mapmaking process are evident. For instance, in Map no. 8, the participant has drawn a large circle in an otherwise blank space and written “Muslim Area”. The other charted map does not annotate this part of the map at all. To get an image of the “Muslim area”, we would need to consult the maps drawn by Muslims, in particular Map no. 2 and 12.

Image 6 - Map 8

The maps produced were varied, in detail, in illustration, in language, and in accuracy, however they shored up an inescapable conclusion: the significance of caste in the creation of space of the Indian village. Each map was a map of the casteist division of space. It was the unspoken assumption as to what a map should organize upon, the palimpsest of mapmaking in Unava, which in the eyes of the uninitiated would just be a blank piece of paper. The salience of caste is in its silence; caste does not come up as a defining feature in the experience of mental health and illness, of sickness and healing, of medical treatment and its outcome. It’s much more casually uttered, simple, and quotidian in the social space of the country. I had to take a long detour, as demonstrated in this chapter, to underline the underlying social structures on which the dargah and the clinic rest.

5.5 Caste as master signifier

Dalit scholarship would posit that casteism is the basis of society in the Indian context, so old that all latter-day forms of social organization that met up with it became subsumed under it. As Anu Ramdas and Naren Bedide state in their introduction to Hatred in the Belly: Politics behind the Appropriation of Dr Ambedkar’s writings (2015), “Brahmin supremacy is the core belief system of the caste society and every Indian citizen is caught in its social, economic, political and psychological consequences, across religions and classes.” (2015: 1). In this formulation, I see the articulation of a unique ‘Standpoint’. Sandra Harding defines standpoint as “the standpoint claims that all knowledge attempts are socially situated and that some of these objective social locations are better than others as starting points for knowledge projects challenge some of the most fundamental assumptions of the scientific world view and the Western thought that takes science as its model of how to produce knowledge. It sets out a rigorous “logic of discover” intended to maximize the objectivity of the results of research and thereby to produce knowledge that can be for marginalized people (and those who would know what the marginalized can know) rather than for the use only of dominant groups in their projects of administering and managing the lives of marginalized people” (Harding, 1993: 56). I believe that new Dalit scholarship is a demonstration of standpoint theory that is able to organize an epistemology that seeks to address knowledge from the position of the historically marginalized position in Indian society – the Dalit.

The word ‘caste’ comes from the Latin root ‘castus’ meaning chaste or pure. It travelled to India in the 16th century through the Portuguese word ‘casta’ meaning race or lineage51. In India, there are two Sanskrit words that formed a problematic equivalence with the term ‘caste’. These are ‘varna’ and ‘jati’, which are

51 On the origins of the word caste, Hirst and Zavos write (2011: 142), “It is an outsider term, a European mode of classification. It comes from the Portuguese word ‘casta’, used primarily during the Iberian colonization of South America to hierarchize different ‘races’ [Europeans, various types of Creole, (local) Indians, Africans and so on]. Early Portuguese travellers in India may have been interested in applying similar notions when they spoke of ‘Brahmenes’ and others, although whether this was assumed to be a fundamental feature of Indian society by these travellers has been questioned by scholars (see Dirks 2001: 19).” 86

not equivalent to each other. “‘Varna’ is a Sanskrit term that can mean ‘colour’. It is frequently translated as ‘caste’ but this can be very misleading. In brahminical texts, it refers precisely to the four ideal social groups into which society is to be divided. Its mythological basis is to be found in a hymn from the Rig Veda” (Suthren Hirst & Zavos, 2011: 144). Thus, the Vedic system of ‘varna-dharma’ classifies people into the dharma52 they are born into, of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras as well as the fifth varna that does not even feature in the varna census - the untouchables. The varna system is a hierarchical stratification of endogamic society based on notions of intrinsic ritual purity/impurity that translates (irrationally) into professional competence. Jati denotes the meaning of tribe or race, i.e. a division of society based on blood lineage and kinship networks, and translates into the inheritance of what are considered typical physiological and psychological features. “‘Jati’, literally ‘birth’ in Sanskrit, also means ‘type’ or ‘specific category’. It has the merit of having modern Indian-language equivalents reflecting long-standing indigenous use: ‘zat’ in Punjabi, ‘jat’ in Hindi/Urdu, for example. It too is frequently translated as ‘caste’ and is often associated with anthropological approaches” (Suthren Hirst & Zavos, 2011: 146). The concept of caste as it is being used in the contemporary has collapsed the two Sanskrit words of varna and jati.

The Unava census of 2011 that I have referred to earlier had measured the population count on the basis of jati. Yet, these jati are readily comprehensible to local people as being associated with a particular varna. Thus the Patidar Samaj jati are traditionally employed in agrarian trade, which makes them a mid- tier Vaishya varna, while the Chamar jati are traditionally engaged in tanning and leatherwork, which denotes their social status as ‘untouchables’ or Dalits. Caste is a slippery word to work with, and it requires meticulous fleshing out to capture how it functions in social organization in India, which is outside the scope of this project. However, it came up not only as a deciding feature in the maps, but also in my embodied experience of the village.

It was my own experience that in my first meeting with people in Unava, in fact in other parts of Gujarat too, the first question I would be asked is, “Who are you?” This is not strange by itself, except that the question had an urgency to it that goes beyond a curiousity of the first meeting. “I am Sabah Siddiqui”, was not the response they were looking for. This is because my name did not convey to several caste Hindus what my caste was. The next question they would ask then would be directly, “what is your caste?” This was a disturbing experience for me, not because it seemed impolite and threatening, which it also did, but because it meant that the perennially pesky problem: “who am I?” would be satisfied with: “I am my caste”. I have lived in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi as three other states in India, but the inquiry of my caste in the past had been an indirect affair of some awkwardness on both sides. This awkwardness may be reducing as Indian society is forced through social and political movements to

52 Dharma is the rightful duty ordained by spiritual and material considerations, and one’s ethical obligations (Siddiqui, 2016: 111) as dictated by one’s caste ascription. 87

become conscious of caste and its divisions. However, I am informed by Gujaratis that Gujarat has been comfortable with such enquiries for a long time. This inquiry is usually made by savarnas or upper caste Hindus because it will spell out how they are to conduct themselves in relation to a newcomer, since one’s caste will regulate the reception they are to receive.

During the course of my fieldwork in Unava, it became much easier for me to enquire about my interlocutor’s caste. I had to put away my own awkwardness around this question as I began to observe that caste and the stating of it was an important part of their experience of the world, and should be taken into consideration. To recognize that the participants of my research had experience based on their caste amongst the caste system was a milestone for me, since it meant that I had to confront my own denial of caste as a fundamental category in the experience of the Indian subject. To join any revolutionary anti- caste politics, one would have to identify how caste continues to dominate the Indian imagination of how a society is supposed to be organized.

Caste functions in Indian society to subsume religion, class, and gender into itself. Taking religion into consideration, Islam in India came across casteism but it had within its historical trajectory, since its foundation in the seventh century, ideas that lend themselves to ritual purity/impurity such as those found in the varna system. If it is argued the concept of caste is not internal to Islam, which is to say that it is not based on direct scriptural sanction, it is promulgated through the social practices of its adherents.

“Although the Qur'an and the genuine Prophetic traditions suggest a radically egalitarian social vision, actual Muslim social practice, including in India, points to the existence of sharp social hierarchies that numerous Muslim scholars have sought to provide appropriate 'Islamic' sanction through elaborate rules of fiqh53 associated with the notion of kafa'a.54”

Sikand, 2015

Endogamy is a key feature of the caste system that supports the notion of safeguarding the purity of blood or lineage, and Muslim societies all over the world have codes of practice around marriage that promulgate endogamy. When Islam came to India, it was not averse to retaining and developing new hierarchies that drew their social sanction from the notion of preserving piety (and not purity) through marriage only within the community (quam55). Inter-group marriages are till the present not only

53 Fiqh is an Arabic word signifying the discursive tradition of Islamic jurisprudence. 54 Kafa’a is an Arabic word signifying the selection of an appropriate spouse for a Muslim. As Sikand says, “Elaborate rules were constructed built on the notion of kafa'a that specified the 'equals' whom one could legitimately marry. Taking a spouse from outside one's kafa'a was sternly frowned upon, if not explicitly forbidden by the fuqaha [scholars of the different schools of Islamic jurisprudence]. In the face of Qur'anic and genuine Prophetic traditions that stressed that the only basis for selecting one's marital partner was piety, the scripturalist sources of Islam were suitably misinterpreted to provide legitimacy for notions of kafa'a based on wealth and birth, including ethnicity”(2015). 55 Ansari historicises the usage of the word ‘quam’ as, “let us take the term Qaum, which now stands for ‘the community’. Till 1870-1880s, if you read the Urdu literature, even if you read the speeches of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and other stalwarts, this term ‘Qaum’ actually denotes the higher elite shareef classes. It is later on, when democracy 88

discouraged, but severely punished.

Caste in Islam is also evident from the fact that many Indian Muslims can self-identify their caste, usually through the surname (though not all). Already two things are born here. The first is that the surname a baby usually gets is taken from the father’s name, his village or his traditional occupation, thus caste and patriarchy get enmeshed at birth. The second is that one is born into a family that goes by a certain name and thus born into a certain caste. If the surname is not itself the name of the caste, it is easily comprehensible to most people which caste it is usually associated to, even within Islam.

The easy adoption of casteism is also observed in Christianity in India. Nidhin Shobhana in Caste in the Name of Christ: An angry note on the Syrian Christian Caste (2015) writes about the Syrian Christians in the context of Kerala adopting and prospering on the basis of caste privilege, as serving as an intermediary between the Brahmin and the Dalit so as to offset any ritual impurity the Brahmin may experience and being a kind of nobility in the ‘Christian Caste Hierarchy’ by allying with the Brahmin. He says, “I would borrow from David Mosse to argue that Caste provides the general characteristic of our society. Christianity should be seen as a mere influence/variable on the bedrock called caste” (Shobhana, 2015: 138). Mosse writes in Caste and Christianity (2012) that Christianity, especially Catholicism, does not find perpetuating caste hierarchies as particularly inimical to the hierarchies of the Church and its priesthood and that from the 17th to the early 20th centuries, Catholicism reproduced caste inequality through its own hierarchical ritual forms. This is similar to how casteist practices are inherent in the practice of Islam as well; even if it is not validated by direct scriptural authority it is permissible by interpretation and certainly perpetuated by practices already in place before it even came across the varna system.

Over the past century, as it redefined the boundary between what was merely civil and what contravened core Christian religious teaching, the Church would also insist on equality of access for Dalits to those ritual privileges and caste honours that had been denied them. […] Especially from the 1980s, the Catholic Church has progressively tried to dissembed [sic] itself from caste, and to dismantle expressions of rank. However, the turn against social expressions of caste only revealed the remarkable extent to which the Church’s own institutions had been infused with caste distinctions. The Dalit Christian challenge of the 1990s exposed a structure of caste and caste discrimination within the Church, its priesthood, dioceses, educational institutions, convents and religious orders.

Mosse, 2012

becomes inevitable, and numbers become crucial in the political game; when just belonging to the propertied class and being educated didn’t matter anymore, and there was now some understanding that democracy is now inevitable and there would be universal adult franchise and every vote would matter – then suddenly the definition of Qaum is expanded to include the other lower castes” (Ansari, 2017). 89

Mosse’s descriptions of the Christian negotiation with caste is remarkably similar to the Muslim acceptance of the caste system. In these negotiatioins, religious identity and caste identity perform delicate manoeuvres to be silently eloquent. An example, in the speaking of a name, caste is revealed, while politeness dictates this must not be openly acknowledged. Thus, ‘Saiyed’ is a Muslim caste of high standing, an Ashraf, a Muslim upper caste, but because also ‘Muslim’ is still lower caste (or even outcaste) in the Hindu caste system. High caste Hindus would be more agreeable sharing food or drink with a Saiyed Muslim than a Muslim of lower standing, but there would still be reservations and conditions to this sharing. This conditional tolerance becomes more glaring in light of the strict separations between people of lower castes and upper castes, of whichever religious persuasion.

To use an anecdote here, for the purpose of the mapmaking exercise I visited the house of a participant who lived in Bhangivas56, and hospitality norms dictated he provide me, as a guest to his house, with refreshment. He was very careful to send his son to fetch a bottle of cola from the shop in my view, and when it arrived he opened it in front of me and served it in a disposable plastic cup to me, so as to avoid any ritual impurity I may experience57. Caste had never been as apparent to me as it was then in that shattering moment. Untouchability is not as strongly practised in Islam or Christianity, but it is not absent and certain upper caste Muslims and Christians have greatly benefitted from leaving the impure jobs to ‘untouchables’, and thus perpetuating the caste system.

The stratification of society along the lines of caste has been very significant in the past, and it continues to be as relevant today, and perhaps even more so in the present atmosphere of unapologetic and intolerant Hindu nationalism. Caste becomes the way to demarcate cultural and religious practices, dialect, cuisine, and wardrobe. To understand contemporary society in India, it is essential to understand how caste functions as a master signifier, the point de capiton in Indian social organization. The master signifier is a Lacanian psychoanalytic concept that locates within a field of speech, the one that organizes the spread of signifiers into a system of speech (Lacan, 1997).

“Lacan’s represents the relationship between one particular signifier (depicted as S1) and the rest of the signifying system (depicted as S2) by way of the matheme S1  S2. A signifier only takes on value by virtue of its relation with the other signifiers, and Lacan’s matheme also serves to represent the way in which certain signifiers’ function as anchors of representation in a text through such rhetorical tropes as the insistence that ‘this is the way things are’, that it is not subject to challenge or dissent.”

56 Bhangi is the old derogatory name of a caste group involved in manual scavenging. 57 It was my general policy not to drink water offered by people in the village, and I would always carry my own bottle of water when out. In the house of this participant, I made an exception because I did not want to be a passive accomplice in the caste politics around ‘untouchables’. So I asked for a glass of water, and I was served a glass of water from the pot in the house in a steel glass. My participant was emboldened by this and invited me back to share a meal with the family, to which I responded that when if I visited the region after finishing my research project, I would surely share a meal with them. 90

Parker, 2014: 41

The master signifier is so ubiquitous it fades from conscious awareness; even its repeated usage as a quilting point in upholstery or an organizing point in the upholding of a discursive system becomes invisible to those operating within the system. Thus, caste as signifier is imbued with important features of the Lacanian ‘master signifier’:

1. Repeats in speech as seemingly commonplace (the innocuous enquiry of my caste by anyone and everyone in Gujarat) 2. Is hard to pin down and define in language (demonstrated by the slippage between varna, jati, and caste, amongst other words in Indian languages); 3. Every other signifier seems to lead back to it (the signifier ‘class’ is subordinated to ‘caste’ in a casteist society); and 4. Stands in for more than itself (‘Muslim’ treated as a caste located outside of the Vedic Varna system);

As Khalid Ansari says in an interview with Round Table India,

“Caste should be seen as the overarching category. And there are internal divisions on the basis of faith, on the basis of sexuality, on the basis of gender and so on. Because caste is the master signifier which actually allocates work, it allocates sexuality, allocates distribution of labour, who gets what, who marries whom. So the broader Indian society cannot be understood unless we enter through the caste category.”

Ansari, 2017

5.6 Siting theory: Dalit Standpoint

Lefebvre (1991) gives a tripartite formulation of how to think about the production of space. He writes that the social space of capitalist societies contains and also signifies for us (1) the social relations of production (division of labour in society), (2) social relations of reproduction (in the gendered relations in the family) and (3) the reproduction of the social relations of production (social practices that ensure the perpetuation of the previous two). He believes that “in precapitalist societies the two interlocking levels of biological reproduction and socio-economic production together constituted social reproduction - that is to say, the reproduction of society as it perpetuated itself generation after generation, conflict, feud, strife, crisis and war notwithstanding” (1991: 32), and thus not have needed a separate third relation of production, which he says is constitutive of capitalism. In this tripartite formulation, space is being

constituted by these relations of production, but also will constitute their (spatial) practices so that they perform cohesively; it will be “its tomb as well as its cradle” (1991: 34).

However is this enough for all societies? The Dalit standpoint would argue that caste in the Indian/Hindu context provided the guarantee of the perpetuation of class and gendered relations of production in society. Thus, the reproduction of this society down millennia was made possible by the upholding of caste; the social relations of production that created the social space we know as India today did not simply interlock “biological reproduction and socio-economic production together” (1991: 32) to ensure social reproduction of society; it had devised a mechanism to ensure that the social thus produced would faithfully carry out the hegemony of the upper castes.

In his undelivered speech titled Annihilation of Caste (1936), Ambedkar says:

“The first and foremost thing that must be recognized is that Hindu Society is a myth. The name Hindu is itself a foreign name. It was given by the Mohammedans to the natives for the purpose of distinguishing themselves. It does not occur in any Sanskrit work prior to the Mohammedan invasion. They did not feel the necessity of a common name because they had no conception of their having constituted a community. Hindu society as such does not exist. It is only a collection of castes.”

Ambedkar, 1990

Hinduism as a singular religion tries to stitch together 4000 vertically and horizontally structured castes into a unified majority, and at the same time establish the cultural hegemony of Brahmanism as authentic Hinduism, and in contemporary times as authentically Indian.

Thus, the Hindu-as-self and Muslim-as-other dynamic has been emblematic in the way a national identity has been formulated in the context of India. This only hides the way caste functions as the bedrock of subjectivity. The Hindu-Muslim problem papers over the need to take caste into consideration by foregrounding a supposedly unassailable religious difference between Hinduism and Islam. However, the disavowal of caste has been a strategy of containment. Coming back to the research problem, to take the Mira Datar Dargah as solely a Muslim shrine, as a site only marked by religion, or as a minor local religion with a major global following, would be to leave outside our analyses how caste is operating on this site where the subject of this research is to be found.

While caste functions as the bedrock, the fact that the shrine is located in a village in North Gujarat also brings in a local dynamic that needs to be explored58. Every state in India is caste-ridden, but in each state it takes a different form. We have looked at the Muslim history of Gujarat (see Chapter 4: History).

58 The 2011 census counts the population of Unava to be 12901, out of which 632 are counted as Scheduled Caste, 19 as Scheduled Tribe. 92

However on the ground, intense caste wars outside the Hindu-Muslim dynamic are being conducted. I have already mentioned being caught in a bandh called by the Patels or Patidars of North Gujarat in 2015. The Patels are a caste group that rose in social and political prominence in the twentieth century as farmers and village administrators (Spodek, 2012: 186-187). Numerically dominant in the district of Mehsana59, the Patels today are visibly occupying most positions of authority in the village, such as the local panchayat, the police, and medical establishments.

As per the Census 2011, out of total population of Gujarat 57.4% people live in rural areas. However in Mehsana district, the rural population is estimated to be 74.73%. The large rural population of Mehsana is significant, because the economic progress boasted of as ‘the Gujarat model’ of development has been disproportionately enjoyed by urban Gujarat. Christophe Jaffrelot has analysed the malcontent of the Patel youth:

“While the ‘Gujarat model’ relied on high growth rates resulting from highly capitalistic investments by big companies, contract workers and low wages (Jaffrelot, 2015), it did not benefit the rural part of the state as much as the cities and it created too few good jobs. The Patels were not alone facing these problems, but […] as a ‘dominant caste’ they were not prepared to experience downward social mobility and to take up jobs which went mostly to migrants—who maintained wages very low.”

Jaffrelot, 2016: 229

Jaffrelot’s analyses the recent Patidar agitations as arising from a caste group that had tasted upward social mobility post Independence, but the economic growth of the rural areas of Gujarat had not lived up to the jubilant claims of the Gujarat model in the last 30 years. This discontent was shored up again in the violent protests in 2015 and 2016 where Patels rallied against the incumbent government formed by the BJP asking for OBC status that would allow them to get access to ‘reservation’ or the seats/posts in public educational institutions and government bodies reserved for people ascribed to an OBC status.

Shah writes, “The vast and unprecedented mobilization of young, middle-class Patels, or Patidars, as seen at the Kranti Rally on August 25 [2015], is a symptom of the unrest simmering in a globalized Gujarat. The government’s repeated projection of Gujarat as a state where “all is well” has been undermined by the scale and strength of this protest, which took the government, political parties and the media by surprise” (Shah, 2015). The face of the Kranti Rally was Hardik Patel who had founded the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS). Jaffrelot points out that the demand for OBC status was strategic for some of the sections of the Patel agitators, “all the Patel agitators were not necessarily interested in the inclusion of their caste-group in the list of the state OBCs, even though this demand remained the standard one, at least on Hardik Patel’s side. The government replied to the Patel agitators that by the

59 In official state and national documents, Mehsana is also sometimes spelled as Mahesana. 93

Supreme Court jurisprudence, reservations could not expand beyond the point they had already reached: 49.5 per cent of the public offices (27 per cent for OBCs, 7.5 per cent for SCs and 15 per cent for STs)” (Jaffrelot, 2016: 224). This was already known by the agitators, and the purpose of the agitation for at least some of the Patels was to target the system of reservation towards OBCs in Gujarat.

During the entire course of my research fieldwork at the Mira Datar Dargah, the Patel agitation was under full swing. While I was conducting interviews with ‘Muslim’ and ‘Hindu’ research subjects, the micropolitics of the region meant that no one was just a Hindu or a Muslim. There were caste divisions, as well as divisions within castes. The mujawars at the dargah were Saiyeds in violent conflict with Pathans (also Muslims), while local government, the police, the doctors, and other professionals were largely Patels who were in some way or the other engaged in an agitation against a government that had been voted in and kept in power by them that either the Patidar Samaj be granted OBC status, or the ‘benefits’ allowed to existing OBC groups also be rescinded. In effect, the local context of this research was how caste politics was being fought on the ground in the rural-urban divide that characterized north Gujarat.

Scholarship on dargahs posits them as in-between spaces where religious pluralism in India can thrive, and where Muslims and Hindus can co-exist. However this falls into the deep-seated idea that Hindus and Muslims are essentially inimical to each other, and plays into the nationalist discourse that pits the Muslim against the Hindu. Hindutva in India would like to posit that Indianness is based on the recovery of ancient Vedic culture that was suppressed by incoming Muslim conquerors in medieval times. However the Dalit Standpoint would argue that it is not religion but caste that functions as point-de-capiton, the nodal signifier for Indian society. The entrenchment of the idea of Hindu-Muslim difference birthed in the colonial past of present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh holds that people belonging to these two religions are so different from each other in the twentieth century that partition was crucial in 1947.

What it overlooks is that the early Indo-Arab Muslim invaders of ‘India’ made peace with the upper caste elite by creating an governmental system that acceded to upper caste domination of lower castes, although this had no parallel in Islamic jurisprudence. Madan writes that it was political expediency that motivated Muhammad bin Qasim in 712 AD to find a compromise with the Indian caste system, such that political expediency won over orthodoxy (as elaborated in Chapter 4: History). Bin Qasim extended privileged status to the ‘Hindus of Sind’ called zimmi (protected class whose internal management was not to be tampered with). Madan also mentions that conversion of Hindus and Buddhists to Islam was not a great success: “Since the Buddhists and Hindus were grouped together as zimmis, their legal status presumably provided them some protection against conversion. In any case, the early Arabs were not enthusiastic proselytisers” (1998: 111). It would seem that the Arab influx under its missionary guise had more to do with conquest than conversion. There were systematic attempts at conversion in the centuries to follow, but to a great extent these were not very wildly successful given that the entire Muslim population before Independence was not more than 25% after more than a thousand years of Muslim 94

rulers. In the medieval age, as power moved to the Mughals from Central Asia (between 1526-1857), the anxieties around running an empire with Islamic ideals but non-Muslim subjects was expressed in many ways from Akbar to Aurangzeb.

Vis-à-vis the Hindu majority of the Indian subcontinent, the formation of a religious identity as a Hindu, rather than a social identity based on the caste system, has been argued to be a colonial legacy that needed to find an equivalency for religion as understood by the British Christian elite. The codification of social practice into a Hindu religion also did the disservice of eclipsing the centrality of caste in the Indian context, for which there was no equivalent Christian concept. At any rate, Hindus and Muslims co-existed under Muslim rule, albeit with the payment of jiziya (the tax levied by Muslim rulers on Hindus) that was intermittently withdrawn or intensified. For centuries, there were intermittent rebellions against the empires built by Muslim imperialists, but trade with these outsiders was both essential and profitable.

Thus, between the ruling elite amongst Muslims and Hindus, the quest for power has overshadowed other considerations. It made possible the construction of both scriptural sanction and administrative structure to make an alliance based on the subordination of the non-elite, who in the context of India were the lower caste Dalits. In making an alliance with Hindu upper caste ruling class, the form of Islam changed when it came to India in first accepting the caste system and in time adopting it as well. In this way, a fundamental difference between two ideologies was side-stepped. The other of the Hindu has been the Dalit, the Avarna (casteless people). Muslim rulers found no difficulty in accepting this reprehensible division of society into higher and lower castes. The Dalit Standpoint would hold out that there is no difference between Hindus and Muslims upper castes in India as long as the division of society is based on supposedly inborn superiority and inferiority.

5.7 The value of syncretism

Anthropological literature celebrates dargahs as space of syncretism, a site of confluence of different religious perceptions. In the increasingly divisive societies of South Asia that have undone some of the political promises of independence movements of the mid-twentieth century, dargahs are seen as spaces where Hindus and Muslims can come together, where the rich and the poor can be witnessed rubbing shoulders, and where women and men are present in equal proportions. In my own observations, the dargah was one religious site where such diversity was visible. There were Muslims, Hindus and Jains occupying the dargah at all times (with two Jain Dharamshalas in the village that only housed Jain pilgrims in Unava), and it would seem that in equal numbers. One can find beggars and pavement- dwellers sprawled on the marble tiles of the courtyard next to richly bejewelled families, who have made the trip from bigger cities in their cars, even some NRIs (Non Resident Indians) from the UK. Women

would be seen dancing with their hair loose and feet tapping to the beat of the drums at loban-time. All this testifies to the openness that dargahs offer in a society grievously constricted by class, gender and religious differences.

Nonetheless, the praises of syncretism of dargahs in the Indian subcontinent overlook how this apparent syncretism works in the favour of the shrine itself. As Carolyn Heitmeyer ethnographic work on the Sufi pirs and shrines of Mahemdabad, Gujarat details the syncretic features of the Mustak Ali Baba Dargah that allows Indians to defy the Hindu-Muslim binary reification, she must also admit that “[…] many Sufi shrines likewise encourage the ‘composite culture’ that has traditionally been associated with shrines so as to maintain as large a pool of potential devotees as possible. In cases such as the Mustak Ali Baba dargah, as well as with other Sufi pirs such as Abdul Baba, attracting and maintaining devotees remain a primary goal given that livelihoods and reputations are closely linked to the number of devotees who come seeking solace or healing” (Heitmeyer, 2011: 503). A big concern of many religious spaces and spiritual groups is the generation of both money and influence. All religious sites get donations from devotees, ranging from loose change to hundreds of thousands of rupees. The openness of some of these syncretic shrines conceals how these shrines collude with power. Omar Kasmani writing on Sehwan Sharif in Pakistan, the dargah of Lal Shahbaz Qalander, points out that,

[…] the ‘soft’ paradigm removes from view Sufi alliances with institutions of the state and its historical allegiances with the powerful. It whitewashes its privileges, economies, and hierarchies that perpetuate inequalities across populations. It glosses over genealogical structures that systematically exclude women and social groups other than sayyids from positions of spiritual authority. It refuses to challenge patrilineal transmission of charisma. It overlooks the conflation of political and spiritual authority. It underplays the crucial intersections of the feudal with the mystical.

Kasmani, 2017

Kasmani’s observations of a dargah in Pakistan hold just as true in India. It requires a focussed gaze to see the dimension of caste on communal living in the dargah. The continued prevalence of caste boundaries, like the best kept secrets, hides in the open. Through the use of maps generated by residents of Unava, I have demonstrated how the dargah is part of a village that is crossed with invisible- but-obvious lines based on caste identity. This also happens within the dargah, albeit even less perceptibly. The practice of caste-discrimination continues within the dargah, most noticeably with the mantle of stewardship of the barakah of Mira Datar donned by the mujawars, who claim as Sayyeds to have an exclusive communication line with the saint. This relation is determined by blood, and thus excludes every other caste, Muslim or otherwise, from its divine structure. The apparent syncretism of the dargahs does little to change caste hierarchies, and in fact it perpetuates it amongst both Hindus and Muslims.

5.8 Misplaced methods

In this section I elaborate on why my original methodology did not work out as planned, which I realized as I lived in the village and interacted with its people. It had been my assumption that I could adapt a method developed in a European cultural context. I had thought that both walking and drawing were activities that would not be too exacting on volunteers. However as I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, these demands did not seem feasible in this Gujarati village. I have already written about the challenges surrounding the exercise of mapmaking. Now I will expand on why the method of the walking interview in this research did not materialize, and what I learnt from this failure.

An original inspiration for conducting walking interviews had been the field of psychogeography. Psychogeography can be understood as a turn to space in psychology, as a visual method of attending to social environments that arose out of Situationism in France. “The situationists referred to a practice called psychogeography whereby they actively disorientated themselves in places to open themselves up to how they experienced and made sense of the environment. The aims were to critique the capitalist gentrification of cities by walking and they documented these walks with stories and poems” (Bridger, 2011: 285). In the original plan, even if we were to shift from a European city to an Indian village, a walking interview would still be possible, even if the experience of it would be different. It would be possible for the researcher and the research participant to navigate the rural terrain together, for the village would “have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly encourage and discourage entry into or exit from certain zones” (Debord 1958, cited in Bridger 2011: 285) too.

However, while Bridger had put psychogeography to use in critical psychology, he had also cautioned that “any engagements with Situationism and psychogeography should […] not aim to replicate the arguments of the situationists nor of others drawing on their arguments, but instead should aim to reconﬁgure these ideas in line with developments in contemporary capitalist society” (Bridger, 2010: 136). Saskia Warren has a feminist analysis of how the walking interview needs to be put through the prism of both cultural and gender differences in plural and diverse societies. She has demonstrated in a study with Muslim women in Birmingham that mobile methods need to look at the interstices of culture, gender and faith, and question the secular Euro-centric assumptions of walking interviews (Warren, 2017).

In retrospect, I did not take these cautions seriously enough. I was prepared for the walking interviews to go awry, however I was caught by surprise when the walks could not be enacted. Research participants could not be persuaded to take up walking. Here the research plan was hindered by two problems. One is that the research participants in particular (and Indians in general) do not find the act of walking itself a pleasant activity. Secondly, walking in a region that is intensely socially-stratified is a remarkable political activity. 97

1. Walking may appear to be a task that requires little equipment, but that is not so. A vast majority of Indian cities and villages do not have the road infrastructure that is pedestrian-friendly. While Unava had adequate town planning and better-than-average road infrastructure, most of the village streets were narrow and unpaved, and not many had street lights. Even the main roads did not have pavements designated for pedestrians. Tar roads meant for vehicles would give way to mud, which would be dry and dusty when the weather was hot, and wet and slushy when it rained. During fieldwork I took to wearing canvas shoes every day to keep the skin on the soles of my feet from cracking, but in the hot climate most people opted for open sandals or slippers. If I asked men to accompany me on a walking interview, they would offer to drive me around on their motorbikes, while women would reject the idea on the suspicion that they would be seen ‘loitering’.

To add to the problem was that the right of way on the streets was often granted to cows and even bulls, Unava being part of the dairy capital of India. Thousands of cows are bred for their milk in Unava, and they are allowed to roam around the village, sometimes without an attendant. Most people were more nervous of the street dogs than the cows. However, it was wild pigs that frightened me the most.

All these factors, I believe, contribute to the fact that people were agreeable to speaking and even sharing meals with me, but not keen on walking. “Just walking around” seemed to appear to them as an aimless activity. I think modern India does not have a culture of walking, in either cities or villages60. People opt to ride scooters, or hire autorickshaws and cabs for small distances rather than face all the elements of nature that street-walking has to offer. Thus, it was difficult to propose the activity of walking as a playful exploration of space.

2. As the maps demonstrated, the village is divided into zones inhabited by different caste- groups. Crossing these invisible boundaries is a testing experience, especially for those lower on the caste-hierarchy. It is well-known that those deemed Untouchables were not allowed access to common areas. Ambedkar as a lawyer campaigned extensively in the first half of the twentieth century for the right of Dalits to use public roads, public wells and tanks, public temples and all other public utilities. In Essays on Untouchables and Untouchability, he recounts the struggles the Dalits had faced in asserting their rights to us of public roads, even after British Indian Law had

60 In sharp contrast is the culture of walking I see in the United Kingdom. Warren makes a historical analysis of walking as a leisure activity in European societies: “In the nineteenth century walking was transformed into a mode of leisure for European elites, influenced by the landscape writings of Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Cresswell, 2010; Ingold, 2004). Ingold has argued that walking for pleasure is based on ‘the striding gait of boot-clad Europeans’ (2004, p. 315). Following this historical narrative, understanding of leisure- walking practices may have been shaped by elite European social milieus […]” (Warren, 2017: 787). 98

granted all Indians the rights to the use of public utilities and institutions, such as wells, schools, buses, trams, railways, public offices, etc.

“Of the attempts made to vindicate the right to use the public roads, it is enough to mention one, most noteworthy attempt in this behalf was that made by the Untouchables of Travencore State in 1924 to obtain the use of the roads which skirted the temple at Vaikorn. These roads were public roads maintained by the State for the use of everybody, but on account of their proximity to the temple building, the Untouchables were not allowed to use certain sections, which skirted the temple too closely. Ultimately as a result of Satyagraha, the temple compound was enlarged and the road was realigned so that there the Untouchables even if they used it were no longer within the polluting distance of the temple” (Ambedkar, n.d.).

It cannot be said that Dalits today are able to make full use of public spaces. There are countless stories reported in news media and social media of Dalits being denied access, forcibly evicted, or physically assaulted when they do so, in contravention of Article 17 of the Indian Constitution. Big metropolitan cities afford some anonymity and thus greater access to public spaces, however in small towns and villages where most people know each other, or know of each other, to retain an anonymous identity is almost impossible to achieve. This differential access to public spaces makes entire cities and villages less welcoming, less hospitable not only for Dalits, but for everyone.

Another consideration for locals was not only to be identified by their caste and religious, but to be identified by who their companions were. Thus, for my participants it was not only about being seen… their reaction to walking interviews was also about being seen with me. For all my participants, a walking interview would mean walking with someone of unknown lineage. For men, additionally, it would mean walking with a woman from outside the village, who seemed to be young and unattended by a guardian. There were too many variables that made this activity unfeasible.

5.9 Conclusion

When I modified the methodology to generate maps of the village without the additional support of the walking interviews, I started making headway. In fact, the maps themselves reveal why the original methodology would have been difficult to transact. Walking in the village, even for an innocuous reason, would become an event with political significance, it would be open to interpretation to onlookers, it could cause consternation, fear or offense. Walking would not only be an occasion if one was to cross the invisible boundaries that separated zones inhabited by different caste-groups, but even a walk in public spaces such as the bazaar or the post office would be noticed. Such an organization of social space

eclipses any material or psychological reasons to shy away from walking. By inference, the dargah and its surroundings are imbued with local meanings that are imperceptible without the Dalit Standpoint.

The awkwardness in applying a mobile method such as the walking interview developed in urban contexts of the ‘West’ in a culturally-different context in the ‘East’ reflects critically on the cultural presumptions informing mobilities research. In the context of India, mobilities research will need to take into consideration – beside the factors of class and gender (which has been explored by geographers such as Warren) – the significance of caste as a prominent category for social stratification. This ancillary finding coming out of a methodological failure also strengthens the analysis of the space of the dargah within its sociocultural environment in the village. The Muslim shrine must also fall within the social organization of the village as a caste-divided space, despite its sitations in scholarship as a syncretic melting-pot of communities.

Earlier scholarship on faith healing has not sufficiently addressed the caste system undercutting religious traditions at shrines in South Asia. While an analysis of faith healing could be performed without reference to caste politics, it was unavoidable for me, as the researcher, in the period during which this research was conducted. The country was reeling under civil conflicts, agitations, and protests based on caste. National media were covering the events in depth (if not strict honesty), and social media ‘wars’ between opposing groups were commonplace. The Patel agitation, akin to political demands made by other savarna groups for greater access to socioeconomic benefits from the State, was underway in the region where fieldwork was being conducted. I was a witness to these events on the ground during the time of fieldwork, and participating in informal conversations on the topic. At that time there were massive student protests taking place in Hyderabad, Delhi, and Pune that had shaken the stoicness of the government. Discussions on caste discrimination and reservations were taking the front and centre place in national politics. It made me question my own caste position and privilege, in addition to my religious identity as a Muslim residing in Gujarat. In this environment to focus on research (or any other activity) without reference to casteism would have been disingenuous and short-sighted. My appreciation of the Dalit Standpoint comes from the socio-political moment during which I was engaged in fieldwork.

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SECTION II - SUBJECTIVATION

Comprises of: Chapter 6 – Narrative Chapter 7 – Subject/Ghost

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CHAPTER 6

NARRATIVE

6.1 Introduction

The subject is at the heart of this section. The previous part on Sitation used different methods of citing/siting the site – through historical, political, and geographical accounts of the Mira Datar Dargah and its social environment in Gujarat. This part looks at the subject that is encountered at this site, the sawwali who is the target of intervention of the ideology of both faith-based and science-based discourse. The sawwali comes from the Arabic-Persian root “so’al” (transliterated here as sawwal) meaning question, and is feminized in its Hindi-Urdu iteration at the dargah (sawwal-i) although it is used for women and men. Thus, the sawwali is one with questions. This subject has been approached in both anthropological and psychological expositions of faith healing in India, albeit tangentially, as most relevant for what it reveals about faith healing, its cultural relevance or the efficacy of its treatment. Now the subject is brought to the fore. This chapter presents six narratives generated through interviews with sawwalis (five women and one man) at the dargah conducted over eight months between August 2015 and April 2016. While the method of ethnographic and participant observation are particularly suited to attending to the spectacle that the dargah presents in the figure of the sawwali, the subject of this research will be approached through speech, and the method of narrative interviewing. The sawwali is at this moment interpellated not only religious discourses of affliction and healing, but also by psychological discourses of illness and cure. Thus, the sawwali is poised at the intersection of discourses that are contributing to the constitution of the citizen-subject of contemporary India. The narratives will explore what the sawwali has to say about these topics, and also explore what the subject does not have to say.

6.2 The narrative turn

The narrative turn in the social sciences encompasses several academic traditions, philosophical debates, and methodological interventions dating back to the 1950s. Corinne Squire, Molly Andrews and Maria Tamboukou in Doing Narrative Research (2008) write that there are two distinguishable academic trajectories within what is called ‘the’ narrative turn: “The first is the post-war rise of humanist approaches within western sociology and psychology. […] The second academic antecedent to contemporary narrative social research is Russian structuralist and, later, French poststructuralist (Barthes, 1977; Culler, 2002; Genette, 1979; Todorov, 1990), postmodern (Foucault, 1972; Lyotard, 1984),

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psychoanalytic (Lacan, 1977) and deconstructionist (Derrida, 1977) approaches to narrative within the humanities” (Squire, Andrews, & Tamboukou, 2008: 4).

This research comes out of a critical psychology tradition that has unarguably emerged from the latter academic trajectory, which borrows its critique of psychological structures and practices as they function ideologically in society from theories and analyses gathered from psychoanalysis, discourse analysis, and deconstruction. In this academic tradition, the narrative approach to the subject attends to speech as a method to approach the social. Corinne Squire writes that to focus on narrative “is to bring structures of language into focus, with a plethora of attendant possibilities for linguistic, visual and even behavioural analysis. At the same time, narrative analysis takes seriously the content of texts, at levels ranging from individual phrases or images to discrete stories to larger ‘stories’ encompassing long and multiple stretches of talk, image or action” (Squire, 2005: 93). Thus, the narrative approach to the subject is to look at the production of the subject through the way speech constructs subjectivity as an ongoing process.

The Mira Datar Dargah has mostly been studied through an ethnographic method that is based on observation. A discreet observer can hear and see a lot of the interaction between the mujawar and the sawwali just by taking a seat amongst the crowd, and therefore the methodological pull of observation is unmistakable. The publicness of the faith healing practices at this site privileges vision, and the method of ethnographic and participant observation are particularly suited to attending to the spectacle that the dargah presents during salaami every dawn and dusk. This is precisely why turning to narrative is a way to approach the subject of faith healing differently than the observation-based methods that have been employed.

There are epistemological considerations to resist the allure of observational methods at the shrine that arise out of critical theory. Pavlovskaya & Martin have analysed how the observational techniques have been critiqued from postmodern perspectives: “in his analyses of the linkages between knowledge and power in Western societies, Michel Foucault (1979, 1980) has emphasized the centrality of vision in creating authority and maintaining discipline and order, such as in punitive institutions. Edward Said (1978) has showed how a colonial gaze perpetuates colonial institutions and practices even after the colonial system itself has disintegrated. Michel de Certeau (1984) conveyed the sense of mastery that an observer derives from visually examining the landscape from commanding heights” (2007: 587). These analyses have critiqued the priority given to vision amongst other sensory modalities, since vision mediates relations between objects or individuals by arrangements that can be visualized as vertical or horizontal, and therefore is most easily co-opted by structures of power. This is also germane in research, since power differences mediate relations between the researcher and the researched as well.

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Feminist scholars have brought an analysis of the underlying gendered premise of visual methods, wherein the rational gaze of the impartial observer has inbuilt masculinist assumptions about the ability to see the object of study, capture it in that moment of observation, and then produce it as an empirical finding of their own. Feminist Science Studies have challenged the claims of objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge. “Radical critiques of science by feminist scholars such as Donna Haraway (1989, 1991b) and Sandra Harding (1986), however, have specifically linked the authority of vision and the practices of looking to the patriarchal nature of Western societies. In their opinion, a masculinist bias of science originated from the exclusion of women and the privileging of sight and vision that give power and sexual pleasure to the male Western observer” (Pavlovskaya & Martin, 2007: 587).

Thus, in this project, the turn to narrative follows in the footsteps of a critical response to observational methods. Morever, devising a method of generating narratives out of multiple interviews over an extended period of time was an obvious decision: the narrative is a method best suited to telling a story of/by the subject.61 As Jerome Bruner writes “We seem to have no other way of describing "lived time" save in the form of a narrative. Which is not to say that there are not other temporal forms that can be imposed on the experience of time, but none of them succeeds in capturing the sense of lived time: not clock or calendrical time forms, not serial or cyclical orders, not any of these” (Bruner, 2004: 692). The narrative puts together a story of how the subject has experienced an aspect of their life (the object of the research) over time, retrospectively reconstructed for the purpose of research. Thus there are several features to this story-telling: “A narrative contains a temporal sequence, a patterning of happenings. It has a social dimension, someone is telling something to someone. And it has a meaning, a plot giving the story a point and a unity” (Kvale, 1996: 200). In the next section, the process of conducting this module of the research will be scoped out.

6.3 The process of generating narratives

In 2015, I invited twelve sawwalis to participate in my research. If they agreed, I would schedule an interview. Before the interview I would inform them that I would be recording our conversation for the purpose of my research. Giving this notice, which is part of the ethics and risk assessment protocol of the university, elicited a range of responses from potential research participants. Some took no exception to being formally interviewed, and would launch into speech immediately. The majority of the sawwalis I approached were uneasy speaking on record, had misgivings about being singled out for interviews or about how the information shared would be used. These are predictable responses that I have

61 In this thesis, both words narrative and story have been used. The (slim) difference between narrative and story is that ‘narrative’ is the method and outcome of the research process, while ‘story’ is used as an ordinary language term to signify an account of personal experience. 104

experienced in my previous research with fellow Indians, and engagement with such research participants was easy to plan into the interview process: I would meet with these participants informally in my daily visits to the shrine, explain why I was there and what I was hoping to do, and answer any questions they had before rescheduling a formal interview and producing my audio-recorder once again.

There were a number of sawwalis I had initially approached who I later found were not viable candidates for narrative interviews. This was primarily based on my assessment of their ability to tolerate the process of narrativization. Narrative interviews require subjects to engage in conversation with the interviewer and speak about their experiences (Squire, Andrews, and Tamboukou 2008, Squire 2005) … to the extent that feels safe and comfortable for them. However, some people do not feel safe or comfortable sharing their experiences and thoughts with a (relative) stranger. This dynamic is exacerberated in a special space like a faith healing shrine for two reasons. The first is that it is where people in acute distress come looking for succour, and are very often focussed on treatment to the exclusion of other social and cultural expectations. Second, shrines that provide treatment for conditions like black magic or ghost possession draw people who are suspicious of the motives of others. The notion of the ‘evil eye’ prevalent here is that someone has taken an intense interest in their life, and out of spite or jealousy wished evil on them. Already caught in the thrall of the evil eye, many sawwalis are reluctant to lend themselves to situations where they feel exposed and vulnerable.

As part of the interview process, I had to make a decision if it would be in the best interest of both parties to continue. I did not want to coerce or even coax sawwalis to speak, if they found the experience too disturbing but lacked the ability to straightforwardly decline the offer to participate in the research. For them, it was hard to find a response to a question when in fact they had come to the dargah to find answers, or to think about a problem in the midst of suffering and pain. On my side, I had to withstand last-minute cancellation of interviews, or finding responses too evasive or scanty to continue a discussion. After one or two tense encounters, if I found our exchanges would be too demanding on them and/or on me, I would bring the interviews to a close, and interact with them henceforth in a casual or neighbourly manner.

In the process of narrativization, I saw stories being drawn up as my research participants engaged with me over several months. Six narratives of sawwalis are presented in the next section62. Each narrative in this chapter pieces together a story told over several meetings. Not all interactions were recorded; there were chance encounters on the street, unplanned interactions in a group, or planned meetings for

62 Names have been assigned to each interviewee keeping in mind their sex and religious identity. 105

purposes other than research63. However the narratives have been constructed on the basis of the recorded interviews and their transcripts.

Interviews were not structured beyond a focus on the process of faith healing, and subjects were allowed to take their own direction. Nonetheless, in all but two instances, sawwalis would constrain themselves to the purpose of the interview, as they understood it, when the recorder was switched on (Eshan and Sejal spoke at length about a great deal of other topics relevant to them). Given the unstructured nature of the interviews, we would stop when the interviewee deemed it sufficient, or was called away for some reason. Thus, interview durations are of variable lengths, the shortest being eight minutes with Aalia before an emergency in the dargah broke up the meeting, and the longest lasting for an hour and forty minutes with Eshan before I called a stop to it. However the average time for an interview was 31 minutes. The rest of this chapter will look at the narratives thus generated.

Table 2 - Research subjects interviewed No. NAME SEX RELIGION LIVING WITH NUMBER OF ASSIGNED RECORDED INTERVIEWS

1 Aalia Female Muslim Husband, daughter 3

2 Samira Female Muslim Mother, sister 3

3 Eshan Male Muslim Wife, daughter 3

4 Arohi Female Hindu Husband, son 2

5 Sejal Female Hindu Husband, son 3

6 Brinda Female Hindu Son 2

63 I was teaching English to the twelve year old daughter of one of my research subjects, Aalia. Farha was one student in a class of twelve Muslim women and girls I would meet once a week from December 2015 till the end of March 2016, under the aegis of the Centre for Development, Ahmedabad, an NGO that works on education for disadvantaged youth. Wahab Ansari of Centre for Development asked me to teach English to these women and girls who had had few opportunities to further their education was both fulfilling and a way to stay occupied in work other than my research. My interactions with Farha were personally very significant for me (See Chapter 7: Subject/Ghost), and as a consequence I met Aalia several times outside of research contexts. 106

6.4 Troubling the subject

Narrative 1

Aalia must be the most challenging research participant I had encountered during my fieldwork segment, being on the extreme end of a spectrum of how naturally talkative research participants can be in unstructured interview contexts: she would respond to an open-ended question very pragmatically in a few words and then fall completely silent. In the case of resistant-to-speech subjects, I had changed my intentions to interview them after one or more fruitless encounters. Still I wondered what such a selection does to the outcome of a research project, since the elimination of resistant subjects meant narratives would only emerge from interviewing those who develop ways of amiably relating to the researcher and easily open up their speech to scrutiny. During the period of fieldwork, I had started to think about research that excludes the frustratingly sparse exchanges with recalcitrant subjects. It seemed to me that they get weeded out of the process of knowledge production, and what they have not said is then twice- removed from the study. With a determination to persist with a “difficult” subject, I stuck it out with Aalia. This meant spending more time in fixing meetings, and taking a very active role during an interview.

Aalia’s narrative

Aalia is a Muslim woman in her mid-thirties who was employed by the Dargah Trust as the first and only female security guard. In a site where the majority of sawwalis are women and there are gender- segregated spaces having a female guard was considered practical. However it was only in 2014 that the Trust had thought of employing a female guard. She was paid enough by the Dargah Trust to pay the rent of her small quarters inside the dargah complex, derogatorily called Gandakhana (Mad Quarters) by its own inhabitants, and had a little money left over for other essential expenses. Aalia lived there with her husband and her twelve year daughter, the youngest of three girls. Her other two daughters lived with her marital family in a village in Maharashtra.

Her narrative begins with her first visit to a dargah in Chalisgaon, Maharashtra, which is called the Syed Musa Qadri Baba Dargah64 65. There in a revelatory dream, she was directed to Mira Datar Dargah in Unava.

64 A description of the Musa Baba Dargah in Chalisgaon can be found in J. J. Roy Burman’s Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities (2002) as a popular syncretic shrine: “Hundreds of devotees flock to the Dargah on every day irrespective of their caste, creed and religion. But the Hindus are seen in many more in numbers. Besides, the number of women visiting the shrine appears to be much more. Many mentally deranged men and women are kept chained to the grilled fence. Many unchained sick women also seen holding their heads against the grill and praying for hours together” (Roy Burman, 2002: 160). It sounds similar to the Mira Datar Dargah in Unava. 65 The Chalisgaon Dargah had been in the news for a demonstration by a progressive rationalist organisation led by now-deceased Narendra Dabholkar in 2011. A newspaper article from November 30, 2011 writes about the incident as “Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (MANS) will resort to a peaceful agitation if the inhuman treatment 107

Aalia to me: See, before I was for 2 months in the Chalisgaon Dargah. Then in my dream [/sapna], he [/Sarkar] told me about this place. Since he gave this [basharat] that there you cannot become well, you must come here. I asked, “Baba, where is that?” I saw a [tower] in my dream [/dream]. So I told my husband, this is what I saw. Close by an aunty was sitting who heard what I was saying… that there is this earthern [tower], there is a light shining, there I became ok. She said, “that is Syed Ali Mira Datar Dargah! You were shown that [basharat] so you must go there”. It is like this: there is a link [/sakli] between dargah and dargah. If you do not become well at this dargah, you can go to another. I had never seen this tower before, first time it was in the dream [/sapna]. I found out from that aunty, and as I reached, the first thing I saw was the tower.

It was in 2009 she had first come to Unava to look for a cure of her own affliction, which consisted of body pain, restlessness and anxiety. Earlier she had worked as a cook in one of the small restaurants that serve the pilgrims and tourists to the village. In the previous one year of working as a security guard, her responsibilities included opening and closing the gates of the dargah in the morning and evening, and patrolling the courtyard of the shrine when it is open to the public. She could not recall meeting any trouble at the hands of the sawwalis during her time as a security guard. Sometimes during work hours, she would feel the onset of hazri, and she would come back to her room to bear it out, rather than to perform it front of other sawwalis in the courtyard.

Aalia to me: Hazri only happens sometimes now. Before, it is used to be lots. Now only once in a while.

When it comes, what does it feel like?

Heaviness (/bauj) in the body. Weighed down [/wajan]. It feels heavy [/bhaari] and tight [/dam]. Feels like very restless [/bechaini].

At that time what makes you feel a sense of relief?

Hazri. When it comes and then stops, then it feels very nice and peaceful.

And you take no medicines any more?

meted out to the mentally ill at the dargah in Chalisgaon is not stopped within a month. MANS has also proposed to provide medical assistance to the mentally ill. According to MANS, mentally ill patients are left at the dargah and made to go through various forms of torture due to the superstition that they can be cured in that way. MANS said the authorities concerned should take action and stop it.” I have written about the rationalist drive of the MANS that resulted in the Anti-Superstition Bill, which was brought into the law in the Maharashtra State Legislature in 2014 (Siddiqui, 2016). Dabholkar was assassinated by opponents of his seemingly anti-religion stance in 2014, widely believed to be belonging to right-wing Hindutva groups. 108

At first we did not have the know-how [/malumaat], so I took a lot of medicines. There was no effect [/farak]. When we first came here, took a lot of treatment [/ilaaj] through [dava-dua]. There was no profit [/fayda]. There is no peace nor sleep with [dava]. Then we stopped it.

After 5 years her husband was tired of living far away from home, and he returned to the village, much against Aalia’s advice.

Aalia to me: I came here first. When he would visit me, and feel some trouble [/takleef], pain [/dard] in the waist, I would tell him that this is magic [/jadoo], if you return, it will increase, so just stay back here. But he said that I eaten the food from here for 5 years, now I cannot take it anymore. And he left. Then the calls would come from there. He would say that give [dua] for me, I am in a [serious] condition, very [serious].

So you were here the whole time because of [hukum]?

Yes. Even he did not have the permission [/ijaazat] to leave. If he had listened to him, to Sarkar, the boat [/nayya] would have crossed to the other side faster. But if one does not listen, does what one wants [/marzi], then damage [/nuksaan] happens.

There in the village the affliction struck him so badly, he and his family deduced that they must have left the dargah before it was time. Her husband was bed-ridden with an agonising pain in both his legs. He finally moved back to reside in the dargah the previous year, with Aalia and Farha, while her older daughters continued with their school education back home. With her husband bed-ridden and immobile, Aalia was the primary carer in the family, although her hazri was still ongoing but reduced from 7-8 years back. Recently Farha’s hazri had started too, and all three had little chains fastened with little locks around either wrist or ankle. It is believed that the chain captures the commitment addressed to the saint and their wish (mannat) to become better.

To Aalia: This chain that you have tied around your ankle, when did you get it?

This is recent. It’s been 8 months.

After coming back then. Do you ever open it?

This opens by itself. We lock it, then put the key into the lake, and then when this breaks open by itself, you can understand that you have become ok.

Farha has one too!

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Farha, and her father too.

A factor that hindered my discussions was the brooding presence of her husband. He would just sit in the room, sometimes giving responses to the questions I was asking his wife without looking at me. I found his presence somewhat obstructive. In his shadow, Aalia’s speech never opened up. Once however he received a phone call (the sound of which is discernible in the audio recording) and left the room to take it outside.

{phone call}

To Aalia: So you don’t have any belief [/vishwas] in medicines?

No.

And your husband isn’t on any medicines either.

No. At first we took medicines. As much we took, that much more stress [pareshaani].

And it was expensive for you too, you said

Yes. The expense is there only. And we didn’t spend as much on ourselves as on him.

But the problem did not come into your control?

No. How much we took him to the hospital. A hospital in Surat. Ahmedabad. Nasik too. But the doctors said that the problem is not physical [/sharirik]. If there is no problem, then why does it happen to him? Here he has become better without any [dava]. He had to be carried here. But here you need only [dua]. He became ok. So much treatment [/ilaaj] we had done before. We had a house that we had to sell for his treatment. But the [problem] of his illness [/bimaari] did not get resolved. Then only we came here.

So then he had a weakness in his legs and waist?

No. It was such that he could not even walk. He could not do anything with his own hands. He would just be lying there. If you even touched him, he would shout, as if poked in the eye. He would shout that there is a fire burning up my body [/badan]. Now we are thankful [/shukr] to Sarkar that at least he can feed himself, bathe himself.

How old was he when this all started?

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41-42 years old? Before 40 years, he had no problems [/mushkil]. Nothing. No problems [/mushkil] at all. No illness [/bimaari], no problem [/mushkil], nothing. It started with me, he developed afflictions [/pareshaani] after me. When it happened to me, he was worried [/pareshaan] for me.

How many years after yours?

After 5 years. After 5 years he started to develop afflictions. When we tried to leave this place, then he [/Sarkar] would show us revelatory dreams [/basharat] that we shouldn’t leave just yet, that you have this, do such and such. This is what the dreams [/sapna] were telling us. So it told him that do not leave this place, even to meet your children, or you will become disabled [/langda], become blind [/andha]. This is what was revealed in the [basharat], that he would go mad [/pagal]. He did not agree, and went back home. I was still here. On going home, the magician [/jadoo karneywala] did magic [/jadoo] on him. For three months he just lay in bed, but then also did not return here. He could not eat nor drink. He would feel hungry but he did not wish [/ichaha] to eat. Felt like going to the [bathroom], the [latrine], and then feel like he was burning up [/aag lagna]. Needles were poking him. He used to say that O Allah, give me death [/maut]. He would be shouting for poison [/zeher]. No sleep for all 24 hours. He wanted to commit suicide. He had to withstand [/bardasht] all this.

Has this happened to any one else in the family?

We were the first.

What did his family do then?

They felt that this illness [/bimaari] is so big that he cannot come here. Instead they took him to the [hospital], to the doctor, and a lot of treatment [/ilaaj] followed. Later on they started wondering that after doing so much, it is increasing, so they showed him to people who know [/jaankar]. They went to 6 [jaankar], who said, “we cannot do anything, this is for the dargah, nothing can be done here, that someone has made a voodoo doll [/putla] of him and tied an issue [/mudda] on it, so we can’t do anything”. When the [jaankar] said it, then they hired a vehicle and got him here.

Aalia’s husband has in the last year by living within the dargah alongside his wife regained the function of his legs, and though he suffers some pain, he seems healthy, albeit lethargic. Like most residents of the dargah, he does not engage in work other than the rituals and quotidian chores. While there is a modicum of peace, anxieties from the outside press down on Aalia. Her mother is alone and ill back in the village, and her daughters are living without both their parents with them. 111

The effort [/koshish] is still on regarding them coming here. My [Mummy] is quite affected/wounded [/ghayal]. She does not have any one with her, right. Brother isn’t, Father isn’t. Those who are very helpless [/laachaar], who are wounded [/ghayal].

So you do not get to meet her very often?

No. Not meeting, we talk on the phone.

And your daughters are there too.

They are also very troubled [/pareshaan]. “Mummy, should we go to school or come here”, that kind of trouble. It is important to study, and the peace of good health [/tabiyat ki sukoon] is also important. That is why I say that, “do your 10th standard, and then come here”. It’s just disturbance [/takleef], anxiety [/ghabrahat], restlessness [/bechaini], no sleep!

Aalia’s family is waiting for the basharat that will tell them that they can go home. They have been victims of the spite of a jealous relative who has hired a magician to do black magic on them. They call this maili vidya or dirty knowledge, i.e. dark arts in popular parlance. Aalia says it is fellow Muslims who know to do this. Without the blessing of the saint, Aalia will not think of leaving Unava after what happened to her husband, and she does not think she will be going back very soon either. It does not bother her too much. When I ask her what her life may look like after she returns home, she had nothing to say. My last interview session was painfully awkward, since the talk of a future outside the dargah shut Aalia down again.

Narrative features

Aalia’s narrative speaks of the dangers of the evil eye (buri nazar) and the malevolent effects of black magic (jadoo) on the family, of how this effect comes from close quarters. For Aalia it was jealousy that had pushed her relatives to hire a magician specialising in black magic (maili vidya) to cast a spell on Aalia, her husband, and daughters. The magician had cast a spell on this family, which first targeted Aalia and she first sought help at the Chalisgaon Dargah. It is here that she claims to have seen a revelatory dream (basharat) about the Mira Datar Dargah, and she came to the dargah with her husband in 2009, more than six years before I met her, to take residence here. When her husband sought to leave, she did not follow him back to their village, and instead continued to stay on in the dargah. Then her prediction seemed to come true… her husband was also struck by the signs of falling victim to the same affliction of the evil eye she had been suffering from, in the form of intense pain and paralysis in his legs, and since then they lived along with her youngest daughter in the dargah. Her husband had improved over the previous year, but the affliction was not over, since in addition to the adults, her twelve year old daughter also experienced hazri. Thus, the symptoms of hazri were shuffling between family members. 112

When it comes to medical intervention for any member of her family, it was clear that Aalia was accepting of the powers (barakah) of the shrine; she had no ‘faith’ in doctors, and would withdraw slightly upon any discussion of medicines, be these psychotropic or even general medicine. Aalia was one of the most anti- medicine sawwalis encountered in the course of fieldwork. Consequently, her belief on the powers of the dargah were high, but not marked by any equally visible demonstration of religiosity.

Aalia worked as a security guard at the dargah, but even with this enforced contact with the huge numbers of visitors the shrine saw daily, she seemed to be relatively withdrawn from people around her. This was typical of many sawwalis who preferred to keep to themselves during their sojourn at the dargah. This was also demonstrated in her reticence during the interviews, where her narrative did not cite anybody apart from her husband, daughters, and mother by name. The sparse details of the recounting of her past was mirrored in her silence around the future. Aalia was the only research subject interviewed who despite prodding did not articulate any plans for the future, or an imagination of life beyond daily chores. It was impossible to visualize how life outside of the dargah would look like her for her and her family. Aalia’s narrative is the starkest in the set presented here.

Narrative 2

I met Samira by chance, as she, her mother and her sister were sunning themselves in the winter noon. I found them beside the main shrine, in the ‘Gandakhana’. It was effortless to strike up a conversation with Samira. As we started talking, I quickly realized that I would like to know more about her. Samira impressed me as a bright young Muslim woman who was trying to work through the affliction that had befallen herself and her family. She proudly told me of her graduate degree in law; it is rare to see that pride, because it is not often that one sees a woman with a graduate-level of education amongst the residents of the ‘Gandakhana’. The other reason was that I was glad to speak to somebody who had not been screened by the gatekeepers to my research area: either the khadims or the NGO workers. I had not found it simple to draw sawwalis into my study if I was not introduced and supported by one of the gatekeepers. At any rate, Samira was an alert research participant who tried to think through her responses, and I enjoyed my recorded and unrecorded interactions with her. While Samira spoke Gujarati, Hindi and English, we spoke to each other in Hindi with words from English strewn in.

Samira’s narrative

Samira was in her early twenties, one of five siblings (Samira was the middle child). Her eldest sister was also seeking treatment at the dargah, alongside herself, and both were unmarried. Their mother lived and looked after them, herself sometimes bearing hazri. Her other siblings would visit them at the dargah, or they would go back home in Rajkot district, located at the centre of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat (as 113

they did a couple of times during my fieldwork period at the site). All her siblings and her mother seemed to have taken recourse in this period to the barakah of the dargah, and the only one who seemed opposed to it was her father. Her father would be the one in the family who found it difficult to believe in the machinations of the dargah.

The first time Samira realized there was a problem was roughly 8 years before our conversations, when she was in the final year of school (15 years old). Her eldest sister’s marriage had been finalized, but she started falling ill.

Samira to me: The talk of her marriage had started, but she had complaints that she is experiencing this or that. We couldn’t understand if somebody had done something bad, or wanted to do something bad. But I was ignoring this thing. Then the [jinn]66 did something special. One day I was alone, it was evening. And that Jinn came with the appearance [/shakl] of my [Papa]. I was cooking. And the door suddenly burst open, the outside door! So I thought it was my Papa who has come. There was a string-bed [/khatiya] there and I heard sounds coming from there, the bed was being laid and he sat on it. It was like the sound of normal hustle-bustle [/halchal]. So I thought it was my Papa. While still working I went to speak to Papa thinking that he has returned, “Papa, you have come!” Those people were coming to see my sister. It was the time when even her engagement had not happened. Mummy had called to say that she would be returning at such-and-such time. I didn’t realize it wasn’t my Papa and I came out. I saw the door was open. Then I started feeling fear [/darr]. How did the door open by itself? Who had I been speaking to? I don’t know. […] As the time for the wedding neared, her health deteriorated. So we thought the problem is bodily [jismani]…

So you thought it was bodily before?

At first yes. Dava. Dava! Dava! Dava! Only! But as the time for the wedding approached, she would herself start doing her dua. She would say, “I am tying my intention [/niyat]. What is that my heart wants, oh Allah, let it come out. God only knows. Why am I so troubled? Why am I disturbed? Make it apparent. Why I am not becoming well with any dava”. Then one day, that personality [/hasti] presented itself.

Hmm?

66 There is an entire chapter (sura) in the Quran dedicated to the Jinn. The Quran references the jinn as a living entity or an alternate dimension that is generally imperceptible to the human, which nevertheless has the power to meddle in the human world. The jinn are the source of many fables and fantasies in Muslim communities.

114

We called the Maulvi-saab. He said that there has been an effect of all the Dua. We had to join in and read the dua. When we called on the village Imam, he told us about Lal Shah Dargah.

The local Imam directed them to a dargah close to their house, Lal Shah Dargah in Rajkot district of Gujarat. In Lal Shah Dargah, her elder sister’s hazri presented itself. This seems to be the first time the family had sought an intervention at a dargah. However, while her mother took to the treatment, her father was not wholly comfortable with it:

To Samira: So they found out the problem in Lal Shah?

No. In her hazri she spoke. She said that she would have to come to Unava. That there is such a place, and such things are found there. The maulvi told that the village is somewhat far but you are called there if you have made a wish [/mannat]. He said that his mother Raasti-ma is buried in Mahapalli. So he directed them to go to Mira Datar, Unava. Papa left Mummy and my sister behind at this dargah with the Imam. My studies were going on then. I was in the 10th, I was finishing my studies. Brother used to take care of sister. My mother used to travel up and down, up and down. I completed my studies and was telling somebody about this all, and that person said there is nothing like that, that is speaking like a mad (pagal) person! We people (/log) are not mad, but nobody understands this thing we say. My brother and younger sister came here during the annual festival [/sandall], just for a visit. During the festival my younger brother’s hazri started. He was at that time sitting for his 12th standard exam. They had come for an outing but when they started thinking of leaving, hazri would come on. We kept this secret from Papa. Papa would say send them (home), but we couldn’t find the courage [/himmat] to tell him.

Why?

As if he would agree. He would say it is mental stress [/dimagi tension] due to studying. Then I got my courage together and told him when my mother’s hazri started. I told him it is so and so. Papa said it all because of [tension] and everything will become alright. Papa had this kind of courage. My younger sister was not managing her studies. My older sister’s wedding [/saadi] was looming. 10 days later my younger sister’s hazri started. Now we were feeling so much [tension] and conflict [/tanav].

Four of you together!

Yes. Now that it happened to my sister, what could Papa say? So he said, how is it that it is happening to everybody? That he’d go mad seeing that. Then shortly after that, the hazri of my brother and sister fell away [/nikalna]. They become ok. Then my (younger) sister joined NCC

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[National Cadet Corps]. While studying, her marriage also took place. It was a love marriage. My brother improved and started looking for work. Now it was only us two sisters and Ammi.

Her sister’s prolonged affliction was marked at Mira Datar Dargah by long periods of dull muteness, followed by short bursts of frenetic speech in hazri. In the midst of it, the prospective groom and his family withdrew their offer of marriage, and the relations between the two families grew strained, continuing up to the time of the interviews. Her mother had become a full-time carer, as her sister became increasingly unable to look after her daily needs. Meanwhile, Samira lived at home taking care of the household while experiencing visions of a man who would appear donning the face of her father sometimes when she would close her eyes to rest her eyes or try to sleep. A few years later when she had started her graduate degree in law from a local college in Rajkot, Samira experienced a peaking of her own affliction.

Samira to me: Last of all, my hazri. It was Friday [/Jumma]. I was preparing for my exam.

Which exam?

That was the final exam of my first year of law.

Ok...

I was preparing. Read Namaz. I had finished cooking the fish. I was in a lot of pain [/takleef]. I was feeling absolutely weak. I gave Papa the food. After prayers, I lay down there and immediately started crying. Then I thought, “Mummy, my hazri was released here at home itself. I will study here. I will not go anywhere else. I will do everything, study, household work, I will do it”. Then slowly over time my condition [/halat] started deteriorating. I couldn’t eat nor drink. My health [/tabiyat] became worse. No food was good. Took more bottles of medicine. Nothing seemed to work. I would vomit it back [/ulti]. Then I came here. My hazri happened. Then my food-drink started again.

Samira thus came about three years back to reside in the dargah with her mother and her sister. Her father was still sceptical about the cause of her problem, and even took her to a psychiatrist in Mehsana, and she was administered psychiatric treatments that she did not wish to elaborate on, either out of deference to the doctor or her father (most likely the latter). Nonetheless, Samira says she felt no no benefit from medical (psychiatric or otherwise) treatments:

Samira to me: I have done all the [tests]. I have all the [tests]. There is no [fault] there. I have done everything. You know how it is, if one is educated then whatever happens, one tries the [medical]. If my Mummy is ever in pain then it is [sonography]. It’s ok if the delusions [/veham] are removed, but it isn’t like that. We believe [/vishwas] in both. Dua is also science [/shastra]. But 116

nothing happened [+with the tests], everything comes out as [normal]. If it was illness [/bimaari], it would have come out as illness [+in the tests]. If it had come out as so, we would take dava. It is not that we leave it be. We do both.

This is something she stresses in all her recorded interviews, that she is not averse to taking medical intervention but it is no of avail, since the problem is of another nature. Here the distinction between Urdu words are stressed not only by Samira, but most of my Muslim research participants, i.e. the distinction between “roohani” and “jismani”. Roohani comes from the word “rooh” which means in Urdu “soul” or “spirit”, while jismani comes from the word “jism” which means “body” or “flesh”. Samira categorizes her problem as roohani, i.e. of the soul, which has an impact on the afflictions that are jismani, i.e. of the body.

Samira to me: What I have is [roohani]. But because of this [problem], there is pain [/dard], so it is [jismani] too. [Roohani] things do cause [jismani] troubles. If I had dava it gave no effects [/asar]. My head would ache [/dard], so I had dava from Mehsana for 6-8 months, but there was no effect. This test, that dava and the expense! I do not just [believe], but {laughs} dava makes no difference [/farak].

If medicines do not produce the desirable results, it is the evidence Samira needs to be convinced that the problem is not organic, but spiritual. This is in common with stories of many others at the dargah; most call upon a medical practitioner whose prescription they find to be both expensive and ineffective. Samira emphasizes that she and her family consult allopathic doctors, and in fact, (western) medicine is ongoing even as they reside in the shrine and take treatment from the mujawars. The “CT scan” is an oft- repeated term, Samira uses it herself as an option to have her headaches diagnosed. Other terms for treatments people at the dargah seek or have received in the past are “shock” (for Electro-Convulsive Therapy), “sonography” (for medical ultrasound imaging tests), “bottle chadana” (for saline bottles administered intravenously) or “sui chadana” (for medicines administered through injection or needles [sui]). Her mother chimes in at one point to say that the obviously medicines can suppress the pain of the body, but not treat the root cause.

Nonetheless, roohani affliction is difficult to diagnose, and its onset may be long before problems become apparent. Samira says that problems beset their family years before the first spiritual attacks started to show in her sister.

To Samira: How do you know when the problem is roohani?

Like it brings obstacles in somebody’s marriage plans. For instance, my sister had it from childhood, but only at the time of the wedding, it came out and started causing trouble [/takleef].

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Sometimes there are things [/cheez] does not want that somebody get married, nor something good happen. Sometimes it keeps playing around with that person but because of that reason the entire house is troubled [/pareshaan].

When this problem had started, you did not think that it was the work of bala or that it was roohani?

Because hazri had not started then. Not at first, but slowly-slowly as events [/haadse] happened around us, and we just tried to [ignore] it. Later on, we would remember those and understand that we have been at rest [/aaraam] only after coming here. So it is certain [/zaroor] that this is [roohani].

There are contradictions in Samira’s narrative. Sometimes, like in the extract above, she says the trouble started around her sister and only manifested after her marriage was fixed. So the cause of the problem starts with her sister and spreads to the rest of the family. Thus, they are all experiencing the same affliction in different ways, which is another common trope to find at the dargah; often hazri travels between members of the family, usually between mothers and daughters, or mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws. At other times, Samira believes that her affliction is unique to her, and has a different cause and onset.

To Samira: Is the bala you have and the one your sister has the same or different?

Different! That is why! If it were the one and the same, then we wouldn’t get different hazri. Different people have done it to us, out of being [jealous]. They are different [jinn]. These bring different tribulations [/bandish], scaring the life out of us. When the jinn bears down, [/havi hona], it becomes very heavy [/bhari padna].

So if the jinn was bearing down on your house, was that because of black magic or for some other reason?

My mouth has not opened as yet. My mouth… Actually during my [hazri] my mouth gets twisted [/teda meda]. My face becomes so that even I cannot recognize it. That is why I don’t bear [/bharna] my [hazri] here. I bear it in secret/private. I feel very like that… If people see, what will they think? My hazri is very different from everyone else’s.

So your sister’s hazri is different?

Hers is one of speaking-gabbling. She has revelations [/bayaan]. In the revelations, she starts speaking. But I am shown the truth in revelatory dreams [/basharat]. I have even seen corpses!

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Samira says her hazri has not yet opened up her mouth to speak about it, and her understanding cannot come out as speech; instead it comes out in dreams, which is as yet she is unable to decipher, since the understanding of roohani affliction requires “ilm”. Ilm67 is a word used by Urdu speakers that has its antecedents in Arabic, signifying knowledge that covers the multiple dimensions in learning, philosophy and practice. Samira says that the ability to diagnose the problem is with those who have ilm, and she finds that at the dargah.

Samira to me: See, we cannot see from the eyes of Allah. Then also we cannot see these things with our eyes, but those who have [ilm], they understand these things. These things are from god. Only they [/woh] can understand this thing.

Hmmm!

After we believe in Allah even when we cannot see with our own eyes. In the same way, as we [believe] that, in the same way, this needs to be believed. And when misfortunes [/haadse] happen to people, they start to [believe].

Knowledge (ilm; Arabic) is different from science (shashtra; Sanskrit). Samira says that if the problem is outside of our science, it should be left to Allah and those who understand or have knowledge of god’s ways. Several times she doubts if I would be able to understand her and the affliction besetting her. This came up in more than one interview session. She would ask if I felt strange (ajeeb) listening to what she was narrating. Towards the end of our recorded sessions, her doubt of what I was doing there in the dargah was more clearly stated.

Samira to me: What have you gathered from meeting people here, hearing them, seeing them?

These six months I have heard so much, it will take time to fit it together in my comprehension [/zeheyn].

67 According to al-Islam.org (‘The Islamic Concept of Knowledge’, n.d.), in the Qur'an the word 'alim has occurred in 140 places, while al-'ilm in 27. In all, the total number of verses in which 'ilm or its derivatives and associated words are used is 704. “In this work on the concept of knowledge, Franz Rosenthal collected a number of definitions of 'ilm, organizing them according to what he saw as their essential elements (admitting that the list was ahistorical and did not necessarily conform to categories the medieval Muslim scholars themselves would have used). Among these definitions, we find the following: Knowledge is the process of knowing, and identical with the knower and the known. (1) Knowledge is that through which one knows. (2) Knowledge is that through which the essence is knowing. (3) Knowledge is that through which the knower is knowing. (4) Knowledge is that which necessitates for him in whom it subsists the name of knower. (5) Knowledge is that which necessitates that he in whom it subsists is knowing. (6) Knowledge is that which necessitates that he in whom it resides is knowing. (6) Knowledge stands for ('ibarah 'an) the object known ('al-ma lum). (7) Knowledge is but the concepts known (al-ma ani al-ma luma). (8) Knowledge is the mentally existing object (Fudge, 2014: 60). 119

When you study this all, then you will think what was that in my [body]? You educated folk seem to think that it is either all spiritual [/roohaniyat] or that the [problem] is the way the brain [/dimag] thinks. It is this, or it is that. But also… how can they have this [case]? How can they think that? What is with their blind beliefs [/andhvishwas]?

You are saying I am going to write what you have told me with doubt [/shak]? That is not my intention.

No, no, no. We lawyers, we write what the [client] says, but we don’t take it as if it is right or it is true. Very often we lose cases, because the clients have not told us the truth.

Her experience of studying for a law degree is very significant for her. It comprises the only non-affliction related theme she ever speaks about. Her wish for higher education is a hopeful and positive note in a story otherwise marked by her family’s misfortune and pain. Her father had encouraged to study further. It was her own aspirations that drove her to study, to tolerate the strain of being separated from her mother and elder sister at first, and then from her father and her other siblings when she came to live in the dargah. By the third year of law training, she had moved to Unava and her hazri had taken a more strenuous form. There is the physical exertion of hazri, which in her case would make it difficult to eat the food she preferred, such as rotis (Indian whole wheat flat bread). I realize over a few sessions that she had been unable to complete her training to become a lawyer, since her treatment at the dargah had taken a toll on her on her studies.

Samira to me: I had thought of studying income tax, so I went into Law. I had so many dreams, that I’d study and become an income tax lawyer, but now it won’t happen.

Why do you say that? It still can.

Now my memory has become very like that, I forget things. It has become weak, my brain [/dimag]. […] In my final year exam, I got held back because of two marks. When I get hazri, there is like a fire in my body [/badan], and then I cannot concentrate. It feels as if I will fall down. I get scared of what will come out of my mouth [/awaaz]. What will that sound be, the [Bala]’s voice [awaaz]. So that it can’t speak, I have kept it suppressed [/daba ke] and so my voice cannot come out. That is how I need to concentrate on my [/problem] and keep it suppressed.

Very much at the end of my time with Samira, I found out that her father had died a few years before, and her mother received a widow’s pension from which they made their subsistence at the dargah. I was surprised to know of this, since I had not got the impression during our numerous conversations and interview sessions that her father was no longer alive. As I took her leave, Samira wished me all the best

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for my studies, saying that it makes us proud when one of our own is able to study and make progress. I told her that I wished the same for her.

Narrative features

Samira’s narrative is the second narrative to refer to the machinations of the evil eye. It arises out of jealousy when her sister is about to be married, which should be an occasion of happiness for her family but instead becomes the start of their affliction (bandish). From then on the hazri shuffled between family members with her two sisters, one brother, her mother and Samira herself experiencing hazri at different points in time. This shuffle is also seen in Aalia’s narrative.

The affliction comes in the form of a jinn, which sometimes appears to Samira in the form of her father. This became more interesting only in retrospect when it was revealed that her father had died between the time her sister first experienced hazri and the time of the interviews. Her narrative had kept him so alive that the recounting on her story had not touched upon his absence, only his disapproval of their family’s reliance on faith healing. He had likened the appearance of hazri and its spread across different members of the family as madness. In her interviews, when Samira would defend her beliefs in the cause and development of their family’s affliction as being spiritual (roohani) rather than physical (jismani) or mental (dimagi), she was continuing an argument she had had with her father. However her father’s death was revealed so late in the interview process that did not become a substantial part of her narrative, and thus could not be explored with her.

This narrative has a religious tone that distinguishes itself from the previous narrative. She uses Quranic concepts like ilm (knowledge) to mediate between the appearance of roohani (spiritual) and jismani (bodily). These are more than religious concepts, their usage speak of an ease with Arabic origin words that comes from a greater access to the textual traditions of Islam; in other words this is a display of erudition in Muslim communities. With graduate levels of university education, Samira’s family was already better educated than most families residing within the dargah. Nevertheless Samira also gave in her narrative, in addition to her university education, a performance of an ease with global Islam’s lingua franca, Arabic. This is one of the many ways in which the markers of religion overshadow the presence of caste in India.

Narrative 3

I was introduced to Eshan through a staff member at the Dava-Dua clinic. He was on medication for schizophrenia and mood disorder. With some people I met at the shrines I did think would be supported

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better through psychotherapy. Eshan was one of them. His words formed long sequences, flowing on for sometimes a quarter of an hour without even a sound from my side. I would usually have to negotiate a halt; the longest interview I conducted was with him: a hundred minutes, which was both exhilarating and exhausting for me as a researcher. He seemed to have a map in his head about what was happening to him, why, how and when, and he had an analogy for everything. He was eager to educate me on what he knew, which was a mix of folk knowledge and religious strictures from both Islam and Hinduism.

Eshan’s narrative

Eshan was living with his wife and their eight month old daughter in a dark studio apartment overrun by rats. He was at that time unemployed, and the family was being supported by his mother-in-law, who was visiting at that time. He had grown up in Mumbai, Maharashtra, and had completed 12th standard education in a college there. Eshan was the middle child with an older sister and a younger sister. He had a younger brother who had died due to jaundice, and it had been several years since his father had passed away due to a heart attack. He was very attached to his mother, however they seemed to be estranged at this time, since she did not share his views about his afflictions. His relations with his marital family also seemed to be strained. According to his own admission, his mother-in-law berated him for not being able to support his family financially, and he and his wife fought all the time. Eshan explained these strained relations with his family members, natal and marital, as a result of the supernatural affliction that had gotten attached to him. He blamed that it was this “tantra-vidya” or occult science that had brought about the death of his father and his brother, but said that he had kept this knowledge from the rest of the family.

You can be attacked by [tantra-vidya]. Think of [tantra-vidya] this way… If something is put on our name, then wherever you wander in the world [/duniya], any where in the world, it will follow you and return for your life [/jaan]. This is the attack [/hamla] of [tantra-vidya], which we call in your Marathi [bhutkarni-vidya]. […] There are people who read [ilm] to call the [ruh] of dead people. There are the small souls [/ruh] that are wondering here and there in the sky [/aakash] that a [tantric] can summon on the basis of their [/vidya] and make them dance to their tune. Then they can make them wreck enmity [/dushman] or havoc [/takleef] in exchange for money. They make them into slaves that can destroy [/barbaad] somebody, kill somebody, break bonds [/rishte] between people, trouble [/tangh] somebody. […] Father’s death was due to a heart attack, but they bring this about in the name of illness [/bimaari].

Your brother’s death too?

Brother had jaundice. He was fair [/gora] and the yellow showed more on his [body]. Then it bore down on his [brain] resulting in his [death].

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Did he have any children?

No, he was unmarried when he [expired]. Then after one month, it was my [number].

He has been looking to be cured of this black magic attack for a long time, and had visited many shrines. As far back as 2000, he used to go to the Musa Quadri Dargah in Chalisgaon. Chalisgaon also has a small chilla (subsidiary shrine) of Mira Datar Dargah, which then he started visiting as well. He recounts that he was bothered [/uljhan] by the pain in his body [/badan], for it felt as if electric currents of 440 volts were coursing through him. He claimed that he could speak in tongues and have revelations [/bayaan]. There was nobody in the village who could translate the words, although everyone agreed it was either Tamil or Arabic. However, he was so frightened by the experience of revelation that his body [/jism] would quake constantly and he visited different shrines to find some relief. He has been to Sailani Baba Dargah68 in Pipalgaon as well as to a subsidiary shrine of Mira Datar in Bombay before coming to the main shrine in Unava69.

I stayed at the Bombay [chilla] for 3-4 months. There my [lines] were in Arabic, Hindi, Urdu. People who heard me were bemused [/pareshaan]. It was as if 1000 [volts] of electricity was running through my [body]. No one dared to come in front of me. I would go for a few hours to the temple [/mandir]. Then to the dargah. During Mira Datar’s mother’s urs time, I happened to come here. From then I have been here, as the devil [/shaitan] has caught me and won’t let me go. Here too I had a lot of problems [/takleef]. I spoke Urdu, Arabic, and Persian [lines].

In fact, Eshan used words from Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic in his interviews. Nonetheless the “lines” he utters in his hazri are out of his control and out of his comprehension. After coming to Unava he met his present-day wife, and they were married in 2014, and one year later had a child together.

68 Roy Burman describes the dargah of Hazi Abdul Rehman, popularly known as Sailani Baba who died in 1907 AD, as “a big shrine typically Islamic in style. […] It is not a single mazar that attracts the people to this people. It is in reality a sacred complex where the admixture of indigenous tribal deities, the Hindu deities and Sufism has coalesced. A little distant from the dargah of Sailani Baba there are a number of other mazars, dargahs, and temples. Devotees visiting the shrine of Sailani visit all the other shrines – at least the Hindus do” (2002: 106). His description of this shrine says that “mentally deranged” people come to this shrine for healing too. 69 Eshan also mentioned the name of famous Sufi shrines of the Chisti silsila, the dargah of Fariduddin Masud Ganjshakar (popularly known as Baba Farida) in Pakpattan, Pakistan, the dargah of Moinuddin Chisti (popularly known as Garib Nawaz) in Ajmer, and the dargah of Fakhruddin Chisti (popularly known as Farid Baba) in Sarwar. These are shrines whose Sufi lineage has been recorded since the 12th century. These are different in style from the thousands of dargahs found all over India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, since the former have the sanction of Sufi mysticism that originated in what is now called the Middle East during the heyday of Sufism (10th century to 15th century), which means they are also aligned to a more canonical form of religion. The latter are local shrines, which despite their popularity and expanding size, only borrow upon the canon, but are really folk versions of religiousity after having amalgamated without distinction Hindu, Muslim, Dalit and tribal influences. Moinuddin Chisti’s dargah is a major pilgrimage spot for any one performing ziyarat at any other dargah in India. However it was not clear if Eshan has visited them himself (visiting a dargah in Pakistan would very difficult for an Indian citizen). 123

Eshan to me: It’s been two years since the [marriage]. Then their next [target] will [change]. If [marriage] is done, then they will not allow the two to live together. Their [/tantravidya] has changed target but their work is ongoing. That should not be a success [/kamyaab]. If he now wants a family, have a child, then they will target the small kids. So the child cannot come. Why? Because the [/vali] lives there, [Sarkar] lives there, they are trying their best to bring happiness, give everything. So the enemy [/dushman] cannot stand this thing. But [Sarkar] is defeating them [/nakamyaab]. Eight months back we had a beautiful girl, this is from god [/Ishwar], this is from [Allah]. But they still try to see that his money gets destroyed, so that no money comes to the house, that in the house there is always conflict [/jhagada]. Break up what the [vali] has granted them, break up their bond [/rishtaa], they are separated and dispersed, that is their [target] next. They are not ready to leave their [target]. They will change it, but not leave it. This can happen to anybody, anybody at all. If a person [/insaan] does not [believe] it at first, but when it happens with the self, then they [believe]. Some do it before, some do it later, everybody comes for their own reasons [/vajaah].

Not being financially independent was making a tense marital relationship more strained, and Eshan attributed the failing of his last business venture to the machinations of black magic (tantavidya). However, Eshan did not feel let down by the powers of the saint in the delay of his treatment. He claimed that it was a problem of being overburdened with case:

Eshan to me: Try to understand. If a [doctor] has 2-3 [cases] then he can give all his [time] to them. But if he has 20 cases, it will take more time. 200 cases, two million [/bees lakh]? Any [roohani] power has it’s own [capacity]. Let it be any power in the world. Whatever god-granted power [/takat] they have been granted, there is a [capacity] limit.

Hmm.

Try to understand. If your body needs four [operations] or ten operations, can ten be done in ten minutes? Not possible is it. After one operation there will be a [break], then the preparation for the second according to your capacity [/kshamta]. For ten operations, it will proceed one by one. That is why it takes time.

Eshan’s defence for the shrine is paralleled in his enthusiasm for the psychiatric treatment he receives at the Dava-Dua clinic. He has been a regular visitor to the clinic for three years on being diagnosed with schizophrenia. He would take the medicines offered there with gratitude, both to the doctor and to the saint. He does not see the clinic as outside the circle of influence that the dargah has over human affairs:

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Eshan to me: I used to live in the dargah, and Chandrakant used to run the outdoor clinic. So he would come to explain, “Look brother, the [government] is doing this-this work, and it’s [free of charge]. We will do the [treatment], and you will get [medicines]”. He would speak to people and they would understand. And that is how I met him. Then I went to their [branch] and became part of the [group]. It was very profitable [/fayda] for me. My [medicine] has been ongoing for 3-4 years. Because of the medicines I was able to stand on my feet [naturally]. I want to tell them [thanks] many-many times for that. This [service] is nowhere else in India, only here in Gujarat. I am very grateful [/shukarguzaar], that this amazing work is being done free of cost. I hope that this is available in every [darbar], every temple [/mandir] where there are sick [/bimaar] people, who needs medicines [/dava]. [Dua] is free from the beginning, be it a church, mandir, gurudwara, dargah! But dava is not free. See here there is the favour of god [/ishwar], the favour of Datar Bapu. They have changed the heart [/dil] of the [government], and now the government is agreeing to work in the [service] of the poor.

So you approve of their work?

Of course. Some people give a bad name [/badnaam] to medicines, that medicines only make you sleep, or that all the medicines are sleeping pills. Then I tell them that all that medicines are not sleeping pills. I tell them that, “see, if you have to undergo an [operation] on your [body], then you cannot be conscious [/hosh mein], because you will not be able to bear it. That is why there are medicines, so your brain [/dimag] can sleep with the support of it, and the treatment can progress further. That is why it is valid to sleep with their medicines”. I do a lot of [publicity] for them.

This attribution of a free government-supported service to the powers of the shrine is in fact quite common amongst sawwalis who also avail of the services of the Dava-Dua clinic. It also attests to how the common Indian feels let down by the Indian State that ‘free of charge’ medicines are digested as a boon granted by supernatural powers. Furthermore in comparison to the supernatural realm of the saints and gods, Eshan says that the medicines are natural solutions to human problems. He relegates medicines to the dimension of nature (kudrat) that can have positive effects on the body, which is also belonging to the same dimension, “god [/Allah] made the human [/insaan], in the body [/jism] made a head, in the head made the brain [/dimag], in the brain there the [ideas] on the basis on which the human made such progress. You call that all by your own science. That is your name. You do not give a thought as to what is the name for that on the part of god [/Allah]. But god has given your brain only so much [/capacity], and only so much you can work it”. His method of separating science from god was quite skilfully done. However, on being pointed out that he used the word “sarkar” in both senses: for the Saint and for the State, Eshan’s voice started getting constricted; such an interpretative gesture brought in a

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moment of doubt and even suspicion. This was always a moment in the interview process when the interviewee returned the gaze of the researcher very directly. This can be seen in Eshan’s case:

Eshan to me: When did you last visit Garib Nawaz? And how long did you stay there?

It has been several years since I last went there. I think it was only for a day or two. Why is it that you ask?

I am forced to think that since you are so involved in the [life] of [science], how much do you believe in this, and how much do you believe in that?

I think that is an open question for me. My research is also suspended between the two. What is the role of science? What about faith? I am also trying to understand. Perhaps that is why I do not have definite answers for you.

I cannot provide you any suggestion on that. And it is not the patient who can give suggestions to the doctor. But I cannot tell you if it is good or bad to waste your time on this question. You are stuck on this question, and giving your time [/waqt] and your life to it. I think it is a mistake to spend so much time on one question. Because [life] has so much to teach, that from your mother’s womb to the grave there is so much [ilm] to obtain [/haasil]. I think your question is without basis [/bebuniyaad]. You are in [line] to become a [doctor] of the brain [/dimag], so [stop] the [confusion], and apply your [mind power] where it is needed, where it can do good [/bhalaa] for everybody. Your own too! I just found your question {about sarkar and sarkar} very strange, so I am telling you.

While this extract may seem particularly vituperative, it is quite normal to face this ‘turn’ in the course of research at the dargah, sometimes sooner than later. Despite his censure, Eshan responded at another time to the question of what his expectations were from the state and from the saint.

Eshan to me: What does every person want? Bread [/roti], cloth [/kapda], house [/makan], that these needs be met. A two year old child needs a full stomach of milk, a ten year old needs bread. Each according to their hunger. Everyone wants their needs met. But then I read that a person does not stay within their needs, but has many desires [/khwaish]. How much ever you want, desire cannot be fulfilled.

Because no matter how much one gets, desire [khwaish] does not die. It is always incomplete [/adhuri]. So the problem is desire. The pure tell me that the wise are those who do not spend

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their time [/waqt] in fulfilling desire. This is where people go astray. They spend their lives in chasing-chasing money. The body can get returned to ash, to the earth, but desire cannot get over. I hear sermons by saint [/santh], by Muslims, and to some excellent speakers on the Aastha channel on TV. I listen to such things. I am interested in mysterious [/rahasmai] things, in esoteric knowledge [/ilm], in things that god has hidden mysteries. That is what I am interested in. Albeit my [capacity] is only so much. If I can reach there, if god [/Allah] is pleased with me, then it will happen. The train [/gaadi] is waiting for me at the [station] but I am find it difficult to reach the station. The train will get me to the [target] at the speed of 300, but to get there to the station is taking me so many years. That’s the thing /cheez].

Narrative features

Eshan’s narrative speaks of the problem of evil eye through the summoning of the powers of occult sciences (tantra vidya). An interesting variable in Eshan’s narrative is the intermingling of words with Arabic (for instance, “ilm”) and Sanskritic (for instance “vidya”) origin, showing his access to the linguistic traditions of two religions: Islam and Hinduism. Like in the earlier narrative of Samira, here too Eshan’s speech draws a lot of its conviction from religious discourse. Eshan had recently converted to Islam, and perhaps his speech consisted of ideas that he had repeated to himself, and was therefore more conscious of it. The dargah may appear to be a religious site, but most of the narratives produced in this are not very religious. Sawwalis participated in religious rituals willingly enough, however, the religiousity gets digested into something that looks very much like mundane matter-of-fact explanations of the phenomena surrounding them: ghosts here, black magic there was the everyday life of the shrine.

Eshan’s narrative of family discord is put down to the influence of evil practices of the occult sciences. This is the other side of the shuffling symptom of hazri between members of a family unit (which Eshan’s family does not demonstrate): conflict in the family is attributed to an external power, and beyond the ‘capacity’ of the members of the family. When a conflict in the family is the problem, the solution offered by the system of faith healing here is for the family unit to stay together and work through the episode of affliction. A break in the unit would be seen as a defeat of the good by the evil.

A variance between the circumstances of Aalia and Samira on one hand, and Eshan and his family on the other was that Eshan did not live inside the dargah, but one street away in a rented house. His house overlooked the street between the dargah and the market. This location is significant, since it means that the interactions with the village and its people increases slightly but significantly. In addition, living in rented houses turns out to be less expensive, with added advantages of more space, privacy and amenities. Those who live within the dargah sometimes seem to be unconcerned with life outside of its walls, just a 100-200 meters away. Eshan, by virtue of being situated even a small distance outside the dargah, would bring into his speech something of the world outside. He had plans to produce and sell

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street food in the streets outside the dargah. His aspirations bespeaks of a connection with the dargah with an imagination of its outside. Nonetheless, the world outside the dargah is not kind. Eshan does not hope for any succour to come from outside the shrine. The question on his expectations from the government is met with a fierce rejection, rather than the vague responses characteristic of Aalia’s narrative. The concomitant hope and hopelessness of his narrative is a feature in the speech of Muslim and people with lower caste ascriptions in contemporary India.

Narrative 4

Arohi was an extrovert who was looking for company. In fact, that was how we got to speak to each other. The clinical staff had brought me to meet somebody else, a patient of theirs. That is how I entered the Jain Dharamshala for the first time. The Jain Dharamshala was on main street of Unava (near what some people call Azad Chowk) and it has high walls and a formidable looking gate. I was introduced to an old woman whose son was on treatment at the clinic, but she declined to be part of my project. While I was taking my leave, Arohi walked up to me and invited me to her house two doors down. The dharamshala consisted of a row of single-room houses with a shaded veranda running down the length of it at the front. Arohi invited me into her room, and was happy to chat. We met several times after that, either at the shrine or I would drop in at her house, and always find her welcoming. She was a pleasant and easy conversationalist, especially since I was alone myself with nothing to do in the hours when I did not have my researcher hat on.

Like everyone at the Dharamshala, Arohi was in Unava to seek healing from the shrine for her hazri. She was here with her husband and ten year old son, and they seemed to have settled in well in Unava. She was not taking any medical treatment, and I felt that she would not be a research participant in my study in the final instance. However then her health worsened, and she told me that she was going away to the next village to be admitted into a hospital for surgery. A doctor had diagnosed the pain she experienced in her abdomen as caused by gall bladder stones. After a week, she was back in her house in the dharamshala, and was prescribed strict bed rest to help heal the stitches as well as a careful diet. I wondered what would happen to her relation to the saint, this shrine and the method of healing propagated here now that some of her symptoms were explained and treated through medicine. Would something change in the structure of her faith and devotion? In the months that followed I visited her house in the afternoons when she was alone while her husband and son were away. This narrative is constructed through three interviews, two of which took place after the operation.

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Arohi’s narrative

Arohi was from a village in Rajasthan. She had come to Unava one year earlier with her husband and their twelve year old son. Her husband worked at a stall inside the dargah to sell flowers and other offerings to pilgrims. Her son used to go to school before they came to Gujarat, but seemed to be left off the hook in Unava. The family was renting a one-room house in the Jain Dharamshala. They were themselves Jains, of the Sisodia70 caste. Arohi is in her late twenties, and a housewife. She keeps herself busy with devotional activities in Unava.

Before coming to Unava, Arohi and her husband had gone to the dargahs of Hussain Tekri71 in Jaora, Madhya Pradesh almost fifteen years back. Around the time of her wedding, Arohi started experiencing discomfort in her body. She used to have debilitating headaches and had no desire to do anything. She consulted with her parents who could not understand the nature of her problem either, although her mother also has had untreated somatic complaints over long periods of time, or as Arohi says, they both have the “[problem] of the body [/shareer]”. It was her husband who took her first to Jaora, and her problem was understood to be caused by “Bala”.

I had my [bala] from before. But there in Jaora, we found out. Before I did not know what is [hazri] or anything. From the Baba of Hussain Tekri, we found out all this. Since then my [case] has been going on. Then we came from there to here. After coming here, it has been a year.

And how long were you in Jaora?

I cannot be sure, but I think perhaps it had been 4-5 years that we lived there. Then one year here with Datar Bapu. We go back home and then return. Like this coming-going, the [case] has been going. Everything needs to be seen to, so that everything goes well. Perhaps it has been 15 years since the beginning.

Arohi’s hazri would show itself in somersaults, this was how her hazri presented itself in Jaora. She is grateful to Hussain Tekri to bring the problem of her bala out through hazri, because as she reasons it is

70 The Sisodia caste of Rajasthan for the most part claims an origin from Rajput clan, which ascribes to a Kshatriya caste status, i.e. an upper caste status. Arohi is however claiming to be a Jain Sisodia, which would still be “savarna” or a caste that distinguishes itself from being of lower caste, i.e. Scheduled Caste or Dalit. 71 Hussain Tekri dargah is located in Jaora in MP which is close to its border with Maharashtra. Its popularity rivals and even surpasses that of Mira Datar Dargah. In fact, within Mira Datar Dargah there is the chilla (subsidiary shrine) of Hussain Aka (Lord Hussain) from the Jaora dargah. There has been considerable scholarship around Hussain Tekri as well (see: Bellamy, 2011). Michel Boivin writes “Hussain Tekri consists of six shrines: Ali, Hussain, Abbas, Sakina, Zaynab, and Fatima. It is remarkable that half of the shrines are devoted to women, who are the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and major characters in Shia mythology. The pilgrimage site was founded by the Khojas, an Indian Shia community originated from Gujarat but influential in Mumbai. Bellamy argues that the success of this particular site lies in the ambiguous character of the dargahs, which is not Islamic nor Islamized, even if it has historical links with the institutions and doctrines of Islam” (Boivin, 2016: 60). 129

better that they know of the bala that is shadowing their lives. The reason for the shift from Jaora to Unava seemed to have practical rather than spiritual; it seems that Unava provides better living facilities than Jaora. Arohi’s gratitude towards the dargah and the saints for bringing the problem out of the body is not too different from how she talks about the surgical removal of the stones in her gall bladder. She had felt abdominal pain for quite some time, but even medical check-ups had not yet thrown up the nature of the problem.

This was a thing of 6 years back. There was a pain [/dard] in my bones [/fasli]. However, when we did the [sonography], we did from the back. We did not know to do it from the front.

So you had been to a doctor?

I had been. For the [problem] of (being with) child. They had done an [inspection] and that was it.

How old is this complaint?

[Doctor] is saying that it is years old. [Doctor] is saying it is very old, 15, 20 years. That this stone does not grow suddenly in 2-4 months. The stone is first small. So it’s small and as we eat food, it goes there and it starts becoming bigger. Then from one it becomes two.

However during this time, a sharp pain had prompted her to go to a doctor in a village close to Unava, who had recommended an operation to remove the five stones they could detect in her gall bladder. Rather than opting for the free or low fee medical treatment offered by the Gujarat government, Arohi opted for a private hospital in Siddhpur, where she felt she got more medical attention from the doctor and the nurses. She was happy to describe her entire experience, even the operation which was conducted after the administration of a local anaesthetic, and consequently Arohi was awake and conscious for a great deal of it. She sounded happy to be rid of the stones inside her;

Arohi to me: It is good that I did the [operation]. Otherwise I could have a lot of [problem] later on. If I haven’t done it that it. Did the operation, that is good only. I went to the [doctor], I did the [sonography], and the doctor said so and I straight away got the operation done. I said, “Doctor- saheb, remove it. Why should I be in pain later on? Like that only I am in pain [/dard]. What is the profit [/fayda] of keeping it inside? Just take it out”. I went by myself. Husband came later. The Sisters [/nurses] asked me if there was no one with me. They took very good care of me.

Since the operation, she was no longer feeling any abdominal pain, but her recovery since the operation was slow, and she was concerned that due to bedrest, she was putting on weight. Although the relations between the husband and wife were cordial, it did not seem intimate. Arohi was left to her own devices during this period of convalescence. 130

At this point in our conversations after the operation, I could hear an overlap between the two experiences: the appearance of hazri at the dargah and the abdominal pain diagnosed by the doctor. I wondered if she was aware of it and could see a connection. However this is tricky terrain, because to question the efficacy of the shrine is a quick way to turn a research participant suspicious. I asked her how she reconciled the lifting of her pain through medical intervention with the treatment being performed at the shrine:

It is the matter [/chakkar] of [Bala], isn’t it? Now in my house everything is going well thanks to the blessing [/dua] of god [/Bhagwan]. The [problem] is now only because of my body [/shareer]. So we can’t leave Datar Bapu as yet.

Is there any relation between your [Bala] and your illness [/bimaari]?

No. Bala and illness [/bimaari] are different [/alag], the relation is different. It’s not the same thing. Which is why Datar Bapu sent me for the [operation]. I had a [basharat]. I saw it in my dream [/sapna], so I went for it. You see, first my [hazri] used to be in my abdomen, but not any longer.

What do you mean it was in your abdomen?

I used to somersault, no? I had the habit [/aadat] of somersaulting, but now I don’t do that for the moment. Now my [Bala] is not even making much noise. When my strength comes back, it will start again. I told Datar Bapu that I have had an operation, and I have no strength [for hazri] right now.

Could it be that the doctor removed your [bala] along with the stones?

No. That was not the [bala]. I can see that.

Oh! What do you see?

If Baba does not kill it, it will not die. Because I was in difficulty [/takleef], I had to do the [operation]. But my [case] is still ongoing here.

Arohi manages to keep the two experiences separate, claiming the primacy of the patronage of the saint over other matters of her life. She credits her seeking medical opinion to a dream supplied by Datar Bapu. She has acquired a great deal of solace by giving her devotion to Mira Datar, and any decisions that she made would also be attributed to the tutelage of the saint. There is no conflict between these two explanatory systems. In fact, Arohi is also a devotee of other explanatory systems apart from the medical model and the dargah model.

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There is a Jain temple close to the Dharamshala that Arohi goes to pray at. In addition, she is also a member of the Brahma Kumari movement. The Brahma Kumari sect is a new religious movement for women that has spread all over the world in the last 50 years.72 Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, the movement’s world headquarters are in Mount Abu (2 hours away from Unava) and it also has a branch in Mehsana (half an hour away). Arohi acquires pamphlets every week that have a written message that a Brahma Kumari must read, understand and chant. Arohi was very excited to share her beliefs about Om Baba (one of the many names by which the founder of the movement is known).

We go to Om Shanti. They have very good knowledge [/gyaan]. You should also listen. These are the pamphlets from Om Shanti. In these, Baba talks. The main centre is here in India. When the [husband-wife] turn 50 years of age, he [/Baba] says what should be done, how life should be lived. Everything is told by Baba Om Shanti. Like how to explain about marriage to a daughter, how a daughter should live after marriage. But now days all these people do anything with anybody, get married to anybody, or this or that with anybody. [Atma]! The soul [/atma] does not do as it pleases. It must be stopped, talk to it, question it. This is what Baba says, that no matter how big a Baba you become, there is still a lot to be learnt.

Where did you get this pamphlet?

From the [manager] of the Pratha Mahasabha. It’s a very big [program]. They worship Narayan. They say Om Brahma is Narayan. We read this all there, hear about it, then ask questions, they give answers, such is the [program]. We get good knowledge [/gyaan] like this there.

The Brahma Kumari order also favours ritual purity and celibacy. This is practised by Arohi too, who lives with her husband in the way of a platonic marriage, caring but detached.

Married women come there too. Try to understand… after 10 years of marriage, you have a child already, everything is done, then what do you want from the world [/duniya]? Everything has been given to you by god [/bhagwan]. Now who is your god [/bhagwan]? You don’t know that! Now who you come to for help, even if it is a stone [/pathar], it becomes something. Now, see there is Datar Bapu here. So many [sawwali] come here. How many-many people come here. People with

72 “The Brahma Kumari sect in its original manifestation of Om Mandli was established in mid-1937 in Hyderabad (Sindh) by Lala Lekhraj Kriplani, a rich jeweller by profession. In establishing the monastic order primarily for females, Lekhraj clearly drew upon the highly developed ascetic tradition of Jainism which flourished across the border in Rajasthan where Jainism had special monasteries for its female followers. Ideologically located within Hinduism, the sect however remained highly eclectic both in its transplant of a heterodox monastic order and in the enunciation of Hindu doctrines. […] Purification therefore was the basic tenet of the sect. Central to the concept of purity was 'brahmacharya' (celibacy), which in fact emerged as the core doctrine of the sect and was the strongest and most inclusive value of the Brahma Kumaris” (Chowdhry, 1996: 2307). 132

[hazri] come here. So many kinds of people come here. They come to reduce their sadness [/gam]. They have one soul [/atma]. As is their soul [/atma], such is their [yog]73.

What is apparent from Arohi’s narrative is how she tries find a harmony in her life by borrowing from various syncretic traditions. She is an upper caste Hindu woman from Rajasthan seeking support from a Muslim shrine in Gujarat. There is no internal contradiction is her position. This is how she summarizes it:

So Mira Datar is one Baba, he [Om Shanti] is also a Baba. Somebody is Hindu, somebody is Musalman [/Muslim]. Those who are Hindus use the [photo] while Muslims do not concentrate on a photo. Because Musalman [/Muslims] do not believe in that. They do things different. Those who are the children of Datar Bapu, they can live together. They are always meeting each other. Not all Musalman [/Muslims] can do that. But those who agree, they will agree, and do this work. Everyone cannot do this work. Everybody is different. Otherwise, bigger than god [/bhagwan] is Siddh Baba who gives us knowledge [/gyaan]. If you don’t have knowledge, then you don’t have anything.

Narrative features

If a narrative of affliction can be constructed without disturbance or difficulty that would be seen in Arohi’s narrative. This set of interviews were conducted during a period of great physical pain for her – a twelve year old medical condition became urgent – and yet her speech was calm, unhurried, and philosophical. She is aware of her surroundings, and likes to meet new people. Like Eshan, she lives outside the premises of the dargah. She practices the somewhat ascetic74 way of life preached by the Brahma Kumari order, side by side with her devotion to the dargah. She is not at war with an invisible enemy, and has the space in her belief system to accommodate divergent views. All the accounts that valorize syncretism can be elucidated in Arohi’s narrative. The starkness or hopelessness that is the hallmark of the previous three narratives is not a feature of this narrative. It does gesture to how upper caste Hindu75

73 Yog is the Sanskitic root word for yoga. Yog is the branch of Hindu philosophy that talks about the method of liberation of the atma through the harmonizing of the principles of Prakriti (Nature) and Purusha (Human). 74 There are several ascetic and renunciatory traditions in India practised by both men and women, and thus there is relatively little stigma attached to asceticism in India. A study conducted by Samta Pandya (2017) that looked at women ascetic in five Hindu spiritual organisations (Brahmakumaris, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Ramakrishna Sarada Math, Upasani Ashram Sakori, Chinmaya Mission, and Amritanandamayi Mission) showed that while for women, asceticism is considered more radical than in men, the women surveyed showed consistently high scores in adjustability and life-satisfaction. The large scale survey analysed the responses of 3699 women ascetics and found that 81.96% of the Hindu women renunciants said that they had joined the order as a matter of personal choice and commitment to the faith/order/teacher; 88.65% said that they would like to continue and be more involved in the order, and 91.81% said that they had no fears, as all happens due to the will of the higher power. The author concludes by writing that, “overall Hindu women renunciants belonging to various Hindu orders scored well on parameters of religiosity and spirituality, were able to deploy those for negotiating lives in the order as finding meanings therein” (Pandya, 2017: 12). This is also visible in the case of Arohi. 75 Pandya’s 2017 survey noted that out of 3699 respondents (the majority of whom showed both devotion to their order as well as high life-satisfaction), “approximately 66.23% belonged to the upper caste, 1.92% were from the 133

subjects speak of life with more hope and meaning, their affect and speech is less constrained, and their relations to the outside world are less guarded and less paranoid. They are able to access multiple treatments without an experience of internal collapse, as the Muslim subjects in the previous three narratives depicted. The result is a healthier and more harmonious narrative.

Narrative 5

Sejal was introduced to me by a staff-member at the clinic. Her son, Aditya, was being treated with psychotropic medication for acute schizophrenia, but this was done surreptitiously by his parents by grinding and mixing the pills in his food or drink. Sejal was a sawwali at the dargah, bearing hazri on behalf of her son, while her husband was forced to endure living in this Gujarati village. He made no bones about his disdain for this life and wanted to return to Bombay (Maharashtra), where they used to have a house and a business. He would say that if their son did not reform his ways, he could imagine leaving him here and making his way back to the city. It was Sejal who would vehemently argue with him on all these points. She would insist that they would not abandon their son while he was so afflicted, they would not leave till the saint ordained it, and when that happened they would all leave together. I spoke to both of them, sometimes together, sometimes apart. I only once managed to meet their son in his decrepit accommodation, and the meeting was unproductive. Sejal’s son was so disruptive, and even violent sometimes, that he was housed separately in a run-down dharamshala that looked close to collapse. Sejal and her husband lived in a housing complex at the start of the main street of Unava, right next to the Shiv temple. The house, like most of the rented accommodation, had only the barest of amenities. However, unlike many places offered on rent to sawwalis, it had two rooms, a kitchen and an indoor bathroom. The family dynamic between the three of them was complicated, but Sejal was an interesting woman in her own right. She seemed like a free spirit, with lots of ideas and a firm devotion in the higher powers. She has danced in an interview to show me her moves, and once she accompanied me to the Rastimaa Dargah, which she frequented often. In the interviews, she would speak easily, moving from topic to topic, sometimes providing a different account from what she had said in an earlier interview, and many times it was not obvious what she was referring to. As a consequence it was not simple to write her narrative, and I do not believe her story finds narrative closure.

Sejal’s narrative

Sejal hailed from a village in Maharashtra. Her family are settled in Mumbai. She was familiar with dargahs, having been taken to dargahs (amongst other religious sites) by her mother who was also a

scheduled castes, 1.70% belonged to the scheduled tribes and 21.21% belonged to the other backward classes” (Pandya, 2017: 5). 134

frequent visitor of shrines. It would seem that she comes from a Hindu family who are at ease visiting dargahs, a common trend seen in western India.

Sejal to me: When we were small-small, mother [/maa] used to take us. In fact, [Mummy], my [mummy] was small when she would go to dargahs. Then after her wedding, we happened, and we all went. Then our children went, then theirs. We did not know Mira Datar then. We went there in Bombay. When we used to play as children, we’d say, “Come on, let’s play hazri-hazri”. My uncle’s son too, we would play it together after returning home [/from the dargah].

Watching her mother visit dargahs and perhaps experience hazri made Sejal as a child play-act at experiencing hazri too. For many people, hazri is experienced as a pleasant release. Sejal was conversant with the idea of hazri, but her experience was limited to the dargahs in Mumbai.

After her marriage to another resident of Mumbai, Sejal was doing well for herself financially; she had a business of her own, employed people to work in her business, had a house and a car.

Sejal to me: We had everything, even a car. I used to run a business [/kaarkhana]. I had 10-12 employees [/naukar], but I never treated them like servants [/naukar], I treated them like my own. We worked well, and they would tell me that “employers [/seth] should be like you”. I would not eat of what was theirs, it was my habit [/aadat] to give them food. Here, drink some tea.

Actually I don’t…

If one eats from the hand of the poor, they feel heartened. That is what I feel. Whatever they serve, just drink it, because it will make them feel good. So just drink the tea, don’t make me sad. Even if you don’t like tea, drink it to make somebody else happy.

Ok, thank you.

Sejal was bothered by how her fortune changed from being self-sufficient to stricken. This she puts at the door of the malevolence of a magician who instead of helping her instead works against her, “I gave a magician one hundred thousand rupees [/lakh rupai]. Like we keep money with god, like that. But then he did me dirty [/ganda]. He did something with his hand, and outside I saw a man who was doing number two [defecating], dirty you know, absolutely dirty. I could not even look at his face, but I caught sight of him. Then my earnings stopped. He did something dirty [/ganda].” It is not clear why she went to a magician in the first place, and why a magician turned against her. However misfortune struck her and her family then.

Sejal and her husband had four children, and their youngest son, Aditya was experiencing problems.

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First time it was in Bombay; Nair hospital, then J.J. Hospital, some three-four hospitals we took him to. Admitted him to the hospitals, administered hundreds of injections. Then we took him there.

Where?

Ahmedabad hospital. We kept him there in Ahmedabad. Then I saw a man, very tall, wearing dirty white clothes. He came to kill Aditya. I visualized it.

OK?

I saw him and wondered why he looks like that. I got scared. Then I saw a pig [/suwar] with horns when I was sleeping. The doctor said, “We have no confidence [/bharosa] in him”. That’s what he said, yes, that is what he had said. Aditya used to pull at people before, “Amitabh Bachhan has come”, he would say stuff like this a lot. That time he was very interested in movies, when he was younger. Even in school he would hang on to people, fall at their feet [/pav padna]. I would ask him why he does that. He used to do that, even now sometimes he does that. Then he got out, got discharged from the hospital, and told me, “Don’t take me back there”.

Amidst the visions and dreams that Sejal reports (throughout her story), it is apparent that Aditya was identified in his teenage years as someone requiring medical help by his parents, and first taken to hospitals before being brought to the Ahmedabad Mental Hospital. Both Sejal and Aditya seemed to have found their experience of the mental hospital frightening or unpleasant. It would seem that after they felt unsupported by psychiatric treatment did they turn towards faith healing.

So tell me how did you come here [to Unava]? Did someone tell you about it?

No. I had a dream that told me to come here, so I came here. For my boy [/ladka]. I had come alone, since it [/voh] told me that your work will get done soon. So I thought that I will return in 8- 10 days. But it has been so much time!

How long has it been? Four years?

No, no, more than that.

Six years?

Six-eight years.

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At other times, Sejal says that she came for the first time along with her son to Mira Datar Dargah three- four years prior to the time of our interviews. She says the first time she reached the dargah during the sandall event at the annual festival (urs)76. She had made the journey on foot from Ahmedabad to Unava. Here initially Aditya was not treated well, and was even beaten up. It could be because while Sejal comes to the shrine, she does not seek intercession with the mujawars. Her visions direct her away from seeking mediation. Nonetheless the patronage of a mujawar eases the passage of a new devotee at the dargah.

Sejal to me: One day, someone took a stick to my boy. A woman informed me about it in Gujarati. I just walked into the dargah crying, “How would you feel if it was your son?” I had gone in with a fight. I said that, “If it was your boy who was beaten, would you feel good? Dadima, Rastimaa, you are big. It is your kingdom [/raj]”. That is not the way to speak, but I did. Then from inside I heard a voice saying, “Go! Go! Your beloved son [/laal] will be fine”. And I saw my son clearly, flying high. Here everyone goes to breathe in the [loban], but when I went, Baba told me, “Don’t do it. Your son will get everything directly”. I wondered how that would happen, but I saw it in my vision [/sapna] that my boy was enveloped in the smoke of the loban. So I never took him for loban, but he now takes it himself.

It is very common for devotees to have angry conversations, often full of invective, with saints and deities. However rather than rejection, it demonstrates an affection or an attachment. This is evident when Sejal says, “I fight a lot, no lies. I fight with Bholenath too, “You are Bholenath, the king of ghosts [/bhoot]. So do something”. I got Bholenath a drum [/damru] from Bombay. I told him to beat it and make the ghosts flee”. Bholenath is another name for Shiva, Hindu god of death and destruction. There is a Shiv-temple in the building complex that Sejal lived in with her husband at this time. Sejal goes to both dargah and temple whenever she feels like it. She keeps no distance from any of her idols. Sejal used to be a resident of the ‘Gandakhana’ at first, however she was asked to vacate her quarters and advised to her to her “vatan” or nation/homeland. This is again evidence that Sejal was not a good prospect for the economic model of the shrine. Not ready to leave Unava, she moves next to the Shiv-temple. Her compromise with being asked to return to her “vatan” is to move back to the shrine of her religious community, rather than Maharashtra where she was born and raised.

Sejal’s husband joined them when Aditya started becoming more violent, even striking out at his mother. It was then that they heeded the advice of the Dava-Dua clinic and took their son for a psychiatric evaluation (again). Aditya was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia at the Dava-Dua clinic, and medications were provided free of charge. She says, “Chandrakant is very good [/achha], honestly. I

76 The Urs or festival that is performed in the honour of the saint of a dargah once a year (usually commemorating their earthly demise) in which the sandall is performed, i.e. sandalwood paste is heaped on the tomb of the saint, which devotees scoop up to apply on their own bodies. During the pilgrimage during the urs, devotees will sometimes make the journey on foot to exercise their devotion. 137

agree with him, do medicines [/dava] also, do prayers also [/dua], do both. Because Baba makes evil [/shaitan] sleep by the use of dava. Isn’t that so? So the brain [/magaj] is quiet [/shant]. Otherwise the brain gets hot [/garam]”. However Aditya resisted taking the medicine, and his violent behaviour got out of hand. Eventually his father relocated him to a room in a rundown dharamshala where they would take him his medicines powdered down and mixed into his food or drink. This is a feature of mental health service provision all over the country, with psychiatrists advising guardians to mix pills into the food or drink of recalcitrant patients. Sejal’s husband however did not share her enthusiasm for the dargah, for her acceptance of living in a village, and not even tolerating their son’s violent behaviour. His desire to leave their son at the mercy of the shrine met with staunch resistance from Sejal.

Sejal to me: See, I am very troubled [/pareshaan]. Aditya’s father [/papa] is not doing right. I told him to go work. I don’t know what he did but he said they don’t want an old man for the job. It keeps happening like this. Now if no food is cooked, will we stay hungry? He wants to go back. It is like that he wants to go back so much that he says, lets leave him and return.

And you are refusing?

He just said it today. Says, leave him. We leave? How can that be? I said, “why go? Who leaves their own child? If I go, who will see that he is not beaten? Forget anybody else, can I do it? No, I will not leave him. My child is my life [/jaan]. Let a score of women do it, in my family it will not happen”.

Nonetheless, while Sejal sees some improvement over time in Aditya’s behaviour over the past few years, she is no longer enamoured with the village. She speaks about herself and her son being mistreated by the young men of the dargah, about how jealousy and black magic are also practised there, about how she discontinued her daily ritual of laying flowers at the shrine because she got a message from the saint not to give her money to a greedy flower-seller. While Sejal still has a firm unshakeable belief in the divine, she keeps herself busy in either devotional activities at the Rastimaa dargah, or embarks alone on pilgrimages to several other shrines all around the country, especially Ajmer Sharif, the dargah of Moinuddin Chisthi77 in Ajmer, Rajasthan, that she visits several times a year, sometimes

77 Garib Nawaz (Caretaker of the Poor) is the popular name for Moinuddin Chisti whose dargah is known as Ajmer Sharif or Khwaja Sahib. “The Khwaja Sahib, the dargāh or shrine of the Sufi Mu‘īn al-dīn Chishtī (d. 1236 C.E.) in Ajmer, India, is quite like many others in northern India: it houses a Muslim saint, though many of its visitors are not Muslims; it has come under governmental control both before and since Partition/Independence; it has a complex history that reflects the political, social, and economic climate of its history; and, finally, within its walls, the dargāh boasts both delimited and shared sacred spaces for various Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs” (Fuerst, 2011: 55). Garib Nawaz is famous all over the Indian subcontinent for being a fluid and syncretic space: “The establishment of the site itself has several versions and stories of Hindu king as the main patron who was a devotee of the Muslim saint and provided the necessary patronage for flourishing of the site. Religious tolerance is hallmark of the place: "the Khwaja Sahib seems to attract growing numbers of pilgrims of multiple faiths precisely because of the hagiography and popular conception of Mu'in al-din as broadminded. For instance, the very conception of the saint rests rather firmly 138

making the trip by foot. She sees many visions at Ajmer Sharif dargah, “In Ajmer, I felt that the [Khadim] and his son both were praying for me inside. I saw that. I would just observe everybody who were there. Just watching my days pass nicely”.

On the other hand, her son, Aditya refuses to accompany her on pilgrimages to other shrines. He has settled into the life of the dargah and does not wish to leave Unava for the present, he keeps himself clean and bathed as directed by the ideals of the shrine, and makes the daily circuit to breathe in the smoke of the loban. When he approaches his mother or father it is for demands of money. He says it is for food, but his parents suspect it may be to buy hashish (charas). Their life here is supported by family members who send money from Mumbai, or from charity from the other sawwalis. Sejal is resigned to living in Unava and looking after Aditya.

Sejal to me: My child! If I take him back, he will bother [/hairan] others. That’s not nice. Here it is tolerated. There as if it will be tolerated! They will come together to beat him. Beat him to death! That’s why we keep him here. We just need to believe [/bharosa] he will become well. He will, I believe that. Whatever happens, it is not a problem [/takleef]. Not a problem for me, or for others. My child! Would it not make anyone angry [/gussa] if they say take him away? So staying here is fine. He is not up to his antics [/harkat] here, he’s not hurting anybody.

Narrative features

Sejal’s narrative is a typical narrative of negotiating mental health services in India, failing to find adequate medical support and then seeking asylum at a site of faith healing. Her son was being treated without his full knowledge by his parents with the medication provided by the Dava-Dua clinic. They claim that before he used to display aggressive and violent behaviours, and they had to keep him secluded. Over time, he had calmed down, and learnt the ways of the dargah. He had made friends with some of the young men from some Saiyed families of Unava. I would see him spend his days hanging out at the edge of the dargah with a group of other young men, smoking, or in hazri. While he had rejected psychiatric options, he is a sawwali who wishes to continue living next to the shrine. Like Eshan, Sejal refers to medicine in terms that sound fantastic. For instance, she too says that medicines make the brain feel cool instead of hot. This is a recurring description of how psychiatric medication works, as some sort of cranial ventilation. Both Eshan and Sejal say how drugs makes one feel “fresh” rather than sleepy. Rather than a description of how it works, this is a way to represent the effect of and expectations from medicine-based treatment: temporary relief without the expectation of cure. A more permanent result rests within the faith healing system alone.

within rhetoric of tolerance" (Fuerst, 2011: 58). Muslims and non-Muslims (mainly Hindus) throng to Ajmer in large numbers with requests for the Khwaja's divine intervention for improving their lives” (Shinde, 2015: 191). 139

While Sejal’s story is representative of many other stories at the shrine, subjectively it is challenging to ‘pin’ Sejal down. Many of her decisions are made through the medium of visions and dreams. She herself is constantly on the move, following her visions from one shrine to another, shrines of different religious denominations. Her relation with her husband is fraught and uneasy, with both their desires for the present lying far apart and making it hard to imagine the future of this family; she tries to build her “vatan” through her own direct conversation with divine powers, while he is straining to return to Mumbai which he identifies as his own homeland. As a mother, she bears the full burden of caring for her youngest child who needs psychosocial support. For his sake, she lives in a village she does not care for, bearing his sorrows and misfortunes through her own tears. She calls it her hazri. At the same time as providing maternal care, she is not averse to medicating him against his will ‘for his own good’. Sejal repeats several times that will not leave her son to fend an unkind world. It would seem that in that she had found her ‘vatan’.

Narrative 6

I had a sense there was trouble brewing whenever I interviewed Brinda for my study. She was one of the many sawwalis who are very suspicious about the intentions of others, and for whome the concerns of the evil eye loom large. Brinda would claim that she makes no friends at the dargah and likes to keep to herself. Although, she had made at least one confidant in the Maharashtrian sweeper woman employed by the dargah (who was a warm and garrulous woman who was always ready for a chat), Brinda would say that her problem was too big to spend any time in idle chatter, and that to speak of the problem would only make it worse. She would say all her problems were because of “X” (the capital letter X in English); it sounded even more ominous that she would not give a name to the origin of her affliction. To have a research participant who is marked by so much dread and paranoia makes for a very troubling experience, because any question can be potentially dangerous. As a researcher, I would feel trapped in a minefield: what was an appropriate question? What would harm the research participant? There were so many ways to damage the relation between the researcher and the researched.

Brinda’s narrative

Brinda was from a town in Rajasthan, the name of which she did not wish to disclose. She explained that she has left behind everything in coming to the dargah, and did not want to refer to it any more. Even the idol of the deities that she had installed in her house had been submerged in water for the moment. Hindu households that consecrate a shrine inside the house with idols of the deities they have decided to honour are obligated to regularly light lamps and make offerings in the way of flowers or food. The personal shrine must tended to through ritual purification exercises. Devotional songs, accompanied by

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bells and sometimes other instruments, may be sung in adoration of the deity. In the absence of such acts of devotion, a neglected shrine can earn the ire of the deities and bring misfortune to the house. Having left her home to live in Unava, Brinda could not leave the shrine there untended. By immersing the deities in water (or visarjan as it called in Hindi), she was bidding a temporary farewell to her deities. When she returned, she could re-install the idols of the deities in the house.

Brinda was living in a ‘guest house’ or motel in Unava with her elder son. Her husband and younger son then still lived back in their town. She felt that there had been a great improvement in their lives since coming to Unava for the first time five years back. She characterised their life before coming to the dargah as unmitigated failure in every aspect of their life.

Both sons had finished studies, they [completed]. They were in [service] but they found it very tough [/mushkil]. Where they went, there was [X]. We call the devil [shaitan] “X”… don’t like calling it by name. So X would interfere, make us fight over small-small things. We were very troubled [/pareshaan]. We did not know [/maloom] that within us there was magic [jadoo]. We did not know [/pataa] what was happening inside ourselves. We did not know [/pataa] about the magic [jadoo] had been done on us by somebody. All we saw was obstacles [rukavat] in whatever we tried to do. There were just problems [/pareshaani]. Didn’t find jobs. And if there was a job, there would be disrespect/shame [/apmaan]. And if here was a job, no work would be done. Lots of problems [/takleef]. X made us ill [/bimaari]. Ill in such a way that the even the doctor cannot cure it. Do an [X-ray] but it shows nothing. All the [reports] come clear – BP, sugar, everything is [normal]. Where do you go then?

Her two sons had graduated from university but were unable to find good jobs. Consequently, they could not marry either. Her husband was not successful at his work (what kind of work, again, she did not want to elaborate on). She herself had earned a Masters in economics and used to teach in a college, but that was also taken from her. The four fought with each other constantly, and there was no peace at the house. Brinda was tried other avenues by consulting other shrines and babas, but was unable to turn around the streak of adversity affecting all four members of the family. Then in a chance encounter with a woman on a train, she heard of the shrine in Unava.

I did not even know [/maloom] of the name, did not know [/pataa] anything of this place. We had a god [/bhagwan] at our house for whom we would light a lamp. I would read the [aarti]. That’s it. I had told you that in the [train] I met two people [/log]. I was [travelling], coming back, and the train was speeding. Two people sat in front of me. An old woman, wearing [white] clothes, and her [face] was full of [light], very nice, beautiful! So I was just crying to myself with my worries [/pareshaani], that my children are finding no [success]. I was crying and I asked them, “Do you know someone who can help me? Is there somebody who can show me the way [/raah], where to

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go, what to do that I can do with my problems [/pareshaani], to resolve them? My children are sitting at home after their studies, and we keep falling ill [/bimaari]”. So they said that, “you [/aap] can go to Mira Datar. It is in Palanpur, Gujarat, in Unjha. There is the [mazaar] of Mira Datar. Go there”.

So this was the first time you heard of this name?

Yes, first time. Absolutely. So I wrote ‘Mira-Palanpur-Unjha-Gujarat’ on the sticker paper of my bindi and put it in my [bag]. The station came, the [next station] and the two got down. They had spoken to me very well, and they said that “we are going now, but you must go to Unjha”.

This story of hearing of the barakah of the shrine is not uncommon. There is some romance in India around meeting a beautiful, smiling stranger on a train or a bus who brings a miraculous solution to a problem. Many other people at this shrine as well as others had also attributed their discovery of a particular shrine as the handiwork of the machinations of a higher power who either took on the form of a beautiful stranger or sent a devotee to cross paths with the afflicted person praying for help.

Brinda claims that she forgot about the slip of paper in her bag, till one day she was supplicating to her god (Bhagwan) in front of her shrine at home to find a solution to their problem, and then she suddenly remembered the conversation with the woman on the train. She found that slip of paper and that evening itself convinced her husband to leave for Unava. It seems that this was something she had done before and her husband tried to resist, but she had insisted and thus they arrived at the dargah the next morning for a few days.

It was almost a month since I met them on the train. One evening I was doing [puja], and I was very upset [/pareshaan]. I put my head down and said, “Tell me, what should I do?” Then I remembered all of a sudden what I had written then. I took it out of my purse. At that time, my [husband] came from work, and I told him, “let’s go to Mira Datar”. He said, “you have already been to so many places, why are you becoming so agitated? Let it be now”. I said, “No! I will try for the [last] time, and after this I will not ask you for anything anymore. Palanpur is in Gujarat. Take me there”. So he agreed. So I [/hum] said lets go right away. He started saying “I [/main] have just returned from [duty]. I am tired. Let it be for today”. I said, “No! This is the last time I am saying it. Let’s go right now. We’ve been so worried, but Baba is calling now”. So we went. We took the bus at 9 o’clock and reached the next morning at 5. That’s it! That was the first time!

She claimed that they felt some relief after the visit, but the problem (takleef) had not yet been resolved, and in fact it intensified. This is typical of the beginning stages of treatment at a shrine. An initial release of tension is followed by an intensification of the problem, which signifies that the person has been

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accepted by the baba, saint, or deity; in the words of Brinda, the “case” has been registered. Slowly over time, the new adherent must learn the ways of the shrine and its treatment. Thus, hazri does not usually start immediately upon the first visit to the dargah, but once it begins the treatment is considered finally underway and the affliction besetting the sawwali starts slowly resolving itself. Along the way, the sawwalis will learn from the mujawars what are the small personal acts they must perform, usually (but not always) customized for their particular affliction, and through revelations in dreams (basharat) or everyday life learn what the saint wants them to do. For Brinda, her hazri started six months after many visits to the dargah. She claims that earlier she would experience a lot of active hazri; at that time she would somersault or whirl around. However her hazri had decreased as her devotion at the shrine bore fruit. Over the previous year, she had stopped preparing food for herself and her son completely, since she found out through her dreams that Baba only wanted her to eat the niyaaz (food distributed by devotees as acts of charity or repentance) provided at the dargah. Eating any other food made her uncomfortable and restless. This stricture meant that she and her family would not eat anything that they had earned, but must live like mendicants and remain dependent on the benevolence of others who visited the dargah.

Brinda also developed matted hair during her stay in the dargah. Her hair locked together to make one matted lock or dreadlock, that she would keep covered with her scarf (odhini). Matted hair in Buddhist and Hindu cultures is considered a symbol of divine favour78, but is less commonly seen in Muslim communities. The matted hair cannot be cut because it is part of the relation to a higher power. As is common in instances of the divine dreadlock, Brinda claimed that her lock of hair was painful and uncomfortable, but was also slowly being undone by the powers of the dargah. She had brought a Hindu aesthetic association of power and matted hair to a Muslim shrine where women would oil their hair and open it up during hazri, and this juxtaposition seemingly brought no conflict to her interactions with the Muslim mujawars or the other sawwalis.

Brinda claimed to keep a distance from people around her. She said there was so much on her mind, that speaking was difficult. She felt that someone who had not experienced what she has experienced would not understand her difficulties. Added to this was the belief that to share good fortune may invite someone’s jealousy, and thus the malignant effects of the evil eye.

Why do people do black magic?

78 Gananath Obeyesekere has studied the cultural symbolism of hair, both open and matted, in Sri Lankan and Indian societies in Medusa’s Hair: an Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (1981, 2004). Obeyesekere’s analysis of matted hair in female ascetics in Sri Lanka brings together Weberian anthropology and Freudian psychoanalysis. “Obeyesekere demonstrates how the psychological, symbolic, and practical come together to create sets of meanings around the practice of growing and maintaining matted hair in a particular cultural context. Obeyesekere’s model focuses on the multiple meanings that a single object can embody: as a private symbol (originating within the individual psyche), as personal symbols, and as public symbols” (Thompson, 1998: 237). 143

People do it for the sake of [jealousy]. Like if a child is doing well in studies, then there is jealousy [/jalan] that, “why isn’t my child studying? So let’s do magic [/jadoo] on this studious child. My child will then do well, and because of it, this child will fall behind. People do this when they are jealous. To show their standing as higher! “Oh, this girl is eating nice food. Jealous! Lets drive her mad [/pagal]”.

The problem in her family was caused by jealousy over her having two sons (and not daughters) who were educated and her husband had both a job and owned property. The jealousy this invited from the people around them had brought X into their life. X was what she called the devil (shaitan) who caused the problem by not allowing any positivity into their lives. Her elder son had found it so difficult to get a job that he was contemplating suicide. The family members would fight with each because of the machinations of X. She reasoned that her husband preferred to stay away from Unava, since X would cause huge arguments between them. They lived apart, and the weight of the treatment for their combined misfortune fell on her and her elder son, a taciturn young man in his mid-twenties.

Brinda could see the end of her tribulations with her matted lock loosening with time. She was hoping that they would be able to return back to their town, her sons would find good jobs and good wives (in that order), and they would live together peacefully. However, there were still obstacles to be overcome. She believed that she was getting the divine call to visit Haridwar, but was unable to make the pilgrimage due to a shortage of funds. Haridwar is a city in Uttarakhand with great historical significance for Hindus who consider it a sacred space and an important pilgrimage centre79. Thus Haridwar is part of the canon of Hindu mythology which signifies its status as a site for upper caste Hindus80. Brinda’s own upper caste status is demonstrated in her belief that a pilgrimage to Haridwar will find the final solution to her problems.

Narrative features

This narrative also presented a family problem. Again the wife and the mother took it upon herself to bear the tribulations of faith healing rituals on behalf of her stricken son. Hazri was experienced by both mother and son. Similar to the story narrated by Sejal, Brinda felt unable to leave her younger son even if her husband expressed his rejection of the life prescribed to a sawwali. Brinda was clearly unhappy her other

79 Haridwar is located on the bank of the river Ganga and its spiritual significance in Hinduism comes from its mention in the Puranas; as James Lochtefeld writes in God’s Gateway: Identity and Meaning in a Hindu Pilgrimage Place (2010), “Although references to Hardwar [sic] in the published puranas are usually quite brief, in several cases, longer texts specifically proclaim its greatness (“mahatmya”)–a trend continued in the manuscript mahatmyas, which are examined in great detail later. The most detailed example comes from the Naradiya Purana the only published purana with an entire chapter devoted to Hardwar” (Lochtefeld, 2010: 34). 80 Lochtefeld writes, “The mahatmya begins by naming Hardwar as the place where the Ganges finally came to earth, highlighting Hardwar’s connection with the Ganges. […] This mahatmya also mentioned the rites to be performed at each site, which are largely the standard rites: bathing, fasting, shraddha, tarpana, and gift-giving, especially to Brahmins” (Lochtefeld, 2010: 34). 144

son and husband had deserted the dargah. Like in Sanjay’s narrative, family conflict in the way of arguments between husband and wife are seen as signs of the effects of black magic, of X. The Indian family is both symptom and succour at the site of faith healing.

Brinda is a minority in the dargah in regard to her postgraduate degree, like Samira who had reached a graduate level of education. Nonetheless, her belief in the evil eye and black magic was no different from the other sawwalis at the dargah. For Brinda, the fear and worry around her affliction had condensed into a single letter, X. This was an efficient way, and even somewhat poetic method of speaking about the problems that beset her family. It captured, with absolute economy, the diffuse nature of the problem of the sawwali. X could be anywhere or anyone. X had a loose trigger, and could be activated by even hearing its name, and therefore the sawwali had to be always constantly vigilant. This was one of the reasons friendships between sawwalis living at the dargah did not seem very common.

6.5 Conclusion

Presented above are six narratives of sawwalis at the Mira Datar Dargah. While each of the research subjects had their own relation to religion, science and state, they also had their questions to the researcher; both have been documented. While half the subjects were Muslim and half were Hindu, religious ideas were divergent, and so were their practise of religion. There was the Islamic ideas laden with Arabic and Urdu words of Samira’s, and the ascetic Hindu ideas laden with Sankrit and Hindi in Arohi’s narrative. Each of the research subject had different relations to the idea of medicine and to the medical practices they adopted; some rejected it fully like Arohi, some accepted it with enthusiasm like Eshan. There were the hopes of returning to one’s own homeland/nation as expressed by Brinda, but even a confusion of what one’s own nation was, such as in the questions of Sejal. The next chapter will bring the narratives together and point out some common themes that emerge from them as a set.

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CHAPTER 7

SUBJECT/GHOST

7.1 Introduction

In the months after fieldwork, the stories began to take on more distinctive form as I, as the researcher, started making sense of my observations and experiences with the people I had encountered. While crafting the narratives in their present form, I have kept the interpretative gesture to a minimum in the hope that the subjects of my research can make an appearance through their own words. Nonetheless further analysis is required to make the pivotal features of the narrative apparent. This chapter will tease out the points of convergence between the different narratives to open up the paradigm at work in faith healing sites in their divergence to global mental health.

7.2 Between faith healing and medicine

The sawwali is surrounded by both religious and medical prescription. The subjects of this research were all living either inside the shrine or close to it. They were either actively on a psychiatric treatment or had been in the recent past. At any rate, they enthusiastically take to general medicine for their aches and pains. Their narratives weave together the way they have negotiated between the alternate explanations of their afflictions. In the case of Arohi, her abdominal pain was diagnosed in a hospital in 2016 as emanating from gall bladder stones and these were surgically removed. She had been visiting dargahs for a decade for hazri that presented itself as abdominal pain. However she does not see abdominal pain from gall bladder stones and abdominal pain as bala or affliction as being related. “Bala and illness are different, the relation is different. It’s not the same thing. Which is why Datar Bapu sent me for the operation. I had a basharat. I saw it in my dream, so I went for it. You see, first my hazri used to be in my abdomen, but not any longer.” When questioned she attributes the medical success of her surgery to the powers of the saint for sending her to the right doctor. To a greater extent, sawwalis had integrated elements from both worldviews into each one’s unique construction of affliction and well-being, ranging from eschewing the scientific paradigm to being an ardent supporter of it.

Just to point it out, there were other sawwalis who voiced their dissatisfaction against the shrine for not demonstrating visible benefits in their favour. I initially wondered why this group of people did not leave to find more promising avenues. However, I realized that the shrine and its environs had become home, its terms of address were familiar to them, the particular enunciation of evil or affliction was comprehensible 146

to devotees of the shrine. For some sawwalis there was no return, and perhaps nobody to return to either. It may also be that dissatisfaction, both experience and expression, is important in some of their psychic constitution.

Nonetheless, the participants of this research expressed their faith in the powers of the shrine, and integrated their relation to medicine in relation to this faith. For Eshan, psychiatric medication made his mind ‘fresh’ and alert to receive messages from the saint. Sejal is a maverick who takes recourse to every treatment… from visiting multiple shrines to enthusiastically taking medicine herself and dosing her son with it. Samira even with her law degree felt a suspicion of doctors as being more interested in money than cure. Certainly having access to free or medical services was a big contributor in influencing people’s acceptance of the medical and/or psychiatric frame. However in the six narratives, Aalia (least educated in the group) and Brinda (most educated in the group) felt that faith needs to be demonstrated by only sticking to the prescriptions of the shrine, and should not be supplemented by other interventions (though neither were rigid about this).

What appears from these different approaches by different people (belonging to different caste, religious, regional, linguistic and educational backgrounds) is that ideological contradictions are momentarily smoothened out in personal narratives. The subject contradicts herself but glosses over this contradiction. I am interested in what psychic mechanisms make this glossing over possible for in turn the Subject is also being (re)constituted through this mechanism. This is to pay attention to subjection (Butler, 1997). The subject is always in process of being inaugurated, which is marked by ambivalence: “[…] the subject cannot quell the ambivalence by which it is constituted. Painful, dynamic, and promising, this vacillation between the already-there and the yet-to-come is a crossroads that rejoins every step by which it is traversed, a reiterated ambivalence at the heart of agency” (Butler, 1997: 17-18). This subjectivity is the consequence of this ambivalence, which is negotiation with contradiction on the part of the sawwali caught between the dargah and the clinic, and on the process of healing, which is at the heart of this site where two disparate discourses have come head to head.

7.3 The mainstream and the marginal

India, with 22 officially recognized languages, has several linguistic traditions spread across the nation, and many Indian subjects are multilingual. At the dargah, there were people from different parts of India, and the research subjects came from Maharasthra (official state language is Marathi), Rajasthan (official state language is Hindi), and Gujarat (official state language is Gujarati); such representation is typical of this shrine. Languages regularly used in conversation were dialects of Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, with smattering of Urdu and English. This is also represented in the interviews, my multilingual participants

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spoke in Hindi to me, with the words of other languages slipping through in their speech frequently. Multilingualism is a common experience of Indians, but this is also a politically and emotionally charged issue. This is because regional identity within India is inextricably tied to language, and migrants within the country are not only identified by their regional and caste background, but also the languages they use, their “mother tongue”.

This however does not mean the winds of westernization are not blowing through Unava and the Mira Data Dargah. English is the language of opportunity and advancement in India. The younger mujawars were speaking a little bit of English, and had travelled to countries where they were required to speak it. Copies of anthropological texts in English like Pfleiderer’s Red Thread (2006) had passed around the shrine, and was once even quoted to me by the mujawar. Besides Gujarati and Hindi, more English was being seen in signs around the dargah and the village in general. Even the informal tutorial classes I held for women to teach basic English was well-attended right up till the end. Finally, the narratives of the sawwalis themselves show how many English words are used in conversation while speaking in Hindi. This is especially apparent in medical terminology. Examples of medical terms used by research participants in English were ‘doctor’, ‘hospital’, ‘medicine’, ‘injection’, ‘body’, ‘blood test’, ‘X-ray’, ‘sonography’, ‘CT scan’, and ‘shock’.

At the same time, the use of Urdu and even Arabic was encouraged by the mujawars at the dargah, and this was picked by many Muslim sawwalis. Urdu and Arabic were also picked up by Hindu sawwalis, but they balanced that with the use of words in Sanskritized Hindi. The use of Arabic, Urdu and Sanskritic Hindi was a way to assert religious and caste affiliation for sawwalis. What it also did was weave a complex vocabulary at the site. This vocabulary had a range of meanings since the words were borrowed from other languages not in active use, but when brought in the vernacular usage contained some of the power of the original as well as the ease of everyday language. The words become semantically elusive, but also polyvalent, performing several functions.

One function this polyvalent multilingualism performs is the fusion of Arabic into Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati. Here we see an alignment with Arab Islam which affords a legitimacy to the dargah. The origin story of the dargah of Mira Datar is that Sayyed Ali came from the lineage of Hussain, the grandson of Mohammed, the prophet of Islam. Direct descent from a prophet is the claim and basis of many dargahs around the world. It is this lineage from where the barakah, the miraculous power of the saint and his dargah comes. Thus, the mujawars bring in their interaction with sawwalis which usually takes place in Hindi and Gujarati, words from Urdu (that itself is a mix of Persian and Hindi) and Arabic. This distinguishes the dargah as a Muslim site.

It appears that it is not the visitors to the dargah, travelling from small villages and town, who require this stamp of authenticity. Many find shelter or succour at the shrine, but also find a version of religiosity that

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is culturally familiar. The dargahs of India have blended Islam with local expressions of piety and devotion, and thus are spaces where Indian Islam looks very different from the Arab Islam. Thus, dargah worship and pir worship (saint worship) have developed in unique ways in the Indian subcontinent, and the popularity of these shrines can be attributed to how these culturalize Islam and change it to adapt to local conditions. In the Indian subcontinent, dargahs have created a particular culture of their own, and from my interaction with sawwalis at the Mira Datar Dargah, this Indo-Islamic blend is a major contributor to the number of pilgrims it receives.

However, today we see the strengthening of the idea of global/universal Islam organized along strait- laced and puritanical lines on the dogma of Islam. Salafi Islam, especially Wahabism, are opposed to any adaptation of the religious canon to the local context, and dargahs are seen as dangerously subversive. These have always been marginal spaces, however today these spaces are under greater attack from Islamic purists. In this scenario, the weaving of Arabic words into everyday speech of sawwalis at the dargah takes on a different significance. It makes a bridge between a marginal practice and the mainstream, not for the sake of the local sawwali (who does not speak or understand Arabic) but for itself, as a strategy of survival. Thus, while the increasing usage in India of English as a global language is working its way into the Mira Datar Dargah, at the same time Arabic is also becoming in Muslim groups a way to connect with global Islam.

7.4 The state of the State

There are two ways in which the Indian State gets imbricated within the narratives. Th first was the use of ‘vatan’ (nation/homeland) by the subjects of this research. The term was used by Sejal and Eshan, both Maharashtrian. For them, homeland is connected to the question of the return. Rather than the nation state, both of them identify it with a belief system. So Sejal, enmeshed in the Islamic ethos of the dargah, finds a house next to a Hindu temple as a way to distinguish her ‘vatan’ in Gujarat. Brinda narrates how she has submerged the idols of the gods (called visarjan) she worships back home, and will reinstate them in her house only when she returns home after her recovery. This suspension of her personal shrine is also tied to her leaving home. With her return, she hopes to reconsecrate her gods at home; her submerged idols are waiting for her to return to come out of ‘visarjan’. Thus, the idea of homeland and worship are inextricably tied together in these narratives.

The other is the use of the word ‘Sarkar’ in Hindi that refers to a position of authority. The sawwalis at the dargah refer to Sayyed Ali as Sarkar to signify ‘master’. However, sarkar is also a very common way of hailing the State, and thus in local parlance also signifies the government. However much these dual usages overlap, at the dargah Sarkar is used solely for the saint. In Eshan’s narrative, it was obvious that

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the other meaning of Sarkar was seen as illegitimate, without basis (bebuniyaad). In my conversations with other sawwalis too, any question about any expectations from the government created consternation. Sawwalis, both Hindu and Muslim, who had tied their wishes (called mannat) with red threads on the shrine were quiet when asked about their expectations from the state. One sarkar was benevolent, the other was absent.

While an open list of political rights (or political wrongs) were not forthcoming, in the set of narratives presented in the previous chapter, there was a subtle difference in the narratives by Muslim subjects and Hindu subjects. The Hindu subjects had modest aspirations that they were able to articulate when asked. Brinda opined that a final pilgrimage with her family to Haridwar would resolve their family affliction once and for all. While this fixation on another shrine that would be able to bring off the miraculous recovery she was hoping for, may be a repeated pattern in her journey towards healing, it is also a moment of hopefulness in her narrative. It is the evidence of an imagination where the problems besetting her find their final resolution. Similarly in Arohi and Sejal’s narratives, the question of the future produced a point of discussion, a projection into the future that showed me that these women could conceive of a future. In the narratives of the Muslim research participants, this was not always apparent. I have mentioned that the starkest of the narratives was generated in conversation with Aalia. The question of the future silenced her so that even her short and to-the-point responses dried up. Eshan responded to the question about the future by saying that it would be better not to have desire. Even Samira who wanted to complete the law degree said she was not sure she still had the ability to do so.

Who must shoulder the responsibility for this inarticulation, this difficulty in producing a vision of the future? Can the Subject, constuited through a submission to power of the State (Butler, 1997), be held liable for not producing a vision for oneself and the State? In a well-functioning republic, all citizen- subjects should be able to articulate an imagination for a future since their demands on the State to make that future possible are perfectly justifiable. If the Muslim citizen-subject fails to articulate this, and instead must pin their hopes on an unpredictable and miraculous resolution, on one ‘Sarkar’ and not the other, this is a failure of the State.

7.5 The shuffling symptom

There is evidence in several narratives of what I call the shuffling symptom, which is to say that the problem seems to move between members of the family; hazri in one member would trigger its appearance in another. This shuffle was seen in the narratives of Aalia, Samira, Sejal and Brinda. A feature in these four narratives shared was that the shuffling symptom seemed to involve the women in a family. The first identified sawwali is not always the woman, it may be her child, husband or sibling. It is

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rare to see the shuffling symptom between fathers and daughters, but not uncommon to find it between mothers and sons or daughters. This shuffle usually happens in the way of symptoms taking different forms in each of the members, and yet the family can identify that the problem besetting all of them is the same.

The sawwali at the dargah is understood by the healing system there to be under the attack of a ghost, spirit, or black magic. For an external observer it is possible to locate the sawwali, but not easy to view the symptom they are being treated for. The narratives depict how my research subjects ended up as residents in Unava. These are long-winded accounts, sometimes spanning decades and rarely recounted the journey in a linear manner. Every time an incomplete story was picked up another day, new features would pop up that would disconcert me. This may have been because I had already started to organize their story in my mind in a certain way, and the new feature (such as an adoption, divorce, or religious conversion) wrecked the cognitive map I had created. Initially my strategy to combat this cognitive disturbance would be to focus on the sawwali: keep the one figure central to the story while every other detail is in a state of flux, i.e. focus on the eye of the storm. This strategy was useful at first, but only to show that I had begun with an assumption that needed to be interrogated.

The assumption was to equate the sawwali with the individual patient who comes to the clinic. The majority of psychotherapy models see the patient as the individual in the clinic, and direct their attention at the symptoms this individual presents. The symptom need not remain constant throughout treatment, and in fact starts transforming in the process of the analysis. This is to be expected in Freudian psychoanalytic clinical work. Freud writes in Remembering, repeating and working through (1914):

“We have learnt that the patient repeats instead of remembering, and repeats under the conditions of resistance. We may now ask what it is that he in fact repeats or acts out. The answer is that he repeats everything that has already made its way from the sources of the repressed into his manifest personality—his inhibitions and unserviceable attitudes and his pathological character-traits. He also repeats all his symptoms in the course of the treatment.”

Freud, 1958: 130

As the treatment progresses, the symptom may transform, and this can be interpreted that the analysis is disturbing the unconscious structure where the symptom was located. This transformation is merely a repetition of the symptom in a different appearance. Repetition during analysis is not a failure of analytic process, according to Freudian psychoanalysis; it is not considered a relapse into old patterns of behaviour, but a sign that the analysis is developing momentum (towards transference). Repetition within the analytic process is to be differentiated from repetition outside of it, which is not in the person’s control or even awareness, and thus not cannot contribute towards producing any change.

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Coming back to the presentation of hazri by the sawwali at the dargah, a symptom that presents itself most clearly only after treatment at the shrine has begun. Hazri is forced to be repeated regularly by the daily exercise characteristic of the time of salaami and the burning of loban. There are other associated actions or features that the sawwali presents, such as appetite or sleep. Samira reported an inability to eat roti (bread) since it would intensify her hazri, and Brinda developed matted hair that could neither be combed nor cut. Aalia’s hazri has changed in the eight years she has been seeking treatment at the dargah. Here it is possible to establish a parallel with the psychoanalytic understanding of the analytic process. However, hazri is also passed between family members; after one member is ‘diagnosed’ with hazri at a dargah (any dargah), other members of the family may also start reporting the experience of hazri. At different times, different members of the family report the greater burden of bearing the hazri. Sometimes they report voluntarily taking on the hazri of a loved one to ease the other’s burden. They understand that magic has been cast on the entire family even if only one member of the family shows its effect, and even if its initial target is one member of the family, it is understood to be equally effective if it troubles their close relative. Thus the problem affects the family as a unit making it tricky to identify the ‘main patient’ since at a given point in time the primary affected can be any one in a family that demonstrates such a shuffling of the symptom. This is evident in the narratives of four (out of the six) of my research participants.

For instance, Brinda opined that someone jealous of how well her family was faring wished ill on them. This first affected her sons who were unable to succeed in any work related venture. To find a solution, she visited the dargah (after consulting with several other shrines), experienced hazri first and gradually made the shift to living full-time at the dargah. However, her older son who (during the period of fieldwork) lived with her in Unava also started experiencing his own hazri down the line. In the case of Samira, it was her sister who was first manifested the signs of being under the spell of a malicious presence, and while her symptoms have changed from being wild and aggressive to being mute and withdrawn, Samira started with hazri several years later and at the time of the interview was semi-permanently living at the dargah along with her sister and mother (who also experienced hazri). All these families see their tribulations as connected, with some members being more supportive of this shift, and some family members being less supportive (in the case of both Brinda and Samira, the oldest male member of the nuclear family resisted the explanation offered by the dargah).

What this presents to a clinical picture is a symptom that is changing not only within a sawwali, but also shuffling between members of a family. The dargah treats the family as in need of treatment, and generally advises the family unit to live together at the shrine for a speedier recovery. More than a systemic model of treatment (as promulgated by certain psychotherapeutic schools), it is understood here that the symptom itself can move between people. This makes the symptom more slippery, since even if one member of the family is showing improvement, it could reappear in someone else in the family, and take a different form. For instance, in the narrative of Aalia, hazri appeared as the jumping kind of 152

movements, i.e. violent and uncontrollable. Two years later when her husband returned alone to the village, his own hazri appeared as acute pain in the lower half of his body rendering him bed-ridden and suicidal. They found it necessary to bring him back to the dargah. At the time of fieldwork, he was the primary patient in the family, although his wife and his daughter also experienced hazri.

The shuffling symptom complicates a clinical response to an individual sufferer, since the links between the members of a family are deemed to be most significant in the treatment process and cannot be overstepped. The narrative is continuous litany of afflictions, illnesses and ill fortune until the event of the final healing miracle, and so one member cannot recover unless they all do so, and. Faith healing practices, such as at the Mira Datar dargah, treats the family as a unit. It protects the Indian family, not only against external attack, but also against itself since each member of the group must commit to the treatment and stay by the other in the moment of affliction. Through the shuffling symptom, faith healing shrines identifies the family as the unit of intervention, rather than an individual in the family. In this way it establishes subjectivity as distributed between members of the family.

7.6 Between (not) seeing and (not) speaking

The sawwali is a devotee of Sayyed Ali whose ‘case’ has been accepted by a mujawar, their vakeel or lawyer in the court of a pir or saint. The mujawar and sawwali develop a close relation during the period the sawwali lives in Unava. The mujawar directs them on the arrangements they must make during their stay, from where to live to which rituals to perform, and even when to leave. The consultations are done in the open in the courtyard near the main shrine, and anyone can witness the proceedings, and even chime in to the conversations. Usually a mujawar gathers his own court around him comprising of sawwalis, who wait their turn while another case is being heard.

At the Mira Datar Dargah, which is representative of many faith healing sites in India, there is an element of heightened performance in the public proceedings that is buoyed up by the watchful eyes of the onlookers. The dialogue between the sawwali and mujawar is usually fast-paced with a good amount of emotional intensity. The mujawar can direct his questions and advice to either the sawwali or to the family member accompanying the sawwali. Sometimes the mujawar may engage in banter with the sawwali, and even with the ghost possessing the sawwali; onlookers join in to enjoy the jokes being made. The most captivating moments are often when a breakthrough has been made by a mujawar in a case, which is usually in the instance of trance possession when the ghost directly engages with the mujawar. The sawwali in full trance or hazri will be full of invective that can hurled at anyone, a bystander, a family member, the mujawar, the saint, or god. Hazri can take a physical form of whirling, writhing, running, and somersaulting. Onlookers are careful to keep a safe distance from a sawwali in hazri, and major injuries

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are rare. Hazri can last for a few minutes but continue for hours. Some sawwalis complain to the mujawar that their hazri has not stopped the entire day, but they are masking its outward signs through practice.

All this can be observed at the dargah since the dargah is an open air construction where the work of treating the sawwalis takes place in the full vision of everyone present. However, the simple act of observation has significance in a site that has its own philosophy of vision. In fact, sites of faith healing in India organized on a certain formulation of illness and well-being, of what is natural and the supernatural, of science and religion, have their technology of the gaze. For instance, ‘buri nazar’ or the ‘evil eye’ is one of the complaints reported by sawwalis. Inciting the jealousy of a covetous onlooker is always a concern for sawwalis; it as if they are saying that “someone was looking at me, and the gaze was so evil that misfortune and illness has befallen me”.

In a site where the evil eye is a circulating danger, there is also the eye of the researcher. Even as this eye watches, it is being watched; the double hermeneutic is firmly in operation. I remember that in my first visit to Balaji temple, Mehandipur (a Hindu temple in Rajasthan) in 2010 when I had struck up a conversation with a young woman being attended to by her mother-in-law in the big hall of the temple. The older woman was talkative and friendly, while the younger woman was restrained. The young woman was also labouring under the burden of her ‘sankat’ (spirit/crisis). After fielding some of my queries and remarks, she remarked that I must be new to the temple. I asked her how she knew. She responded that she knew from the way I was looking, my gaze had been too direct. She said it was not the way to look upon a person in trance (peshi) since the person is in the presence of Balaji (the deity of the temple). In a space of open vision, there is an etiquette to looking. Ever since that first encounter, it has been apparent to me that my researcher’s gaze was something of a problem. It produces a reaction even in a population that is used to performing trance in the public.

Nonetheless, the time spent in hazri around the time of salaami and the burning of loban comprises of a small period of the daily life of the sawwali in Unava. The rest of the time, for a majority of the sawwalis (who for the most part have left homes and jobs to live in Unava) there is little in the way of distraction. Some sawwalis find work connected to the activities of the dargah within the premises or outside in the village, though these jobs typically do not pay well. In these hours between salaami, I would find sawwalis either engaged in housework or resting. This was the time for conversations to flourish. There was nothing spectacular about this engagement, no episodes of hazri to perform, and no crowds of onlookers to negotiate. I would walk around the courtyard, and stop to talk to people who were not otherwise engaged. After a few months of fieldwork, I spent more time in the dargah in the periods between salaami than during. After all, the act of hazri is repetitive; sawwalis stay on in Unava for years, performing their hazri in front of the saint’s mazar regularly. This is not to say that conversations were not repetitive sometimes too. In the conversations I had with sawwalis, the same story would be repeated, however it was easier to discern the difference with each retelling. The narrative approach was selected for one 154

purpose: to generate the story of accessing treatment – at the dargah, the clinic, or both - in the words of the research participant. These stories are of becoming a sawwali, since their primary identity at the moment of research is their attachment to the shrine. The narratives put together the journey of each subject in how they came to the Mira Datar Dargah, what their life at the dargah is like, and what they see of their future. Interspersed in the story of the sawwali is their encounters with medical and psychiatric treatment.

Nonetheless, in the story behind the story, I met with a great deal of resistance in the process of constructing narratives with sawwalis at the shrine. These were not subjects who had a first hand or even a second experience of the process of university-based research. For the most part, in five out of six narratives (as well as in the case of the mapmaking exercise), the participants did not seem to grasp the point of asking and answering questions, especially on matters of faith. It was my policy to repeat in meeting after meeting that I was a student who was in Unava to conduct research in which I would like to hear their story of coming to the Mira Datar Dargah. They would hear this, nod, and even ask me questions. I would then try to explain what I was doing and what it would yield. However I was not sure they could imagine what the end result of this project was, other than at the end I would be a ‘doctor’. ‘Doctor’ was a familiar concept, though ‘doctoral researcher’ had no equivalent I could provide. Ahmedabad was three hours away from Unava, but Manchester had no significance; it was a sound, not a signifier. Although many sawwalis had travelled from distances much further than Ahmedabad, where I was coming from as a researcher was a place outside of symbolic value. Research subjects in responding to my questions were, as if, pouring their words into an abyss. It was not very inspiring to speak about their stories for an outcome they could not visualize. Outcomes such as ‘contributing to knowledge production’ or ‘writing stories of first-person experience’ were too distant and abstract’. Instead I would say, “I want to hear your story in your words”.

In the story behind the story, there was much difficulty in arranging an appointment for an interview, and scheduling one was no guarantee that the appointment would be kept. To arrange for an interview in a relatively private space was equally challenging, and sometimes participants would arrange a meeting at a time or space where talking was actually unfeasible, such as during salaami. The talkative Indian is not necessarily enthusiastic about being brought to a process of narrativization, and could be resistant to shaping words into stories. In my experience as a narrative researcher, the sawwali as a research subject was not interpellated by the political and pedagogic agenda focussed on them. Mujawars had been sensitized to the demand of comprehensibility, and were producing accounts of themselves for the consumption of a global hunger for knowledge of this traditional site, but the sawwali less so. This also made the process of constructing narratives much more challenging.

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7.7 Subject to Ghost

Despite methodological exercise, the narratives do not speak much, or rather they speak no more than texts of other kinds. They may reveal something of the story-teller. On the other hand, too much is said in any extract from an interview, all of which cannot be followed during the interviews or even during the writing of the narrative. Instead, like a snapshot, the narrative becomes framed within the agenda of research. The voices of my subject within the narratives become fainter as they are superimposed with the din of academic aspirations, of meaning-making and position-staking that is the hallowed ground of the social sciences. This is a reminder that narratives in research are not only simple stories, they have to do something, say something that responds to the research question, and this must be done through the intervention of the researcher. As Kvale writes, “narrative interviewer will encourage subjects to tell stories, assist them in developing and clarifying their stories, and during the analysis work out the narrative structures of the interview stories and possibly compose the stories to be told in the final report” (Kvale, 1996: 274). Since the narratives do not, in the end, speak only for themselves but also speak for the priorities of research, some greater work is required to make narratives intelligible.

How are we understand the curious opacity in the text of the narrative? Nothing is self-evident in the story-form of the research narrative, the subject speaks without even the comprehension of what is happening, and a story is not even narrated in ‘lived time’ (how else must one understand the dreams – revelatory of otherwise – that propel the narratives of sawwalis forward? These are not even necessarily the dreams of the narrator, but can also be a family member, the mujawar, or even a chance encounter with a stranger at the shrine). It would seem that the narrative thwarts an attempt at meaning-making; it hides something in plain sight. Alenka Zupančič writes that, “There is something in the modern ideological structuring of knowledge (which often takes the form of revealing what is ‘behind the scenes’ – before anybody even thinks to ask) that seems to absorb the question of consequences and to make it literally meaningless, incomprehensible” (2016: 413). This is to say that psychoanalytically knowledge presented as open and illuminating turns into a non-event, it reveals itself as something obvious that one ‘must be stupid not to know that’.

The stories of sawwalis are a good example to demonstrate an absence that marks the narratives. This is because the sawwalis are subject marked by an affliction, a bala, an undefinable X, a ghost that troubles them. However sawwalis are hesitant to talk about the ghost. In fact to talk about the ghost is undesirable because it can attract the attention of that malevolent presence in their life. For some of the research subjects, it was distressing to talk about the ghost; examples of this include Aalia and Brinda. For others, the ghost was a vague shadowy presence whose motivations were never clear. Examples involve narratives Eshan and Sejal. One narrative has only the vaguest allusion to a ghost, such as in Arohi’s narrative. There was only one narrative that had robust descriptions of the ghost, that of Samira’s invading jinn. 156

The narratives show that the narratival subjects are not very clear about their ghosts, and it takes the combined efforts of the family and the mujawars to explore the muddle of who is being heard when the sawwali is speaking during hazri, and work towards eliminating it. In the meantime, sawwalis are cautious in their speech about how they refer to the ghost. Thus, the ghost only briefly flits into their stories. It may thus appear that in the narratives of the subject thus produced, the ghost is not very important, that it was only the psychological crutch the sawwalis required for their story of affliction. This psychologization of the sawwali has animated scholarship in medical and cultural anthropology, as well as cultural psychology and GMH. This psychological analysis has nothing to say of the ghost.

The trope of the ghost has featured quite differently in the works of Avery Gordon (1997/2008) and Stephen Frosh (2012, 2013), both on haunting. Gordon’s sociological analysis of haunting is a feminist critique of racism and oppression that returns as something ghostly. She writes, “What’s distinctive about haunting is that it is an animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known, sometimes very directly, sometimes more obliquely” (Gordon, 2008: xvi). Frosh’s analysis of haunting is as much a psychoanalytic analysis as a ghostly analysis of psychoanalysis. Drawing on Freud and Derrida, he writes “If the truth is spectral, then there is something true about what has been repressed, lost, maybe murdered too. These lost truths keep coming back to haunt us, and demand recompense. They are unwanted apparitions, truths troubling us; we often wish they would let us alone” (Frosh, 2012: 247). In both analyses, the ghost is the sign and the symptom of an unsettled injustice of times past.

From the narratives of sawwalis at the Mira Datar Dargah, it can be extrapolated that the ghost is by essence without a home, a usurper who does not belong to the present moment but cannot return to its own time; it’s a time bomb thrown into the future. The ghost has an insubstantial body, but with a voice that speaks its name and its story. It often possesses the body of someone, a subject, and in doing so creates the possibility of speaking in many voices, its own and the subject’s. The ghost is unruly, and does not respond well to command. To discipline a ghost requires labour, persistence and discipline on the part of the healer and the sawwali, and it may at any time break out of the control of the rational agent. Here the ghost can be positioned in relation to the subject. The ghost is the excess of the subject, both in the narrative process and in the experience of the story-tellers. The ghost is an indication of something-gone-wrong that threatens the supposed unity of subjectivity. It is only dimly perceived, and switches between a threatening presence to a malevolent absence. For instance, Samira hears the ghost make sound in another room, but she does not see it. At another time the ghost comes into her dreams in the familiar form of her father, but she knows it is not her father, it is the bala threatening her family. For Brinda, the ghost causes mischief by creating fights with her family members, but the ghost must not be named, it is only ‘X’. The narratives of sawwalis can be written without a name for the ghost, and yet it is a ghost that brings them to the dargah. It would seem that method to speak of the ghost is haunted by the challenge of bringing into the foreground the absent presence of an ontological uncertainty. Perhaps like 157

the mujawar who speaks to the ghost in the subject, there can be a method to speak to the ghost in social science theorising.

The observer at the site is faced with the challenge of ‘one body-many voices’.81 If the sawwali during hazri speaks in the voice of their bala, it is not always apparent whose voice is being heard. In interviews when my research subject indicated that they could feel their hazri coming on, the question that would come to me would pertain to whose voice was I listening, recording and responding to? Was it the sawwali or was it the ghost? There were times when the onset of hazri was difficult to distinguish from the routine mannerisms or behaviour of the sawwali. In the middle of a conversation, I would be informed by my interlocutor, their relative/attendant or even a bystander that hazri has come upon them. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that while hazri can be observed, the ghost cannot be. It cannot be showed, nor borrowed. However it can be incited. Sawwalis live their life in trying not to incite the wrath, or even the attention, of their bala, except during hazri where the ghost is given rein to speak (up) and act (up). Thus the ordinary academic exercise cannot recreate the conditions for the emergence of the ghost.

That is significant because the ghost in moments shows itself, the ghost shows characteristic hungers and desires, and in that it can be predictable. Its predictability is where a pattern can be established. There is a method to the ghost, which the practices of healing at the shrine are gesturing toward. Faith healers listen to the ghost and try to trace its pattern to explain its presence in the voice and the body of the sawwali. This is not an admission of some psychological apparatus within the sawwali acting up, this is a systematic practice, and a methodological promise. The ghost is another approach to the subject, something less easy to contain and capture, not private but also not forthcoming. This research demonstrates that faith healing can produce a space in which the ghosts in the story of the subject can be manifested, in full ‘view’ of members of the community.

7.8 Ghost as method

Psychology has traditionally been at ease with the ineffable (the mind, consciousness, intentionality) by tending to map it on to the interiors of human psyche. In psychological terms, the ghost would be a production of the mind of the sawwali, fostered by a belief system in magic and superstition. Being housed within the concept of psychic machinations gives the absent presence of the ghost a body; by locating it in the human, the ghost must abide by the physical laws of the world that all humans must live with, such as time and space. However, interviewees speak of ghosts as external forces bearing down on them. They lay down their problems at the door of the ghosts, their misfortunes, illnesses and symptoms. However they are speaking of ghosts as fact or experience, while here in the thesis the ghost is referred

81 This is aggravated when the symptoms shuffle between family members and becomes factorial: ‘many body-many voices’. 158

to as a concept. The ghost is a concept to signify that which escapes description in the sciences. Nonetheless, the shrine creates a method to tap into the momentary, an invisible break in the script of rationality. This thesis shows that we must look towards a method that provokes the ghost to momentarily take the stage, to develop the ghost as method.

The ‘ghost as method’ is influenced by the idea of ‘Asia as method’. Chen Kuan-Hsing’s book Asia as method: Toward deimperialization (2010) makes a connection between Asia as a geographical entity and Asia as an idea, with the purpose of challenging how knowledge production in the social sciences that has been dominated and hegemonized by ‘the West’, specifically Europe and North America. Asia as method is a critical approach to epistemology and therefore methodology to de-universalize and contextualize knowledge. Chen builds his notion of Asia as method from Yoshimi Takeuchi’s paper by the same name82. Chen proposes to use the landmass of Asia as an idea to think of knowledge production differently:

“Asia as method” as a critical proposition to transform the existing knowledge structure and at the same time to transform ourselves. The potential of Asia as method is this: using the idea of Asia as an imaginary anchoring point, societies in Asia can become each other’s points of reference, so that the understanding of the self may be transformed, and subjectivity rebuilt. On this basis, the diverse historical experiences and rich social practices of Asia may be mobilized to provide alternative horizons and perspectives. This method of engagement, I believe, has the potential to advance a different understanding of world history.

Chen, 2010: 212

In this extract, Chen provides an alternate imagination, an Asian imagination for both epistemology and politics by re-cognising the problematic of the east-west binary. He proposes that Asian countries and subjects, impacted by a history of European and American domination in the past, produce new knowledge through inter-referencing within Asia.

For the purpose of the present study of rendering the ghost into method, yet another turn is necessary. Asia is an idea whose physical reality cannot be disputed, in fact, it’s almost too big to be ignored (which makes its elision from the processes of knowledge production so very interesting). To make the move from an idea grounded in physical space to an idea with no physical reality, Erica Burman's formulation of Child as Method is important. Burman topicalizes the idea of child in education studies to interrogate the machinations of the knowledge production in modernity. Borrowing on postcolonial and decolonial epistemologies, she draws on both Chen and Frantz Fanon. She elaborates that,

Like Asia as method, ‘child as method’ is a research analytic or orientation, rather than specifying a particular ‘method’. Yet far from ‘method’ not being a concern, the aim is to foster and bring into dialogue diverse, innovative and creative disciplinary and research approaches to document how

82 “Chen’s interest in Asia as method is not entirely original, but has been deeply inspired by the Japanese scholar of Chinese studies Takeuchi Yoshimi, who gave a lecture of the same title, ‘Asia as method’, in 1961. Takeuchi’s stance has not been discussed as much as Chen’s” (Lee, 2018). 159

child/childhood/children are understood, where ‘child’ is understood as a figure or trope (Burman, 2008; Castañeda, 2002), ‘childhood’ as a social condition or category, and ‘children’ the living, embodied entities inhabiting these positions and their corresponding institutional practices across a range of geopolitical arenas.

Burman, 2018: 3

Here we see that the child is used as a trope to advance a way of thinking, as a methodological resource that can be then deployed to investigate not only childhood or education, but subjectivity. Burman’s ‘child as method’ keeps the coupledom between space and knowledge in the social sciences, and allows for a re-imagination of method by creating temporary and contingent mini-standpoints, rather than absolute standpoint epistemologies like the Lesbian Standpoint or the Dalit Standpoint that completely unsettle the hegemonic. There is a contingent standpoint to be discovered in the idea of the child or the ghost that briefly disrupts the hegemonic and in doing so acknowledges the presence of take-for-granted understandings in discourses around it.

The ghost creates very briefly a mini-standpoint to turn awry the smooth narrative of social science, in the same way as ghosts appear for a few moments in the speech of subjects. I am proposing ghost as a turn in social science theorising to make a pause, a space for uncertainty, even something uncanny, the sudden appearance of such familiarity with our own non-knowledge of the subject that it becomes frightening. Freud in the essay titled The Uncanny (2003[1919]), which he understands as the coming across something familiar as a source of horror and disgust since it reveals a disavowed attachmenet as well as the compulsion to repeat83.The turn to ghost is a move to confront the uncanny, rather than repudiating and foreclosing what makes us uncomfortable. It is an invitation to make space for the unknown X, which is, after all, at the centre of all science and research.

7.9 Conclusion

This concludes the section titled Subjectivation. Narrative interviews were conducted with sawwalis at the Mira Datar Dargah with the expectation of reaching both the subject and the ghost. This part began with the subject and ended with the ghost, and what became apparent was that while there is a relation

83 Freud uses an anecdote from his own experience to elucidate the mechanism of the uncanny: “Once as I was walking through the deserted streets of a provincial town in Italy which was strange to me, on a hot summer afternoon, I found myself in a quarter the character of which could not long remain in doubt. Nothing but painted women were to be seen at the windows of the small houses, and I hastened to leave the narrow street at the next turning. But after having wandered about for a while without being directed, I suddenly found myself back in the same street, where my presence was now beginning to excite attention. I hurried away once more, but only to arrive yet a third time by devious paths in the same place. Now, however, a feeling overcame me which I can only describe as uncanny” (Freud, 1930: 10-11). He speaks of uncanny feelings as feelings of helplessness. Freud, in fact, refers to beliefs in the evil eye and the return of the dead as uncanny feelings stemming from the repetition-compulsion. However in this thesis, these experiences are not being analysed as working under a psychoanalytic compulsion to repeat. 160

between the subject and the ghost, this is not straightforward, and perhaps that the ghost functions as an internal critique of the narrative approach to the subject of faith healing that was used in this study. The narrative analysis performed in this chapter provokes us to think that the ghost has a method of moving the subject, and thus this thesis proposes working with the ghost as a method.

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CHAPTER 8

DISCUSSION

8.1 Introduction

This inquiry draws the attention of critical psychology to faith healing, in its imbrications with the psy- complex in contemporary India. Faith healing is a set of local, cultural, and religious practices that have been traditionally used to treat problems understood by mental health professionals as psychological or psychiatric manifestations of illness. The language used by faith healers and by mental health professionals is markedly different and incommensurate, and it is apparent that faith healing has a different account of the subject when compared to the psy-disciplines. The research is a qualitative study of a faith healing shrine that opend up the discussion on the modern negotiation between religion, science, and state. Thus, we see movements between the local contexts of India to transnational debates on contemporary subjectivity.

This chapter summarizes the findings of the two sections of the thesis titled Sitation and Subjectivation. It deliberates on the major contributions of the study. Next it brings up the major limitations of this project, and concludes by listing some directions that future research could take.

8.2 Research summary

The Mira Datar Dargah had been extensively researched through the methodological lens of anthropology since the 1980s. It became the first shrine after the Erwadi dargah tragedy of 2001 to be identified as a site for government-funded medical intervention in 2006, thus becoming interpellated by a nationalist discourse to modernize and become regulated under the mental health laws of the country. What was lacking in the citations of this site was a reference to the shrine and its practices on its own terms. However, the problem was deeper than that since in addition it was and continues to be challenging to determine the terms of an engagement with a culturally-different site.

I have shown how powerful discourses on religion, science, and state converge while referring to faith healing shrines using the example of the Mira Datar Dargah. I propose that faith healing is a site where a

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history of the present (Foucault, 1977) is being written84. “A history of the present begins by identifying a present-day practice that is both taken for granted and yet, in certain respects, problematic or somehow unintelligible […] and then seeks to trace the power struggles that produced them” (Garland, 2014: 373). I explore the paradigm of faith healing seen at the Mira Datar Dargah, Unava to write this history of the present, since “Writing a history of the present means writing a history in the present; self-consciously writing in a field of power relations and political struggle” (Roth, 1981: 43; emphasis in the original).

The aim of this resarch is to study faith healing in India on its own terms. I have explored faith healing by examining the particular conditions of its occurence in relation to the universal discourses of science, religion, and state. I followed two tracks in this study through a modular approach: the sitation of the site and the subjectivation of the subject of faith healing. While attending to the question of the subject, I was also able to inquire into the question of the ghost. These were three research questions brought to bear on the thesis:

1. How is the site, i.e. Mira Datar Dargah and the space surrounding it, being discursively produced in contemporary India? 2. How is the subjectivity of the sawwali constituted at the dargah? 3. What is the significance of the ghost in the stories recounted by sawwalis?

What we learn from faith healing practices can be elaborated by studying the site, subject, and ghost of faith healing. The site demonstrates that caste, which marks the quotidian life of the village, also influences the work of the shrine. Caste as master signfier undercuts the notion of a benevolent syncretism given to cosmopolitan shrines. It allows us to acknowledge that caste is the master signifier of Indian society, and the ground of a Dalit Standpoint epistemology. The subject of faith healing shows remarkable flexibility; multiple languages, multiples treatments, and even multiple people sharing the same symptom. Systems of faith healing deploy a notion of distributed subjectivity evident in the shuffling symptom between members of the family. We are witness to how subjectivity can be distributed between languages, between healing philosophies, and between members of a group. What is left outside the accounts of the subject is the ghost. The ghost cuts a dramatic figure when made centre stage, with a significance and method of its own that is encapsulated in the Ghost as Method. These findings are elaborated and explicated in the remainder of this section.

84 Michel Foucault had called his work on the prison in Discipline and Punish (1977) a ‘history of the present’. “His aim was to reveal something important – but hidden – in our contemporary experience; something about our relation to technologies of power–knowledge that was more clearly visible in the prison setting than elsewhere but which was nonetheless a general, constitutive aspect of modern individuals and their experience” (Garland, 2014: 368). Like some of his other coinages, Foucault himself does not elaborate on term ‘history of the present’, however the term has acquired its own weight through ancillary interpretations of his work (Roth, 1981; Garland, 2014). 163

The site

The Mira Datar Dargah was selected since it is a religious shrine with extant practices of healing that were interpellated by the State imperative to modernize faith healing centres, following the Erwadi Tragedy and the subsequent Supreme Court verdict of 2001 that considered shrines to be treating mental illness in the guise of ritual healing. In this moment, the psy-disciplines were able to make inroads into a space that had been relatively unaffected by the advance of psychiatrization. Since scientific psychiatry is blind to how religion or caste function in this drive to modernize, the fact that it is a minority-group shrine that is selected as the focus of intervention in a region marked by communal conflict is bypassed. As a way to respond to the blindness of scientific objectivity, this study has explored the site in its historical and geographical specificity as sitation.

A historical analysis showed a thousand-year history of Islam’s coming to the region of Gujarat, premised on a politically-expedient acceptance of the caste-hierarchy prevalent in the Indian sub-continent. During the medieval period as trade in Gujarat flourished, it also acquired a cosmopolitan character, especially in its capital then, Ahmedabad, that saw an influx of Sufi and Islamic scholars. Dargahs that came up were seen as syncretic spaces, which is how dargah worship continues to be cited in anthropological literature today. However, Gujarat has been the site of great communal discord in India, especially post- Independence. This research questions the syncretism thesis attached to dargahs, by first taking into consideration the history of communal violence between the majority Hindu community and the minority Muslim community in the region.The stronger critique of the syncretism thesis comes from an analysis of caste politics.

A geographical exploration of Unava village through the method of mapmaking found that caste functions as the master signifier (Lacan, 1970) of Indian society. The maps generated were caste-maps; each of the maps clearly showed how social space of the village was organized along the lines of the mapmaker’s caste identity. Here I propose the Dalit Standpoint, which reads caste as Brahminical hegemonic discourse to ensure the perpetuation of class and gendered relations of production in Indian society. Caste marks the Indian subject’s place in the world, of how a body relates to another, of how languages are deployed to signify both religious identity and power. Even in a syncretic shrine like the Mira Datar Dargah, where people of different class and gender co-inhabit the space, caste performs invisibly. The Dalit Standpoint hence provides a critique of previous scholarship on dargahs in India that celebrated its syncretism, by being blind to the invisible and unconscious processes of casteism.

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The subject

The subject of this research is the modern Indian citizen-subject negotiating between discourses of state, science and religion at the intersections of caste and gender. One kind of inquiry can be made solely on how the Hindu-Muslim relations play out around the dargah, of how a Muslim shrine in a village with a dominant savarna Hindu population is grappling with religious identities, as well as the claim to space and the right to use communal resources. However, within the shrine we find Hindus and Muslims (and others) co-existing. Within the shrine we also find other contradictions, of sawwalis whose devotion to the shrine is not impeded by the medical cures. Narratives generated through the process of this research show that subjectivity is replete with contradictions. Nonetheless, the sawwalis at the dargah are devotees of the shrine, and therefore beam their understandings and descriptions of medical interventions through the prism of faith healing: medicine works because the saint makes it so, medical doctors are directed to find right diagnoses due to the barakah of the shrine over the sawwali. Thus, ‘science’ is delegitimized in the narrative of the subject.

This study demonstrated that distress/disorder is a family affair, and reimagines the symptom of psychoanalytic imagination (Freud, 1914). In the shuffling of the symptom between family members we see how not only suffering, but also how subjectivity is distributed. The shrine treats the family as one subject, it advises the family to stay together, and sawwalis work on this logic that the family may be the source of conflict, but is also the method of working through the affliction besetting even one member of the family. While women in the family take on the burden of the shuffling symptom, the men in the family are often involved in it too. This inquiry concludes that faith healing shrines have a method of clinical value in identifying and working with the shuffling symptom that clinically-minded researchers would need to look at in future research on faith healing.

The ghost

This inquiry started with the question of the subject, and in the process of theorising subjectivation made its way to the ghost. The ghost is the missing element in the speech of the subject of faith healing. While its absence is noticeable in the narratives, its presence is never clear. Sawwalis have stories to tell of the ghosts they have encountered, but even in the story the ghost is only dimly perceived by the story-teller. To make present the ghost is a methodological problem, since neither an exegesis of the site nor the speech of the subject can capture this momentary but prominent appearance of the ghost. Thus, the ghost comes as an internal critique of the narrative approach to the subject.

This conceptualization of the ghost leads to the development of the ghost as method. Building on radical epistemological breaks such as ‘Asia as method’ (Chen, 2010), and ‘child as method’ (Burman, 2018), 165

ghost as method offers a way to think about the dimly-experienced and shadowy complaint of the subject that becomes so very troubling since it does not become part of the knowledge of the subject. Even when it is undoing the unity of the subject, the ghost could well be a necessary component of subjectivity. Ghost as method builds on the realization that lacuna in knowledge is disturbing to the corpus of knowledge we call science, and instead of trying to fill that gap in the script of rationality, uncertainty in itself is generative.

8.3 Other contributions to knowledge

Between caste and religion

There is a noticeable discrepancy between the two sections of this thesis. The section titled Sitation constructs an understanding of the space of the shrine and its social environment on the lines of caste hierarchy. It locates this Muslim shrine within the micro-politics of the site at the global and the local level. This is performed through both a historical and a geographical inquiry of the site, which supports the conceptualization of the ‘sitation’ of the Mira Datar Dargah. Through these analyses, this section forwards the idea of the Dalit Standpoint, or a conception of the subject that is constructed through the experience of the inescapable burden of caste hierarchization on every citizen-subject of modern India. It produces a conceptualization of sitation that should ideally hold up in the following section that interrogates the subject. However, this is not apparent in the narratives. Sawwalis do not drop their caste identities when they come to the dargah for faith healing, for sawwalis speak of religion rather than caste.

The second section titled Subjectivation attends to the speech of the sawwali at the dargah. Both Hindu and Muslim sawwalis were interviewed in this research, and there is an absence of a mention of the significance of caste in their narratives. Research subjects interviewed speak about their religious affiliations, beliefs, and attitudes, but have been reluctant to speak about what their caste affiliations. All the three Hindu sawwalis interviewed lived outside the premises of the dargah, and in fact, two Hindu sawwalis lived in rented accommodation close to others of their caste group. On the other hand, two of three Muslim sawwalis lived in the living quarters for sawwalis within the space of the dargah.

It is here that the relation to the nation-state became apparent in the narratives of the research subjects, with the identification of homeland being made with religious ideas. Two subjects, one Hindu and one Muslim, spoke of their notion of homeland not in connection to region but in connection to religious practice. Furthermore, Hindu subjects in this study projected an imagination of the future that demonstrated their hopes of finding healing and aspirations of overcoming the affliction besetting them at present. Two out of three Hindu sawwalis spoke of continuing to live on in Unava and being close to the

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shrine even after improving and experiencing a change in their fortunes. In contrast, Muslim subjects expressed less hope in becoming better, or their circumstances improving, and therefore did not elaborate on an imagination of the future outside the dargah. For two of the Muslim sawwalis, allusion to the future were tied to the boundaries of the shrine. The starkness of this imagination speaks of how religious minorities in India can produce fewer alternatives even within the large landmass of India as a nation.

However, this thesis will hold that this is not solely a religious divide in India with the Hindu majority of the country generating a more positive and upbeat narrative, and Muslims generating a more restrained account of subjectivity. Here, the experience of religious identity is mediated through the experience of caste hierarchy. The Dalit Standpoint argues that caste is written into the social unconscious of not only the region of Gujarat, but the entire nation. This can be demonstrated within the experiences of the research. For instance, their daily activities, where they live, the kind of food they eat, the dialects and terminologies they utilize, as well as the ways in which their individual symptom manifests are connected to their caste background. The religious identity of the subject of this research is resting on an unspoken experience of caste identity. This the way caste functions in Indian society, being all the more hegemonic as a discourse for being unspoken. Without the Dalit Standpoint, the narratives would present themselves as completely secular and tolerant of religious difference, while the site would look comfortably ensconced in the attributions of syncretism made by existing scholarship on faith healing/traditional medicine in South Asia. Nevertheless, the difficult relation between caste identity and religious identity will require further analysis in future research.

Methodological contributions

This research has experimented with methodology and method: it has forwarded the idea of modularity in methodology to respond to the multifaceted problematics of real-life situations that require differentiated analyses. This supports doing research without articially breaking up the research problem into fetishized part-objects that can be relegated to a specific sub-discipline with a niche methodology. Modularity allowed the project to track two different but intersected problems in the site and the subject. Methodologically a modular methdology can be facilitative in exploratory studies that are attending to an ongoing and contemporary event or situation that require wide-ranging and critical approaches in research, i.e. in researching a ‘history of the present’.

In exploring the site located in a rural village in Gujarat, a mobile method of the walking interview was attempted, and this thesis has analysed why this attempt was difficult to put into action. This method even its unsuitability was able to produce knowledge about the organization of social space of rural spaces in India. Beyond the insights it produces in this thesis, research in the future could build on this limitation of 167

this method to reimagine the use of mobile methods in India, and generate understandings of human geography that are adapted to the Indian context as well as non-urban contexts.

Finally, this research approached the subject through a narrative approach, and through it arrived at the ghost as method. The long and detailed process of generating narratives was made even more laborious in bringing the Indian subject to narrativization. This could be attributed to a failure of research to interpellate this subject, and thus incite the speech that would be gratifying to the researcher and the research process. Subjects in vulnerable situations like supplicants at sites of faith healing can be reserved and uncommunicative for several reasons, such as beliefs about jealous and malevolent interlocutors. While this makes the narrative approach strenuous, it also reveals cultural, social, and religious belief systems that can intersect with research agenda and researchers’ beliefs.

8.4 Limitations of the project

This project is based on the study of one site. In India there are thousands of shrines that are well-known for dispensing faith healing treatments. These shrines belong to different religious communities, there are Hindu, Dalit, Christian, Jain, Sikh, Buddhist, and Muslim shrines (to mention only the major social or religious groups of India). Spread across the country, these diverse shrines conduct healing practices in different languages. While the rationale for selecting this fieldsite was that Mira Datar Dargah was the first shrine to have a widely publicized and well-recorded psychiatric programme attached to it, this inquiry would have benefited by compared the practices of this shrine to that of another shrine. Thus, it is not obvious from the findings of the study if the conceptualization of faith healing can be generalized to all shrines in India with comparable reputations for faith healing.

A similar limitation can be perceived in this research’s conceptualization of subjectivity. It is not certain that the devotees of a Muslim shrine – Hindu or Muslim – would produce an account of the subject that can be replicated in devotees of shrines belonging to other religious communities, and even of other Islamic denominations. This is further complicated by the understanding generated in this research that both the identity and the subjectivity of the researcher produced a certain reaction in the researched. The intersubjective aspects of fieldwork that are highlighted throughout the thesis makes the task of transferring the meanings generated through the process of research to a more general study of the subject challenging. This thesis has attempted to respond to this limitation (that is faced by a majority of qualitative research) by making apparent the process of conducting it. The use of a fieldwork diary was introduced into the research design to document the subjectivity and individuality that the researcher brought to the project, as well as to make the researcher more reflexive about her research practices. An attitude of ongoing self-reflexivity has underscored decisions made both within the fieldsite, and without, and these have been included throughout the writing of the thesis. 168

8.5 Future directions for research

Working in clinical contexts in India is intersected by the modern imperative to deliver evidence-based medicine typified in the GMHM while simultaneously preserving the cultural specificity of local contexts. This investigation has provided insights into how faith healing functions in the relation between the shrine and the space it occupies, as well as the relation between the mujawar and the sawwalis. It has attended to how the subjectivity of the sawwali at the shrine is structured. It has demonstrated how the treatment at the shrine identifies the family as a unit for intervention, and how the symptom is then conceptualized to shuffle between members of the unit such that the subjectivity of the afflicted is distributed across the family, and thus the family not only share the burden of the symptom but also share the subject position of the sawwali. However more work is required to convert these insights into practical and actionable knowledge in clinical contexts. Future research must look at the clinical implications of the distributed subjectivity and the shuffling symptom shored up in faith healing practices in India. Thus, the findings of this research need to be tested through a clinical examination to produce practice-based solutions to professionals trained in clinical work such as psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers.

The ghost as method as an internal critique of the narrative approach brings a fresh approach to approaching the subject. It is obvious that the ghost as a concept is useful in a site that speaks about possession and trance regularly, however this thesis is advancing the ghost as method within the social sciences. Future research must investigate the deployment of ghost (both as concept and as method) as a critical resource for studying subjectivity in contexts outside that of faith healing, shrines, ghosts, and haunting.

8.6 Conclusion

Within area studies, this study provides a way of rewriting political and sociological theory in India, by first acknowledging the continuing relevance of caste, and then turning around the notion of Indian subjectivity by advancing the Dalit Standpoint; the oppressed ‘untouchable’ has the potential to change the anchoring points of social theory in India. The selection of a Muslim shrine thus had two advantages. One, it granted the opportunity to explore the significance of caste for Muslim communities in India, thus blowing away the assumption that caste discrimination is not practiced within Muslim groups. Two, it showcased the experience and narratives of Muslims, belonging to a beleaguered minority community at a time of rising defensive nationalism, and demonstrated the constriction and bleakness of narratives by Muslim citizen- subjects of India. Put together, this thesis is listening to the call of contemporary India struggling under the weight of identity politics and it is trying to be heard, even in a relatively prosperous village in northern Gujarat.

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Faith healing as an object of study presents an interesting challenge to discipline-based critical research. This is because this topic has implications for several social science and humanities disciplines, the most salient ones being psychology, critical psychology, gender and sexuality studies, culture studies, postcolonial studies, translation studies, cultural and medical anthropology, area studies, human geography, sociology, sociology of scientific knowledge, and sociology of religion. In the field of critical psychology, it particularly opens up a new area of study because it is located today between the universalizing agenda of global psychiatry and culturally-embedded practice of local belief systems. It is an area where the ‘big discourses’ of the subject are writ large – science, religion, state, gender, class, caste. At the same time, it is a study of the distress and malady experienced by thousands of people who flock to faith healing shrines all over the world. Faith healing is a paradigmatic example of reading a history of the present. If this topic becomes too burdensome, present within are playful speculations on ghostly matters. Faith healing conjures up the ghost, a teasing reminder that our knowledge of the subject is incomplete.

I hope this study will open up thinking about faith healing… not as an outdated cultural artefact, nor as a tourist guide to the hinterlands of India, but as an area of study that has the potential to approach the subject critically, and respond to the pressing issues of the contemporary moment. This research has experimented with methods and theories, worked through its paranoid moments, to experience the surprise of doing critical research on the site, subject, and ghost at a Muslim shrine in India.

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CHAPTER 9

EPILOGUE

9.1 Introduction: Why ghost?

In the early phases of this research project, this story was never meant to be written. The research plan did not include the plan of generating a ghost story or the story of a ghost. However following the phase of active fieldwork in Unava, where sawwalis narrated their experiences of misfortune and affliction, the absence of any sustained discussion of the ghosts in their narratives was evident. If neither observation nor conversation could capture the ghost, I began to think of a method to bring the ghost into words. If the ghost is an absent presence that is rendered into a present absence in the stories of the sawwalis that live with ghosts, then perhaps the ghost would have to be met on different terms than the meeting with the subject. Writing in the literary mode provides an alternate route to the ghost, one closer to the sensibility of the ghost, since the meaning of the ghost is difficult to fix.

Presented here is a fictional account based on my ethnographic observation of the practices of faith healing at Indian shrines. Thus, the site described in this story is not the Mira Datar Dargah, nor the characters any one of the research participants, but the resemblance is obvious. While the plot of the story is fictional, the description of the setting of a shrine for faith healing, and of the rituals conducted at the shrine are based on my fieldnotes. The setting does not directly correspond to the Mira Datar Dargah, but uses as reference material different shrines in Western India known for providing faith healing services to people possessed by ghosts. The story uses my observations of both faith healing shrines and the people who visit there to produce an account that allows a transmission to the reader of my experience of doing this research. It invites the reader to take on an observer’s role in a fantastical story of faith healing at a religious shrine in India.

The ghost story is an attempt to go beyond the narrative method, and tap into something that gets missed out in the account of the subject, which is the ghost. The fictional story, like the ghost, does not try to provide answers to (research) questions, but it is open to reading and interpretation. As such, it is an appropriate method to speak to/of the ghost.

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9.2 The Manifest: A Ghost Story

A scream tears up the air around me into shreds. Borne upwards by the sound are lemons, small and dried-up, and carried up as easily into the sky as scraps of paper. I let the din around me fade out as my eyes follow the lemons floating up, past the gilded roof. Some are trapped by an obstruction of brick or tree, and fall back down towards the ground, as if suddenly gaining their weight back. The rest of the shrunken lemons are disappearing into the dusk. I scrunch up my eyes to see if I can still follow them. Where do dead lemons go? Is it a better place?

“ni… munni… MUNNIYA!” I look around to find the source of that insistent call. In that chaos of bodies cavorting to the blaring music, for a moment I cannot recognize anybody in the courtyard around the shrine. As the sun sets, bright artificial lights are painting the scene before me into harsh colours. Next to me a man is flipping his head from side to side, trying to escape the hundred thousand tiny insects fluttering right in his face. As if they know that I am watching, a few insects detach from the cloud to swerve in my direction, but I stumble away from them and look away. Ah, there is the woman who shrieked just now. She is curled up into herself, holding her throat, trapping her scream inside her body. Those lemons must surely hurt! I watch them jostle inside her mouth, now stapled into an ugly grimace. But I must keep some distance from one such as her. The lemons have her. Taking a step backward, I fall over a girl bent over on all fours. Her hair is whipping around her as gusts of wind strike her small frame from all directions. I can feel a puff of air trying to make its way up my shalwar. “Munniya”, I hear it directly in my ear this time, and a hand grabs me from the side. The face looking expectantly at me is beginning to acquire distinguishable features, one eye smaller than the other, greying hair peeking out from her dupatta.

“What is happening? Are you OK, Munni?”, the woman is saying as she pulls me towards her. I know this hold! It is Ma, but she is clutching me too tightly. I nod my head vigorously in response to the question, hoping her obvious excitement will subside and she will loosen her grasp on my arm. Instead her eyes widen and she tugs me closer, “What is happening to you, Munniya? Tell your mother. What are you feeling? You are looking strangely at me. Don’t hide it from me, my sweet Munni”. I do not have a response, but she seems to be expecting something. At my feet, I see a brown lemon. “Look,” I say as I reach for it, “lemon”, and I hold it up for her inspection. “Where did you find that?” she asks in exasperation, brushing it off my palm.

I suddenly remember an image from the past, it is both clear to me and yet shadowed in the colours of childhood. I was dancing around in a red dupatta, and through the window I saw my mother hanging up the clothes to dry on the clothesline. I had raced towards her, holding up the dupatta behind me so that it could fly in the wind, the badge of my exuberance. Just before I could have slammed into her hip, I had veered into loops around her with my dupatta trailing me. Very quickly we were stitched together by stiff 172

red threads, and she had hugged me, but her voice had been stern, “where did you get this? It is my wedding dupatta, you know”. I remember just hanging on to her, the sun and my cheeks had not then learnt division. But she had unwrapped us, and as she carefully folded the cloth, she told me, “Someday you can have this. I will dress you up on your wedding in it and everybody will marvel at how beautiful you are. Just like your mother”. She had ended on a laugh, but I had been confused. Did she mean this dupatta was not mine already?

*****

I emerge from my memory, and see Ma distributing our food onto four misshapen aluminium plates. It is a mish-mash of stuff, and I look at it with suspicion. “Come on, don’t look like that! This food is blessed. We got it from the shrine. God bless the kind souls who gave it. See, Kajal is eating it without complaint,” Ma says. Seated quietly, already tucking away into the food is Kajal, my younger sister. Ma gives a plate of food to Baba, and then carries mine over to me where I am seated on the floor of the one-room accommodation built for pilgrims. To one side is the kitchen, hosting the few utensils Ma transported from the village, and a kerosene stove, greasy and slightly unbalanced. On the other side is our bulging luggage, still unopened, and some rasai mats to sleep on. Crisscrossing the space above our heads are a couple of sagging clotheslines, and the dim tubelight high on the wall is casting their shadows on my head, as if cancelling out any thoughts I have. “Munniya! Look sharp! Take the plate from your mother’s hands. There is nothing on the ceiling above.” I hear Baba’s irate voice, and giving him a quick glance, look at the plate of food being held out to me. “I don’t want it. I am not hungry,” I tell Ma with certainty. Her eyes perceptibly change definition, and briefly it makes her look inhuman. “Eat it now! You haven’t eaten anything since noon. You need to keep your strength up,” Ma says and shoves the plate directly into my hands. I perch it in my lap, and look at the assortment of food, some oily, some stale, and all of it unappetising. I can’t make myself eat it. Rather than eat, I want to step out of this musty room. Visions from last evening at the shrine are flickering in front of my eyes. It was all so strange! When they lit the loban in that sooty-black pan, I thought I had seen something. What was that in the smoke rising from the burning loban? I was not able to make out if there had been a form inside the smoke, or the smoke itself had a form. Whatever it was, it was angry. I had slightly drawn away from the pan when the man had walked past us, while the others around had tried to catch the smoke with their hands. This place is frightening. I see people seeking out these shadowy forms in smoke. Why am I here amongst these strange happenings? I just want to be alone and wander in my own thoughts, not dodging lemons and loban.

“Oh god, what do I do with this girl? The rest of us have finished eating and she hasn’t even started,” Ma’s voice is dripping with frustration. “I have to go to the toilet”, I say, and putting the plate on the ground, get up. Kajal volunteers to go with me, rushing in to defuse any tension, and I take the opportunity to walk out into the night. The shared toilets are at one end of the passage. I give my dupatta 173

to Kajal, close the door and squat over the hole in the ground, finally alone with myself. The door is made of rotten wood, rusting tin, and nails that are lessons in caution, and it does not fit its frame. Cold air rushes in from the space it leaves below, but on the top is the dark sky. The moon is full tonight but I can only see a slice, as the door obscures the rest. Good, it is too bright! There are things of the night prowling in the sky, unafraid, not even trying to hide… unlike me, but in the dark they cannot see me. I breathe in a sigh of satisfaction in the stillness around me.

*****

“Arré, Munniya, wake up now. It’s time for the morning prayers at the shrine”, I hear in my ear. Ma’s face is looming much too close again. A quick surge of anger courses through me that she won’t let me alone. It’s still dark outside, the birds are sleeping, the trees are sleeping, but not me. I turn away and pull my leg inside the sheet. See, even the floor is asleep, so cold it is! Ma is hot with impatience though. She yanks away my cover, and I sit up as the cold wind assails me all over, goosebumps raising the hair on my arms. My hair tumbles around my shoulders in stiff coils, but suddenly I am energized. When Ma tells me to get up, I quickly stand up before she can finish her nagging. I am wearing the clothes from yesterday, but these feel warm in the chilly pre-dawn, and I convince Ma to let me go in them. I will change later, after the morning prayers. From the open door, I can see that the sky is slowly lightening. “We are going to be late now,” I tell the rest, now eager to get going. Baba looks pleased to see me so enthusiastic, but he wants a cup of tea before setting out. “We can have chai outside the shrine”, I admonish him, and he relents. He also knows there are chai-wallahs who wander through the crowd there with a large hot kettle of sweet milky masala chai and little plastic cups. The little boys selling chai will anyway beg us to buy a few cups till we relent, if only to be rid of them.

I step out of the room, not being able to wait any longer, stamping my feet to get warm. By the time Baba begins to lock the door, my feet are ready to race, and I start walking alone in the direction of the shrine. It’s only my second time here, but I can see the minarets in the distance. Anyway, I feel like I would be able to make my way blindfolded, but I try to temper my pace so that I won’t be scolded again. When I see that Kajal has been deputized to keep up with me, I am finally able to pick up my stride. There are only a couple of people on the road, and they are making their way in the same direction as me. A couple looks at me as I overtake them. The man is carrying a slip of a woman in his arms. The woman peeps out from her shelter on his shoulder before her head falls back in fatigue. I can hear all her bones grinding against each other with even that tiny movement. One step ahead is an older woman carrying bulging cloth bags in both hands. It has packets of food like the ones we took back yesterday, and that I could not make myself eat. Grimacing, I hurry past, almost tripping over a dirty matted dog sprawled in the middle of the road. It maniacally barks at me, and I start running in anxiety. “Didi! Didi!”, I look back to see Kajal trying to keep up with me, but I cannot see the dog, though I can hear it howling behind us. The heaps of

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rubbish are dwindling in size along the way till I finally reach the gates, my dupatta barely hanging on to my shoulders in my hurry to get here. Ahead of me is the shrine looking serenely back at me.

It’s not yet sun-break and the shrine seems to be relatively empty. The next moment, I hear the strains of the prayers being thrown into space by loudspeakers. It is the same recording as last evening, and it starts spreading like the flood-water that had broken the banks of the river in my village many, many years ago. I was so eager to get here but now I am afraid that the music will suffocate me and then submerge us all into a watery grave. People brush past me as I falter at the threshold. The family I had overtaken arrive too, and the husband carries the woman’s slight form into the premises of the shrine. The noise inside is loud enough to drown out the sound of bone-on-bone crunching coming from the woman. Kajal comes up behind, breathing hard, and pulls me to the side of the gate, so that people are not pushing me in their haste to enter. “Cover your head, girl”, a man dressed in crisp white clothes gives me a stern look as he steps inside. His eyes have the power of acid, and I hastily cover my hair as protection against his gaze. Kajal reaches up to adjust my dupatta, her own primly perched on her head. Our parents arrive, and without a word steer us into the shrine.

Inside the sound is even louder, almost deafening and I close my eyes and mouth to keep it out, trying to breathe as little as possible. I remember how the flood had taken everything in its path, and the houses that had been close to the river had been ruined. The chickens would have safely floated away, I presume. But the goats must have met an early death. Now I can smell the rot of flesh. I use my dupatta to cover as much of my face as I can, trying to squeeze shut all my orifices, and I am alone with the sound of blood beating inside me, and the smell of meat is receding in little ebbs. Flesh will have its own sound henceforth, the sound of flowing water, thickened with goat’s blood. The sound outside me abruptly shuts off, the recording at the shrine is over. I am drained now. The water is gone. My eyes are tightly shut, and I need to concentrate to open them up, slowly, like a drawstring purse. I see a man in white clothes walking towards us with a smoking pan in his hands. In place of his eyes are two embers. Before I can shut my eyes again, he waves the pan in my direction. In a flash, fire jumps in my direction and enters my eyes. I want to scream but manage to hold it in as the burn quickly starts descending past my nose, my throat, and then shoots in to my extremities. The nails on my fingers and toes curl up in the radiant heat, leaving the pink skin below exposed. The pain is excruciating but I try to keep my pain muted. Ma is looking at me, she can see that it hurts. For a second her eyes glow too, she looks satisfied. Then it is over. I slump to the ground, the cool tiles of the courtyard of the shrine welcome me into their embrace. The relief is indescribable. I let myself sink into it till we are one.

*****

I stir in the cool of the outer chambers of the shrine. It isn’t summer yet, but it gets hot under the direct sun of the afternoon. “Munniya, see, here he is”, Ma says. The four of us are seated on the floor in a

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semi-circle. I see that man who had admonished me in the morning about my dupatta come towards us and sit down, his back leaning on a tin cupboard. He takes his time to get comfortable, takes out a large mobile phone and lays it carefully next to himself, and then looks up directly at Baba, “so how can I help you?” Baba launches into talk, as if he was just holding in the barrage till now. “This is my daughter, Munni, Munniya”, nobody looks at me, so I guess they are talking about someone else, “she is the elder one. What all we have not done for her! She was such a lively girl. But now look at her. She is not interested in anything. She won’t help around the house. She is of no use to her mother. Is this what a girl her age is supposed to be like? Her mother has spoilt her, but I can’t do everything, can I? I work at an oil refinery. When I come back, they are always fighting. Munniya is either yelling or sulking. She is just sitting doing nothing, as if she is some queen. Kajal is ok, we took her out of school so that she could help in the house. But you tell me…”, he is interrupted by Ma who chips in, “Baba, It is fine if Munniya does all her drama with me, I am her mother. It’s a mother’s lot to take everything! But we had a found a boy for Munniya. Look at her, she is old enough to start her own family. Will her sasural treat her with as much patience? A mother-in-law is not the same as a mother. A mother’s heart is soft like candle wax, it melts when a child of hers is crying, girl or boy.” Her face crumbles, as if she is going to cry, and she hides her face with the pallau of her saree. I look at her with bemusement. These past couple of days everybody was so wooden, spitting out short commands, terse directions. Now they are all breaking open over a stone of a man. Close by to the man in white is another one in white, rotund and yet with the same stony exterior, who is holding his own council with another group of people. In fact, I looked around, all around me these mini-councils, small darbars are being conducted. I don’t know how many there are; perhaps it is a hall of mirrors?

I notice Baba is talking again, his voice rising in pitch, sounding more and more feminine, which seems to attract a crowd. Our small circle is being padded with onlookers who settle down on the ground behind us. It feels cosy. I realize that the man in white is asking me something, “Munni! Isn’t that your name?” I give a small nod, my head too heavy for my neck. Munni, little girl. He is calling me little girl, and his eyes are cradling me, “OK, Munni, I am going to heal you. You will do as I say. Isn’t that right?” This is not a question, because he turns back to his cupboard while speaking, unlocks it, and removes a children’s school notebook and a pencil. Opening the notebook, still looking down he asks, “where are you putting up then?” Apparently Baba knows who he is talking to because he eagerly bursts into speech again. I am scanning the contents of his cupboard which seems to be pulsating with small but potent noises. In the corner from a little feather-broom I can hear the wind hissing. There are necklaces and amulets that are whispering curses. Little boxes that are struggling to hold their contents in; it sounds like a wrestling match is taking place inside. There are bottles giving out fumes that sound like women crying. I see a few old plastic bottles of Coke and Thums Up, but filled with a light orange liquid… not orange juice or even Miranda, it is too thin for that, but something else. It is glowing with orange sparks. Beside it are locks and keys, and chains of iron links. They look at me as I look at them, challenging me to a battle of strength.

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My attention sharpens like a nail, and I scan the chains to find the weak links. I can break them, I will show them! I can feel my strength grow, covering me like a hood. My hand reaches out to crush a chain into pieces, no, into dust. Another hand comes from the side to grasp my wrist. It is the man in white, the healer who everybody is calling Baba, even my Baba is calling him that. I jerk around to look at him and he gives me another admonishing look. I pull my hand out of his hard grasp quickly, my strength plummeting back into my body and tucking away into my spine.

“That will be yours when you are ready,” he is looking at me but his voice is loud enough so that the entire assembled audience can hear him, “You can go now. I have told you what you must do. Bathe, once a day! Oil the hair, and tie it up. Clothes must cover her up properly. See that she is not left alone at any time. Someone must always accompany her, especially here at the shrine! We are responsible for her, but we can’t be everywhere, can we? So one of you has to be there with her all the time. I am going to give you some holy water and some medicinal herbs, which she must take at regular intervals. I will give you a fresh supply every day. Be regular at the time of loban, all of you. All of you need to be active. And listen to me. You cannot leave till she becomes better! You have been brought here by Baba and he will be the one to release you. And Baba will make everything ok”. I look at Baba, who is drinking in every word. He can? However the healer gives me twisted smile, as if realising my confusion, and points at the wall separating us from the main shrine. “Baba! He is everybody’s Baba. He looks after everybody”. I realize the man in white is not talking about my Baba or even himself, but the one residing in the grave in the centre of the courtyard. Another Baba? How many are there?

*****

In the days to come, I hear that word often. Every time I join the conversation, somebody is saying, “Baba-Baba”. The word is everywhere, like mosquitoes after the mustard harvest. Buzzing around me, it is repetitive and annoying. Ma makes me chant it endlessly, till my mouth loses its shape. What if it slips off my face? But it is not as painful as being assailed by the music from the loudspeakers. My nails get seared every day into dark talons, and fall off later, only to grow back during the night. The floor of our room is littered with my dehydrated nails. No one seems to mind it. We do not even try to sweep it away. Perhaps someday we will be submerged in these horny pieces of my shedding. It is just that everyone is getting accustomed to the routine now. Life here has a circuit of its own, between the shrine and the room. There is nothing else to do, but one gets used to it. There are many families like ours. They live in hired rooms like ours, and we meet them at the shrine or on the walk to it. Each of us have our favourite spots and we settle into them. We respect each other’s space. I like that. There is no work to be done, no domestic concerns when you have no house, no hours to count down when you have no job. There is nothing to be accomplished by the end of the day. I can keep to myself and observe the drama at the shrine.

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The other day I yelled out though, scaring Kajal into tears. There was a woman who spat out a snake. Not a small one either. It was the length of my arm and had a yellow diamond design on its thin slimy body. It slid out of her mouth till it was almost out and hanging straight down, a foot above the ground. For a few moments the woman struggled to expel it completely while her healer yelled insults at the snake. I saw that the tail end of the snake was poking out of her ear and coiled in some of her hair. “Inside the ear! Inside the ear!” I screamed, excited. The healer was galvanized into action and smacked the side of her head with his feather-broom. The snake fell free on the ground as the woman fell unconscious in the waiting arms of another woman. The serpent flicked its head from side to side, it seemed to be scanning the onlookers for another host. People were just milling around stupidly, craning their necks to get a better view of the action around the unconscious woman, rather than the snake. “Snake! There!” it burst out of me as I took a step forward to warn them, before Baba had grabbed a handful of kurta to pull me back. I lost sight of it then. It was a really fast one, I can tell you that.

I like snakes. There used to be a wandering tribe of snake-charmers who would periodically make their way through my village. One of the snake-charmers was my friend. He was a little younger than me, I think, but he was always so self-assured as he cradled the snakes in his bare hands. He was never fearful of them, as I used to be. He would tell me that snakes were highly intelligent creatures; if you approached them properly, they made good companions. His own was a light-coloured snake that would slide like silk over the dark skin of his arm to disappear into his shirt, where I could see it make its circuitous path around his narrow body before popping out at the neck. I found myself excited every time the snake-charmers made their way back into the village. I would slip away when I could to meet the boy and hear the stories of his travels. His tribe were nomads, and he had seen so much of the world. He would tell me about other villages he had been to, and we had developed a good friendship.

I hear my kurta tear. In Baba’s clasp, the old fabric has ripped apart. I try to spot the snake one last time, but I don’t know where it went off to. “Munniya, enough! Do you have no sense? Come on, you need to go back to the room and change. This is not decent!” Baba, my father, sounds very angry with me, and he holds me by my upper arm and shepherds me out of the shrine. Other people are talking about the snake in fear, “Did you see the snake? Have you seen anything like that?” somebody asks the old woman who has been here for longer than everyone else. She is so old, the cataracts in her eyes are silver like the moon, and emanate a mournful light. “Yes, I have seen everything”, she croaks and gives me a sharp look. Fortunately I am marched away from her piercing gaze.

*****

My head is being held underwater by Kajal. Little sister takes charge very often now. I struggle under her hold for a moment and throw her away. I may have lost weight in the past two weeks, but I have gained a lot in strength. I am much stronger than her and we both know it. She counteracts it by being very rough

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with me. Must I remind her that I am older? She seems to no longer care about respect. We are in the bathing pool inside the shrine where ever-so-often I am encouraged to, or even harangued into performing ablutions with my clothes on. Usually after one of the fire spells that burns me from the inside to my ends, I don’t mind it too much. I am certain that I can handle whatever they throw at me. I feel something like contempt for them; this place, those healers dressed in white, my family, none of them cannot harm me no matter what they do. Somewhere inside me is a seed that is safe from all this daily activity we must toil in, the prayers twice a day, these baths in front of everybody, the devotion that is made into spectacle for the general public.

Kajal charges at me from behind, her unsullied nails scratch at me. She presses her body into mine, and pulls me with her whole body into the pool. We are both fully dressed, but it is immaterial; the clothes may not have been there at all. I feel her gritted jaw on my shoulder, and her lips are hot on the edge on my neck. For a moment, I allow the contact before flicking her away. I surface out of the water and look at the sky. Mirroring the relative calm of the shrine after prayer time, the sky is placid for the moment. It is amavasya, night of no-moon; for some reason that was important to the healer. After the evening prayers, when we had gone to take our daily blessings from him, I had smiled at him, and it seemed to anger him. “Tonight is the night! Tonight you will get it! Prepare her”. As usual he was speaking to multiple people, and I could not be sure who he was addressing. I was brought, then, to the pool.

“Kajal, enough!” Ma says from the edge of the pool, and pulls Kajal out with care. I wade out unaided, water flowing off in rivulets out of my hair and down my body. I am powerful in the growing gloom of the night. I stare at the tableau of affectionate mother-and-daughter in front of me, and shout, “You cannot fool me! Munniya, Munniya, you call me. It is all a lie. You think I can’t see that?” There is something in my throat and the sound comes out like a growl. Ma gives me a dirty look, chanting “Baba-Baba” under her breath, and a gurgle of laughter is bubbling up through the restriction in my throat. But it hurts my throat and when Baba shoves a plastic cup of sweet tea, I gulp it down thankfully. Lying down on the floor of the courtyard just at the opening of the main enclosure of the shrine, I look up at the sky again, deliberately pointing my feet towards Baba’s shrine, but this time nobody scolds me. Perhaps they have finally given up on making me ‘behave’? Now the sky looks like a black dome and I am reminded of the black skin of my snake-charmer. A couple of clouds snake away into the horizon. I want to call them back.

When I had told him about the marriage my parents had arranged for me to a man picked from our own caste, he had promised that he would come back soon and take me away. We had spent a few stolen moments by the river, away from the watchful eyes of the village. Then his tribe had left as always, but this time leaving a trace behind, I had locked our promise into the coils of my hair and I had waited. I had never felt so much a woman as when I had waited. I was no longer a girl, and everyone had complimented me on how I was becoming more and more beautiful for my groom. If only they knew why my hair grew so wildly! My skin became white as I was kept away from the sun over that year. Once a 179

month I would rub turmeric and sandalwood all over my body, and my face glowed with anticipation. I would imagine how my colour would contrast with his as we lay among the snakes. I saw everything in black and white then. But there are other colours too, I saw that when I grew up. Isn’t there vermillion red? It tastes like lead. I know, I had tasted it through my forehead on the day I was married off to a man I barely knew from the neighbouring village.

I am jolted back to the present as I hear the sound of drums close by. Is this what happens at night at the shrine? Usually we go back to the room by this time. My curiosity is pricked, and I sit up to see that there is a troupe of men with dholaks who have started a simple beat a few paces away. They look at me with hard eyes, and though I like the music they are making, I cannot help but be suspicious. I get up to move away, and then realize that while I was sky-gazing, I had been surrounded on all sides. My family, the acquaintances we have made over the last two weeks at the shrine, and other regulars at the shrine had quietly formed a rough circle around me while I was lost in the contemplation of the sky and the snakes. Then I see the healer seated quietly with his paraphernalia spread around him. He gives me a nasty smirk. I face him squarely, challengingly, pulling my power out of my spine like a snake. He is the person to look out for, the drummers are here at his call. I watch him ceremonially open a small bottle of thick orange liquid, which I now know to be saffron boiled in water. He then takes out a peacock feather, the tip of which he dips into his saffron ink. He uses it as a quill to write something on four chits of paper. I have seen this before, and I would not be impressed but for the fact that today there seems to be a special gravity to the moment as he drops the chits into a copper glass.

As the saffron dissolves into the water, it gives off fumes that are speaking in tongues I cannot decipher. He gives the tumbler to my father, who advances towards me as many hands hold me down and the orange liquid is poured into my throat. The constriction in my neck loosens a little bit, and along with the liquid I start coughing up tufts of black hair! Hair but not soft like how mine used to be, but like steel wool. I am petrified, my earlier feeling of power is receding. There is no one here of mine, no one who will help me against the healer. It hurts as this stiff hair comes out of me, but also something else is getting loose within me. A strange scream is launching out of me. It hurts. I don’t know who is screaming inside the confines of my body… Is it me? Or somebody else? Is it Baba?

There are too many voices now, both inside and outside. The dhols have picked up the beat and the crowd is chanting “Baba-Baba”. The healer advances in deliberate steps, but I have no place to retreat. In his outstretched hand is a talisman necklace, a black thread on which is suspended a red cloth that seals some of his magic words. With a burst of strength I flick his hand away and the talisman falls out of his hand, as he falls back one step. “Saali”, he swears at me and goes to pick it up as the crowd goes wild. They close in even more, and I claw out at a woman who has wandered in within reach. Under my ministrations, her face grows angry red threads down one side, red like my wedding dupatta when they had married me against my will to “the right man”. The screams from within me continue unabated; I do 180

need to stop even for breath. Now I am more than one person, and I have the strength of all of them. The healer is back and he pounces at me, our bodies making contact. Other hands snatch at me, trying to immobilize me as he ties the talisman around my neck. I fight them all, I have never had so many hands touching me before. I had only felt the hard calluses on the hand of my husband as he had beaten me into submission, squeezed the wait out of me once and for all. He had taught me with my last few breaths that nobody will come for me, that resistance was futile. Now, once again I remember the lesson, and fall at the feet of the healer, the fight seeping out of me.

When I look up I realize it isn’t him, not the man in white they call Baba. Instead it is him; Baba! “Baba?”, I scream in terror. When did the switch happen? When did he appear? His seat in the shrine had been vacant all these days. “Baba, you?” “Yes! So now you know”, says Baba dressed in a white so radiant, I cannot see him very well, but the impact of his presence is like a bruise on the underside of my skin. I see the bruises making themselves apparent, all hurting at the same time. I struggle to my knees. “What is your name?” he asks loudly. “What? It’s Munniya. My name is Munniya! Everyone calls me that!” I am disoriented, between the uproar around me, the saffron-water seething within me, and Baba’s presence like a brand on the surface of my flesh, I cannot think very clearly. “What is your name? You cannot lie to me”, he thunders, “Tell me your real name. Tell your real name. Tell your name”, it becomes a litany that the dhols pick up, that the circle takes up, even the ground is pricking it into my feet, and knees. I use my strength to leap into the air to minimize the contact with the ground. Just as I try to launch myself into the sky, Baba anchors me down with his voice, “You cannot escape me! Tell me your real name!” He flings more saffron-water at me, “Tell me your real name!”

And a name manifests itself to me. In the midst of everything that feels alien to me, surrounded by strangers and their sharp ways, this word feels mine. It is familiar, its edges have softened with many many many years. It belongs to me, and now that I know it, I do not want to share it. Nothing else is mine, only this. I screw up my mouth and try to curl up into a ball. “Munniya! Munniya! Munniya!”, I sob in desperation. Surely she will not mind if I use her name, I have been good to her, saved her from “the right man” they found for her. She does not say anything. Mawn Munniya, the mute Munni. She has been silent this entire time. I realize we have never spoken to each other. Can she even speak?

Gathering my courage from her secretive silence, I repeat it with fervour, “It really really is Munniya”. Can I convince them if I say it often enough? I scan the crowd to find somebody out there who is sympathetic, avoiding the urgent gaze of Munni’s family. I join my hands in supplication to the crowd, perhaps there is someone who will help me protect my name. “Please, please, please”, my voice is hoarse. The crowd will have none of it. They do not let me go. The drummers surround me, and wherever the beat touches the ground, it starts to crumble. The earth is shaking, and the sky is too far away. Between the two, there is the only the torment of Baba’s fierce presence. The pressure is intolerable. The bruises under my skin are now pigmented with brinjal-colour. “I beg you, Baba, leave me alone” I whisper softly, I know he can hear 181

me. I am utterly exhausted, and when Baba roars at me again, I give it up. “Pratyakshita. It’s Pratyakshita.” The lights start going out in front of my eyes, and I feel my strength collapse into itself, as my name is exposed to the world and to myself. “Pratyakshita”, says Baba and I can’t look at him anymore, at any of them. “Now your healing has begun. Now you are mine”.

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APPENDIX I – UNIVERSITY RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL LETTER

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APPENDIX II – CONSENT FORM FOR WALKING INTERVIEWS (ENGLISH VERSION)

You are being invited to take part in a research study as part of a doctoral research. Before you decide it is important for you to understand why the research is being done and what it will involve. Please take time to read the following information carefully and discuss it with others if you wish. Please ask if there is anything that is not clear or if you would like more information. Take time to decide whether or not you wish to take part. Thank you for listening to this.

Who will conduct the research? Sabah Siddiqui, School of Education, University of Manchester, PhD in Education, Full-time

Title of the Research

Clinical imagination in critico-cultural context: faith healing practices in India

What is the aim of the research?

The aims of this research are to study the practices of faith healing as they operate at the Mira Datar Dargah, Unava by looking at a) how is the space of the Dargah and its environment structured, b) how does faith (vis-à-vis the Dargah) and science (vis-à-vis the Clinic) negotiate with each other in the Dava- Dua programme and c) what possible imaginations does this site provide to working clinically in India.

Why have I been chosen?

This research collects data from multiple participants in order to better comprehend the practices of faith healing at the Mira Datar Dargah. Therefore, you, as a long-time resident of Unava will have seen how the town has grown with time, have a significant place in this town and have been chosen to take part in this study.

What would I be asked to do if I took part?

You are being asked to participate in a walk along with the researcher through the parts of Unava that are you comfortable with (this is being called a walking interview). The aim of the walking interview is to demonstrate how you as a resident of Unava occupy the town. The duration of the walk is largely dependent on you but as a guideline it should conclude within two hours and will take place during daylight at a time hours that is mutually convenient. After the walk, you will be asked to draw out a map of the area that you and the researcher covered as well as the parts that you did not. This map will be kept by the researcher at the end of the walking interview.

What happens to the data collected?

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Any conversation during the walking interview will be recorded with your permission and transcribed. The map will also be retained by the researcher. The audio recordings, transcripts and map will be kept in a password protected computer.

How is confidentiality maintained?

Identifiable names will never be written on data. The collected data will be stored in a password-protected computer and written transcripts will be kept under lock-and-key. Audio records of the interviews will be destroyed after the research.

What happens if I do not want to take part or if I change my mind?

It is up to you to decide whether or not to take part. If you do decide to take part you will be given this information sheet to keep and be asked to give verbal consent. If you decide to take part you are still free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason. You may withdraw from the study even after having accepted to take part. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Will I be paid for participating in the research?

This study does not include payment to the participants. It is based on voluntary participation.

What is the duration of the research?

The overall duration of the research is planned to take six months. This particular interview is expected to last for around two hours. Besides this, the doctoral research as a whole includes interviews with people accessing the Dava-Dua programme, i.e.those accessing the Dargah and the Clinic for treatment.

Where will the research be conducted?

The research will be conducted within the town of Unava.

Will the outcomes of the research be published?

The outcomes of this research might be published in academic journals and included in a doctoral dissertation. Excerpts from interview transcripts might be published. However, full confidentiality will be maintained and it will not be possible to identify the participants of this research.

Criminal Records Check I have undergone a satisfactory criminal records check.

Contact for further information To contact me: e-mail [email protected] For further contact related with other issues, you might contact the researcher’s supervisor:

Dr. Rubina Jasani; E-mail: [email protected]

Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL UK 197

What if something goes wrong? If you wish to withdraw from the study you can do this by intimating the researcher of your intention to withdraw without having to provide an explanation. If in retrospect you want your data expunged from the research you can intimate the researcher by letting her know within 1 month of the last interview, after which the data cannot be withdrawn. If there are any issues regarding this research that you would prefer not to discuss with members of the research team, please contact the Research Practice and Governance Coordinator by either writing to 'The Research Practice and Governance Coordinator, Research Office, Christie Building, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL', by emailing: Research- [email protected], or by telephoning 0161 275 7583 or 275 8093.

What do I do next?

If you decide to participate in this study, you can inform the researcher through these contact details:

Ms. Sabah Siddiqui, +91 95584 17383, e-mail [email protected]

Before joining the studies you will be required to give your verbal consent to participate in this research project.

This Project Has Been Approved by the University of Manchester’s Research Ethics Committee [project 15343]

CONSENT FORM

If you are happy to participate please give verbal consent for each of the statements below:

Do you agree?

1. I confirm that I have been told the attached information sheet on the above study and have had the opportunity to consider the information and ask questions and had these answered satisfactorily.

2. I understand that my participation in the study is voluntary and that I am free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason.

3. I understand that the interviews will be audio recorded.

4. I agree to the use of anonymous quotes.

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I agree that any data collected may be published in anonymous form in a doctoral dissertation, academic books or journals.

5. I agree to take part in the above project.

Name of participant Date

Name of person taking consent Date

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APPENDIX III – CONSENT FORM FOR NARRATIVE INTERVIEWS (ENGLISH VERSION)

Who will conduct the research?

Sabah Siddiqui, School of Education, University of Manchester, PhD in Education, Full-time

Title of the Research

Clinical imagination in critico-cultural context: faith healing practices in India

What is the aim of the research?

Why have I been chosen?

This research collects data from multiple participants in order to better comprehend the practices of faith healing at the Mira Datar Dargah. As you are accessing the Dargah for faith healing and the Clinic for psychiatric services, you have been chosen to take part in this study.

What would I be asked to do if I took part?

You are being asked to participate in a series of semi-structured interviews, structured more like conversations with the researcher (these are being called narrative interviews). The aim of the interview is understand what you take from being part of the Dawa-Dua programme between Mira Datar Dargah and the medical clinic and how it informs your experience of illness and healing. The duration of a single interview is largely dependent on you but as a guideline it should conclude within an hour and will take place during daylight hours at a time that is mutually convenient. The series of interviews will go on for a maximum of five months and the time gap between any two interviews will be discussed at the end of each interview.

What happens to the data collected?

The interviews will be recorded with your permission and transcribed. The audio recording and transcripts will be kept in a password protected computer. At the end of the narrative process, you can be provided with a verbal report consisting of a preliminary analysis based on the interaction between you and the researcher.

How is confidentiality maintained?

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Identifiable names will never be written on data. The collected data will be stored in a password- protected computer and written transcripts will be kept under lock-and-key. Audio records of the interviews will be destroyed after the research.

What happens if I do not want to take part or if I change my mind?

Will I be paid for participating in the research?

This study does not include payment to the participants. It is based on voluntary participation.

What is the duration of the research?

The overall duration of the research is planned to take six months. This particular interview process is expected to last for around four to five months. Besides this, the doctoral research as a whole includes interviews with residents of Unava who will participate in walks and map-making exercises.

Where will the research be conducted?

The research will be conducted within the town of Unava.

Will the outcomes of the research be published?

Criminal Records Check

The researcher has undergone a satisfactory criminal records check.

Contact for further information

To contact me: e-mail [email protected]

For further contact related with other issues, you might contact the researcher’s supervisor:

Dr. Rubina Jasani; E-mail: [email protected] Humanitarian & Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL UK

What if something goes wrong?

If you wish to withdraw from the study you can do this by intimating the researcher of your intention to withdraw without having to provide an explanation. If in retrospect you want your data expunged from the research you can intimate the researcher by letting her know within 1 month of the last interview, after which the data cannot be withdrawn.

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If there are any issues regarding this research that you would prefer not to discuss with members of the research team, please contact the Research Practice and Governance Coordinator by either writing to 'The Research Practice and Governance Coordinator, Research Office, Christie Building, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL', by emailing: Research- [email protected], or by telephoning 0161 275 7583 or 275 8093.

What do I do next?

If you decide to participate in this study, you can inform the researcher through these contact details:

Ms. Sabah Siddiqui, +91 95584 17383, e-mail [email protected]

Before joining the studies you will be required to give your verbal consent to participate in this research project.

This Project Has Been Approved by the University of Manchester’s Research Ethics Committee [project 15343]

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CONSENT FORM

If you are happy to participate please give verbal consent for each of the statements below:

Do you agree?

1. I confirm that I have been told the attached information sheet on the above study and have had the opportunity to consider the information and ask questions and had these answered satisfactorily.

2. I understand that my participation in the study is voluntary and that I am free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason.

3. I understand that the interviews will be audio recorded.

4. I agree to the use of anonymous quotes.

5. I agree that any data collected may be published in anonymous form in a doctoral dissertation, academic books or journals.

6. I agree to take part in the above project.

Name of participant Date

Name of person taking consent Date

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APPENDIX IV – INTERVIEW TOPIC GUIDE

Basic information

Where are you from? If not from Unava, is that within Gujarat? How far is it? How did you travel to come here? What is the language or dialect you use most often in your home-town? How many languages or dialects are you (a) fluent in, (b) acquainted with? How comfortable are you speaking to me in Hindi? Age? Gender? Marital status? If married, how was it arranged? Religion? Caste? Education? Would you like to study (further)? Are you working? If yes, details of work? Income? If not, how are you being financially supported? Are you looking for work? Where are you staying in Unava? Is it comfortable? Are you being accompanied by anyone?

Family background

Who do you live with? Is there a familial relation? Who constitutes the family you were raised by? Are they alive? Do you live with them? What are your relations with them? If unmarried, is there any pressure from your family? What are your own thoughts and feelings towards marriage? If married, who constitutes your marital family? What are your relations with them? What is the relation between your birth family and marital family? Do you have any children? If no, is there any pressure to produce children? If yes, how many? Age? Gender? Education? What are the inheritance patterns practiced in your (a) birth family, (b) marital family? Has this ever been a cause of conflict in the family? Separated, divorced or widowed? What do you think of re- marriage? Who do your closest relations consist of? Is there anyone you were close to who is dead? Is there someone you feel more close to after their death?

Coming to the shrine

What brought you to Mira Datar Dargah (MDD)? How long has this visit of yours been? Have you been here before? How do you know of MDD? Is there any one in your family or neighbourhood who also visits the shrine? Is there a challa of MDD in your hometown? Do you visit it? If yes, what is your experience of the challa and how is it different from the main shrine? How much time do you spend in the shrine? What are the things you do within the shrine? Have the mujawars told you what they think you are dealing with? What is your reaction to their analysis of your situation? What is the treatment being prescribed by the mujawars? How do you experience it?

Coming to the clinic

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How did you reach the (Altruist) clinic? Did someone recommend it? Have you visited a psychiatric clinic before? If yes, is your clinic-experience similar to previous times? Has someone else in your family availed of the services of a psychiatric clinic? Could you describe what their experience was like? Have the doctors told you what they think you are dealing with? What is your reaction to their analysis of your situation? How often do you meet the doctor here? What is the treatment being prescribed by the clinic? How do you experience it?

The Dava-Dua programme

What has been your experience of availing of the services of both the shrine and the clinic? Do you think it is bringing any positive outcome? Can you isolate the effect of the pills (dava) from the effect of the prayers (dua)? If yes, what is the effect of the pills and what is the effect of prayers? If no, how do you think they are working together? Would you recommend this combination to someone else?

Religion

Do you believe you are a religious person (dharmic/momeen)? Is it important to you? If no, what do you put your faith/belief (vishwas/neeyat) in? If yes, what are your religious beliefs? What was your religious upbringing? How much part did religion play in your childhood? As you grew older, did religion become more or less important? What do you think of very religious people? Would you call the mujawar a religious person? Would you call the doctor a religious person? Do you think religion is becoming a stronger or weaker force in the world? Do you approve of that? Do you think MDD is a religious shrine? How does it align with your religious beliefs?

Science

Do you have any knowledge of science (vigyan)? Did you study it in school or college? Is it important in your life? Does it play a part in your daily life? Do you think there are some worldly principles that are true for everybody (i.e. objective)? If yes, what would those be? Do you think psychiatric treatment is scientific? What about it is scientific? Do you think faith healing is scientific? What makes something objective/scientific? Do you think science is becoming a stronger or weaker force in the world? Do you approve of that? Would you be able to afford psychiatric treatment at home? In other words, what is the price of science?

State

What does being Indian (Bhartiya/Hindustani) mean to you? What makes someone Indian? Are there something like Indian cultural values (sanskriti)? If yes, what are they? What do you think of 205

our current government (sarkar)? Do you think the government is supporting you in your daily life? If no, what is that you would expect or want from the government? What is not doing? If yes, how is it doing so? Do you think the government is promoting Indian values?

The Future

What are you hoping for through this treatment at the shrine and the clinic? What does ‘being well’ mean to you? Do you want to return home? If yes, by when would you want to return home? If no, what is home to you now? Will you continue to take the medicines prescribed by the clinic? Will you think of visiting the shrine in some time? How would you like to imagine your future? What would you wish India to become in the future?

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APPENDIX V – SAMPLE TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW No. 2:

Sabah is S1, Samira is S2, Samira’s mother is S3

Translation Transcription S2 See, we cannot see from the eyes of Dekho, hum Allah ke aankho se nahi Allah. Then also we cannot see these dekh pathey hai, vaisey yeh cheez bhi things with our eyes, but those who hum apney aankho se nahi dekh have [ilm], they understand these saktey, lekin jiskey paas woh ilm hota things. These things are from god. hai, unhi ko yeh baath samajh mein aati Only god [/woh] can understand this hai. Yeh Allah ke wali hai. Bas, wohi thing. yeh baath ko samajh saktey hai S1 Hmmm Hmmm S2 After we believe in Allah even when Allah ko hum mantey hai na jab ki hum we cannot see with our own eyes. In apney sareaaankh se nai dekh aktey the same way, as we [believe] that, in Isi taharh isey hum jaisey wo believe the same way, this needs to be kartey hai, vaisey yeh believe karna believed. And when padhtha hai. misfortunes/events [haadse] happen Aur jaisey jaisey haadsey hotey hai to people, they start to [believe]. insaan par, wo believe karta hai. Itni padhi likhi ke baad bhi main manti iss baath ko. When this is my thought, and when I Jab meri soch yeh hai, aur sub yaaad started to remember that such aaney laga, ke aisey aisey harkatey behavior/events [harkate] used to hothi thi to ignore kar deti thi, nahi happen, I would ignore them, not give dhyan nahi deti thi, lekin abmere saath any attention to it. But now after yahan aaney ke bad kuch farak dikh coming here, there has been some raha hai. To ab aisa nahi ho raha hai, to difference. Now that it isn’t happening lagta hai ki yeh sachmuch yeh aisa anymore, it seems like truly is was chakkar hai sahi such a matter.

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S1 So what had happened with you in Toaap ke saath kya hota tha pehley jo the past? tum usko kuch mahine.... S2 It was something like a [jinn] who Aisa hota tha ki ek jinn jaisa tha, ek used to appear before me. It isn’t that admi tha, jo mujey dikhta tha saamney. I couldn’t sleep but whenever I would Aisa nahi ki neend mein lekin jatka jab close my eyes suddenly he would bhi mere aankhey band hotey na, to appear in front of me with the face of samney aakey mere papa ke shakl [Papa] mein khada hota tha. He would sometimes stand near the Wo kabhi mere sirhaney aakar khada headstand while I slept or sometimes ho jata tha, aur mai soi rehti thi, kabhi when I was trying to rest my eyes and araam ke liye aankhe band karke relax [relax]. Why is this happening, I used karti, to aisa kya ho raha hai, pagal to think I am mad. This is of that time mein apney aap ko samajh leti thi. Tab when sister’s wedding with those ki baath jab behen ki sadi (shadi) un uncouth people was being fixed. jaahilo ke saath ki baath ho gai thi. S1 Oh! So was she already married by Oh. Behen ki shadi ho gaie thi? then? S2 Yes, the talk had started. But she had Han baath ho gai thi. Usey sikayat rehti complaints that she is experiencing hamesa ki usey yeh ho raha hai, woh this or that. ho raha hai. We couldn’t understand if somebody Kuch samajh mein nahi ata ke koi kuch had done something bad, or wanted galat karva deta hai, kuch galat karvana to do something bad. But I was chata hai. ignoring this thing. But then the [jinn] Lekin yeh baat mai ignore karney lagi. did something special. Lekin wo jinn nay kuch khas kiya One day I was alone, it was evening. Ek din jab mai akeli thi, sham ke time And that [jinn] came with the pe, to wo jinn aya mere papa ke shakl appearance [shakl] of my [Papa]. I mein was cookin. And the door suddenly Akeli thi main ghar me burst open, the outside door! So I Mai khana bana rahi thi thought it was my [Papa] who has Aur darwaza phatak se khul gaya; come. There was a sting-bed bahar ka darwaza!! [khatiya] there and I heard sounds To mujhey laga mere papa aa gaye coming from there, the bed was Aur vaha ek khatiya tha being laid and he sat on it. IT was like To mujhey thelney wo khatiya ka awaz the sound of normal hustle-bustle aya [halchal]. So I thought it was my Khatiya usney bichaya

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[Papa]. While still working I went to Us pe baitha speak to [Papa] thinking that he has Jab hal chal kartey hai to awaz aati hai returned, “Papa, you have come!” na halchal ki Those people were comin to see my Wo kadam mujhey laga mere papa sister. It was the time when even her ayey hai engagement had not happened. To mai bahar akey nahi dekhi [Mummy] had called to say that she Mai kaam kartey-kartey papa se baath would be returning at such-and-such karney lagee papa samajh ke time. I didn’t realize it wasn’t my Papa tum aa gaye [Papa] and I came out. I saw the door Wo log meri behen ko dekhne aa rai hai was open. Then I started feeling fear Tab meri behen ki engagement bhi nahi [darr]. How did the door open by hui thi tab ki baath itself? Who had I been speaking to? I Mummy ka phone aya hai ki woh itney don’t know. bajey aa jayegee Mujhey patha nahi ki mere papa nahi hai aur mai bahar aa gai To dekha ki darwaza khula hai Tab mujhey darr laga Apney aap darwaza khul gaya aur uthney time kiss say bath kiya mujhey patha nahi S1 Did anyone respond to your voice? Woh Awaaz.. koi awaaz wapis aa rahi thi ya nahi? S2 There was no sound in response. Koi awaaz nahi aa rahi thi Just the sound of the bed being laid, Sirf khatiya bicha raha, dawaza khul door opening, [etc. etc.]. This I saw gaya, wo vaisa etc.etc. with my own eyes! And the sound of Aank se dekhi hui cheez hai the lock. The latch of the door open.

After that my sister’s health was not Kahi telney ka awaaz good. Darwaza khula ...woh.. darwaza ka baad(latch) khol diya tha Aur phir meri behen ki tabiyat bhi theek nahi aur etc. One or two more such events [hadse] Aur ek do aisey hadsey huey happened. So when we used to sleep To jab darwaza baadh (close with rod we would sleep with the door closed across) karkey sothey hai

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and barred with a plank [saanch] Aur darwaza baadh karkey usmey {demonstrates} saanch (chain) vagaira laga dete hai, woh aisa wala sanch S1 Yes, I have seen it. Ha, maine dekha hai, S2 To that kind of door would open with To woi darwaza aisa pathak se khula a bang, as if some person [insaan] jaisey ke koi insaan ne saanchi ko aisaa has hrown aside the plank. phenk diya We both sisters were there. And we Hum dono behney thae. Aur aankh khul woke up. My sister told me, “Hamida, gayi. Meri behen ne mujhey kaha... just see who is at the door. We had hamida, zara dekho to darwaza khul barred it but now it is open! Who can gaya jab ki hum ne saanchi lagaya tha! do that?” kaun kaun khol sakta hai darwaza?... Then we would remember, Jab hum yaad karney lagtey hai na... “[Mummy], this has also happened” mummy aisa aisa hua... S1 Is the [bala] you have, the one your To aap ki jo bala hai aur aap ki behen ki sister has the same or different? jo bala hai alag hai... kya... ki unpar jadoo hua hai na? S2 Different! That is why! If it were the Alag alag hai. tabi one and the same, then we wouldn’t Agar ek hota to sab ko hazri nahi aati. get different [hazri]. Different people Alag alag log kartey hai na, jelous ke have done it to us, out of being mare [jealous]. They are different [jinn]. Alag alag jinath lagta hai These bring different tribulations Wo aisa kartey hai na bandishey, vahi [/bandish], scaring th life out of us. jaan ghabra deta hai. Wo jab havi hota When the jinn bears down, [/havi hai to sab ko bhari padtha hai hona], it becomes very heavy [/bhari panda]. S1 So if the jinn was bearing down on To jaisa jinnath aapke ghar pe havi tha, your house, was that because of wo bhi jaisey jadoo ke wajaeh se tha ya black magic or for some other koi aur.... reason. S2 My mouth has not opened as yet. My Mera hai na abhi tak muh nahi khula mouth… Actually during my [hazari] hai. Mera mooh... meri haazri may mera my mouth gets twisted [/teda meda]. mooh aisa teda meda hota hai, itna My face becomes so that even I bhayanak mooh mera, wo mera mooh cannot reognize it. teda meda bana deta hai, bana deta hai

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ke dekhkar mera chehra mae khud apney aap ko dekh nahi pati That is why I don’t bear [/bharna] my Kisi ke saamney isliye mae haazri nahi [hazari]. I bear it in secret/private. I bharti hoo. Mae chupke hazri bharti feel very like that… If people see, hoo. mujhey bohut wo lagta hai. Log what will they think. My [hazari] is dekhengey to... kya hai na… sabse alag very different from everyone else’s. hai meri hazri S1 Really. So your sister’s is different? Achcha . Aapki behen ki haazri kaisi hoti hai? Asisay nahi? S2 Hers is one of speaking-gabbling. Wo to bolney-bakney wali haazri hothi thi. Abhi... ab ki baar aisa kal ho gaya... S1 So she speaks aloud? To woh bol jati hai? S2 She has revelations [/bayaan]. In the Bayaan hota hai. To bayaan mein keh revelations, she starts speaking. deti hai. But I am shown the truth in revelatory Mujhey to basharat main sach dikaya dreams [/basharat]. I have even seen jata hai. Mujhey laash bhi dikh jati hai. corpses! S1 So if you know you are going to Aap ko patha chalta hai ki haazri kab experience [hazari], you go indoors? honay wali hai, to tab andar chaley jatey hai? S2 I have hazari all day! Meri to poori din ki haazri hai S1 Ok Achcha S2 But I [control] my [hazari] inside Lekin main apni hazri apney andar myself so that I can do household control kar ke rakhti taki main ghar ka work too. baki sab kaam bhi kar sakti hoo In this state, I have done my studies, Mai is haal mein padhai bhi kari, baarvi done 12th standard, done [law bhi kari, law college bhi kari, naukari college], done a job, everywith with kari, sab kari haazri ke saath. [hazari] I make a [timetable] of work. At this Mai kaam ki time table bana leti hoo [time] so much work should be done. Yeh time se yeh time itna kaam karna I want to give children [tuition]. They hai. will come home. In that house, I run Mujhey bachchey tution lena hai. Ghar children’s [tuition] too. I used to take mein ayengey. Uss ghar mein chalati hu all tuition there. bachcho ki tution bhi. Sab bachcho ki I do the cooking. tution bhi letee thi vaha Pakana ka bhi kaam kar letee thi 211

Everything my timetable. Even Sab time table se kaam may, haazri bhi

[hazari] must be read [panda padhna padhega to yeh yeh time pe padega], so at this or that time I have mujhey haazri bharna hai to bear [hazari]. S1 It must be difficult Bohut mushkil hota hoga na aap... S2 It is very difficult. But I make my Mushkil to hota hai timetable. Before I used to bear Lekin mai timetable bana leti thi [hazari] from 10 o’clock to 11 o’clock. Mai pehley 10 bajey se gyarah barah bajey ek ghanta haazri bhar leti thi. S1 So you studied in this manner… To aap ne aisa padhai ki S2 Yes. With this condition [/halat]. Han. Aisey halat ke saath, log boltey People say like those who have hai na, mental illness [/mansik bimari], it can Kya , mansik bimari kisi ko bhi, koi happen to a person [/vyakti]. vyakti ko ho sakta hai However this brain [/dimag], this mind Magar yeh dimag ka mann hai na bohut [/mann] can be very restless. This chanchal hota hai. brain never stops turning [/rukta nahi] yeh dimaag kabhi ek pal bhi rukta for even one moment. This mind is nahi.yeh mann bohut chanchal hota hai. very restless. You can even Usko dava bhi diya jaa sakta hai lekin administer [dava] but this thing will yeh baat hai na mann may hi coming to mind. The truth [/sach] padhegee. Sach to aatey rehta hai. keeps coming out. S1 And because this happened to you, Aur yeh aap pey kia hua, isliye aap ka you believe [/vishwas] it vishwas bhi hai iss par S2 Yes, I believe it. There is essence Haa mujhey vishwas hai [astitva] to it. Iska astitva hai. […] ( Cant understand ) S1 You have said there is another Aur aap ne kaha tha ki aap ke ghar ke Dargah near your house. paas bhi ek aisi hi dargah hai S2 Lal Shah Lal shah S1 Yes Han Han So same work happens there too? To udhar bhi aisa hi kaam hota hai? S2 There also [hazari] is borne. Udhar bhi hazri bharti thi S1 There also? Gujarat has several Udhar bhi haazri bharti thii? places like this. In the Kutch as well. Gujarat mein kafi hai. Kutch mein bhi hai

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S2 People live in these dargahs, and Dargah mei sayad rehtey hai. catch the problem there. Or even on Woh vahi pakad lete. Ya shayad reaching the gateway. chowkhat par janey se. S1 So your sisters… how did hers start? To aapke behen ka ... unka kaisa shuru hua? S2 That time it was sister’s wedding. Maina… pichley baar behen ke shadi mein S1 Had the wedding going to happen or Shadi honay wali thi ya shadi ke waqt had already happened? S2 As the time for the wedding neared, Shadi ka waqt jaisey kareeb aya tab her health deteriorated. So we tabiyat kharab ho gaee thought the problem is bodily To hum ko laga jismani problem hai [jismani] S1 So you thought it was bodile before To jismani problem pehley S2 At first yes. Dava. Dava! Dava! Dava! Pehley han. Dava. Dava dava Only! But as the time for the wedding dava.bas. lekin jaisey sadi ka waqt approached, she would herself nazdeek aya na, to woh khud dua az starting doing her [Dua]. She would karney mein lag jaati say, “I am tying my intention [/niyat]. Kehti.. niyat band ke... pata nahi kya What is that my heart want. Oh Allah hai. Ghar mein hai ya dil ki cheez hai. let it come out. God only knows. Why Ya allah karde zahir allah hi janey. am I so troubled? Why am I Mujhey takleef kyu ho rahee hai. Jo hai disturbed? Make it apparent. Why I zahir kar de. Kyu mai pareshaan hu. am not becoming well with any dava. Kyu mai dava se achchi nahi hoti hoo Then one day, that personality [/hasti] Phir ek din achanak woh hasti hazir hui presented itself. S1 Did it? Hua? S2 Very suddenly! Ekdum achanak se zahir hua We called the Maulvi-saab. He said Maulvi saab ko bulaye. Unhone kaha ki that there has been an effect of all asr hua hai. the Dua. Dua ki arz ki Ek dua hai S1 Ok? Achcha S2 We had also join in and read the Dua ke saath saath hum ko bhi padhna Dua. Then we called on the village padta hai. Imam. Then he told us about Lal Hum phir gaon ke ek imam ko bulaye Shah’s Dargah.

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To vaisa hua ki unhonay bataye laal

shah ki dargah ke barey mein. S1 Did only your sister go, or did you go To tum bhi gaye ya sirf tumhari behen

as well. S2 My Papa and Mummy took my sister Mere papa aur mummy mere behen ko leke gaye S1 So you were alone at home? Aap ghar pe thae akele S2 I have two sisters, two brothers Bataee ek behen bhi hai, do bhai hai S1 So you are the youngest // Aap sab se chotey hai na? S3 Middle child // yeh meri beti badi beti hai. S2 I just look the olest // mai umar se bhi badi dikhti hoo S1 No. You look quite young Nahi. Tum bohut chotey dikhtey hai. S2 {laughs} Laughs happily S1 So they found out the problem in Lal To unko lalshah mein pata chal Shah? S2 No. In her hazari she spoke that she Nahi. Uski hazri boli woh boli ki unnava would have to come to Unava. That jana hai. Aisaa jagah bhi hai aur aisa there is such a place, And such aisa hota hai nahi maloom tha. Maulvi things are found there. The maulvi ne bataya ki gaon se thodi door par woh told that the village is somewhat far bhi mannat se. jaisi unki ammi hai na but you are called there if you have Raastimaa Mahapalli mein. Unhoney made a wish [/mannat]. He said that bataya. To imam ne bataye jaao mira his mother Raasti-ma is buried in datar unnava mein. Tho Papa mummy Mahapalli. So he directed them to go aur behen ko chod ke chaley gaye. to Mira Datar, Unava. Papa left Woh imam jo namaz padha rahein hai Mummy and Sister behind at the na... wahan . unkey saath chod gaye. Dargah with the Imam S1 OK. Achcha When did they come here then Phir aap kab idhar aaye? S2 Studies were going on then. I was in Padhai chaloo thi. Main dasvi mein thi. the 10th. Mummy used to live here. I Mummy yahan rehti thi. Main padhai was fininshing my studies. Brother khatam kar rahi thi. Bhai behen ko used to take care of sister. My mother sambhalna tha. Meri ammi yahah thae used to travel up and up, up and aatey-jaatey aatey-jaatey rehtey thae down. I completed my studies and Meri padhai khatam kari to kisi ko suna was telling somebody about this all, rahi thi to usey patha chala to woh

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and that person said there is nothing kehey ki aisa kuch nahi. ki woh pagal like that, that is speaking from a mad hafzai bolti hai. (pagal) person. We people (/log) are not mad. But Hum log pagal nahi hai. (sad smile) nobody understands this thing we lekin hamari iss baat ko nahi samajh say. pata hai koi. My brother and younger sister came Atey aatey mere bhai aur choti vali here during the sandall, just for an behen sandall mein aaye. Aisehi outing [/ghoomna-phirna]. During the ghoomney phirney ke liye.... to.. sandall sandall my younger brother’s hazari mein chotey bhai ko haazri shuru hui. started. He was at that time sitting for woh baarvi ka exam dekar aya tha. his 12th standard exam. They had Goomney phirney ke liye aya tha. come for an outing but when they Tosochey ab phir ghar vapis chaley. started thinking of leaving, hazari Jaisa jaisa sochey laut chaley, tousey would come on. We kept this secret haazri aa jati. from Papa. Papa would say send Hum ne yeh baat papa se chupa kar them (home), but we couldn’t find the rakhey thae. Papa boltey rahey bhej the courage [/himmat] to tell him. bhejo. Lekin unhey kehney ki himmat hi nahi juta paee. S1 Why? Kyu? S2 As if he would agree [/maanana]? He Woh kya maanengey. Kehengey would say it is mental stress [/dimagi dimaagi tension hai padhai ke wajeh se. tension] due to studying. Then I got Phir mainey himmat bandhi aur keh my courage together and told when diya jab meri ma ko bhi haazri chadi ki even my mother’s hazari came up. I usko bhi aisaa aisaa ho gaya. Papa ne told him it is so and so. Papa said it kaha yeh sab tension ke vajeh se hai. all because of [tension] and sab theek ho jayega. Papa himmat everything will become alright. Papa detey ke sab achcha ho jayega. Meri gives this kind of courage. My chotee vali behen ko kahan issey younger sister was not managing her padhai vadhai nahi honay vali. iski studies. My older sister’s wedding saadi (shadi) ho jaye. Dus din aagey [/saadi] was looming. 10 days later peechey is baat k our choti behen ko my younger sister’s hazari started. bhi haazri aayee. Ab itna tension aur Now we were feeling so much tanaav mehsoos ho raha tha.... [tension] and conflict [/tanav]. S1 4 of you together! Chaar logo ko ek saath! S2 I got last of all Mere ko sab se last mein hui.

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S1 But your hazari has lasted very long Lekin aapki bohut kadak se haazri jama hai. S2 Yes. Now that it happened to my Han sister, what could Papa say? So he To ab, mai keh rahi thi, meri behen pe said, how is it that it is happening to jama ti, to papa ko main kya kahoo? To everybody? That he’d go mad seeing unhoney kaha ki yeh aisa kaisa sabhi that. Then shortly after that, the ko kya ho raha hai.. hazari of my brother and sister fell Phir aisa hi jaisa hua tha vaisa meri away [/nikalna]. They become ok. behen aur bhai hazari se nikal gaye. Then my sister joined NCC. While Woh achcha ho gaya. Phir meri behen studying, her marriage also took ne NCC line mein join ho gaee. Usney place. It was a love marriage. padhai likhai kartey kartey uski sadi bhi My brother improved and started ho gayee. Love marriage usney karee. looking for work. Now it was only us Aur mere bhai ko bhi achcha ho gaya. two sisters and Ammi. She felt easier, Woh kaam dhandey mein theek hai. but see, she still has paralysis Ab hum dono beheney aura ammi ko [/lakva]. haazri aati hai. Unko abhi bohut araam hai Dikhtey nahi ki unko lakwa hua hai. S1 Paralysis? Is that because of black Lakhwa bhi!!! Woh balaa ke wajeh se? magic [/bala]? S2 It is an attack. [Bala] attacks, doesn’t Woh waar ke wajhey se.. Balaa waar it. So my mother’s dava is ongoing, kartey hai. Waar kartey nahi? and dua too. Dava and Dua both. It is To meri ammi ki dawa bhi chaloo hai not that we only sit with our faith aur dua bhi kartey. [/shraddha]. We do dava and dua. Dawa dua dono kartey hai Because Dava is also [Sunnat]. We Yeh nahi ke hum sirf shraddha kar ke do both. baithey hai.dawa dua dono kartey hai. Ki, dawa bhi sunnat hai.dono kartey hai. S1 And studies too! Padhai bhi kartey hai. sab kuch ek saath. S2 I have gotten better now Abhi to mai achchi ho gayee.

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APPENDIX VI – MAPS

MAP 1

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APPENDIX VII – EXTRACT FROM FIELDWORK DIARY

MONDAY, JAN 18 2016

Morning

I get a call from KP at about 9:30. He asked me where I was.

At home, I tell him.

Don’t go to the Dargah. Something is happening there.

I ask him what.

Some bawal, he says and disconnects.

Bawal, I like that word! It means disturbance, but it has a texture of its own. I can hear bees buzzing outside my window. Kids are making their annoying raucous cries somewhere close by. Everything seems normal. What is he on about? Should I go out? I am curious, but also perhaps a coward. Last time this had happened, in August, there had been gunshots and one person had been injured. I listen to my local informant, and stay put.

Afternoon

Lunch time, AH comes back from work. She calls my name from downstairs. I meet her on the staircase. Don’t go to the Dargah, she tells me.

I ask her what is happening.

There is some fighting happening within the ‘Musulman’, she informs me. They have closed down shops around the Dargah. Most of the market is closed too. Bhaiya (her husband) had to close down the shutters on the D&D office outside the shrine. Somebody was hit.

I am unsure if she means MK was hit. I ask her if things are safe this side.

She says, everything is safe in the Patel area. Nothing happens here, she assures me. The Musulman fight. So don’t go out.

I agree that I won’t go out. I am wondering, am I not Musulman?

Evening

I get a call from WH. He says things are afoot in Unava. Are you safe?

I assure him that I am.

He tells me to call if I sense any danger. He can shift me to Mehsana.

I thank him for his concern. Our call is short as usual, I find it difficult to follow himon the phone.

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Night

I meet both husband-wife at night for our meal together. I ask MK what happened, while scrutinising him for injury… there is none.

He looks energized. The Saiyeds and Pathans are fighting over territory. A Pathan man tried to open a ‘galla’ or paan shop near the Dargah and the Saiyeds objected. They started fighting. There was stone pelting and things are tense.

Was anyone hurt in the stone pelting, I ask him.

Two, he says, and the police have been summoned. Don’t go there tomorrow, he advises me.

TUESDAY, JAN 19 2016

Morning

I stay at home. I do not know what to make of this intra-Muslim-group rivalry. Is it caste? Saiyeds and Pathans could be understood as two powerful castes in this region. Once again, I do not know what to make of caste within Muslims in India. Not to say there is no caste within Muslims. There are the Dalit Muslims and OBC Muslims. All my kin network must fall in some general Muslim category, not OBC, not SC. My Jharkhand folks may not be though. I don’t know actually. Would anyone in my family know? I can understand class distinctions within Muslims, but not caste. I remember the furious argument I had with another researcher when we had made a joint field visit to Balaji mandir, Rajasthan.

Throw away your surname, if you don’t believe in your caste, he had thundered at me in the bus travelling from Mehandipur to Delhi. You are a Muslim Brahmin by your surname, he told me.

I don’t care about my surname, I had said, but why should my surname define my caste?

We both thought the other deluded. Nothing had emerged from our 6 hour journey of yelling in a bus. 3 years later, I am not much clearer. He was right, I was not wrong. Where is he now, I wonder?

The news is full of the suicide of a Dalit student in AP. It is quite difficult to read, I feel full of emotion. This is the time to act! Sitting at home is really not helping right now.

Evening

In the evening, MK, brings fresh news. Lots of police crawling all over the town (not here in the Patel area, of course). The men were being watched, so the women

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started fighting. Then policewomen were called to handle the women. He tells me only to go out when he tells me so.

Another day, I am safe, too safe. I work on the book. How safe will this book be? Too safe?

WEDNESDAY, JAN 20 2016

Morning

I write to Erica, Ian, and Rubina about the conflict. Nothing like too safe, they say. But surely there is, isn’t it? Write detailed notes, says Erica. Sometimes I cannot make out the difference between research and not-research. Is anything that happens to me in Unava research? I feel like I’ve become my own research subject, so settled here I am.

Afternoon

MK comes back early. I find out from him that a house was torched.

Whose, I ask.

A Pathan.

I ask him if he will take me there the next day. He agrees.

THURSDAY, JAN 21 2016

Morning

9am we leave to find the house. Someone on the street tells us there were two houses that were affected. We are wandering, MK has no idea where the houses are. No one else seems to know either. I am starting to believe that it is all a myth. Then I notice one lone policeman sitting comfortably in front of the Dargah. In a couple of minutes, we pass two more. Finally, we are directed into another lane. We see a police bus with 6 men who look at us cursorily. Then we turn the corner. Another police man. MK asks a villager where the house that was burnt is.

Here, the man points right next to us.

The house is not burnt. I look at the man quizzically.

He explains that somebody put a rubber tyre on fire, smashed open the back window and threw it in. The damage is inside. It was midday and no one was home, so nobody got hurt.

I notice it is right next to an Anganwadi. I am horrified. Kids could have been caught in this conflict.

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The villager wants our attention back. He asks if we want to see the damage inside the house.

I decline but MK decides that we must.

Meanwhile, the man bangs on the door. A woman comes out. She wants to know what we are doing.

Everyone turns to me, including policeman who is looking vacantly at the scene of yesterday’s crime. I am a student and wanted to know what happened, I say, feeling stupid and guilty.

The villager intervenes, imploring the woman to show us her house.

Another woman joins her at the door. No, says the first woman. What if you are a journalist?

I assure her, I am not a journalist. And that I do not want to intrude.

Do you have a camera, she asks.

I don’t want photographs, I tell her.

She suggests that I should leave, it’s not safe and the police may arrest you, she says. She points at the policeman.

We look at this policeman, who is not interpellated. I feel like giggling looking at him, but desist.

The villager and policeman start a discussion in Gujarati: ‘media chhe’. MK asks imploringly if we should leave. But I am already on my way out, past all those policemen. This time, I am a little nervous.

FRIDAY, JAN 22 2016

Afternoon

I decide enough is enough, cannot sit at home in these few months I get for fieldwork. I go into the Dargah. There is movement inside as usual, but it’s much quieter than usual. I go to room where the little girl who I teach English lives. Her mother is a female security guard and I have been meaning to interview her. Farha asks me if I will take class tomorrow. Yes, I tell her. She looks at her father and I realize that she’s 12 but already very pretty. A moment of admiration intertwined with trepidation. Beauty is a difficult burden here in our culture.

Her father says that I cannot send her out tomorrow. Things are not safe.

Farha tells me that the Saiyed women will most likely not come for class.

I say that we will cancel the class if it’s not safe. I ask them what had happened.

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Her mother Aalia says that last night the police raided the Dargah.

They were checking everybody’s identity papers, says the man. Anybody without papers was arrested. He then looks at his wife and continues speaking to her that there were 700 policemen who came and they must have arrested a 100 people.

I cannot even imagine 700 police officers, or why he needs to direct this conversation away from me. Do you have your identity papers, I ask them.

Yes, we do, he says.

We were not troubled, Aalia says. But they came into the Dargah with shoes on. And they walked everywhere, even the graveyard. They roughed up the poor sawwalis. Those who sleep outside in the open. And even arrested some.

I interview her after that. She too is not verbose and won’t say much unless probed. We speak for 20 minutes, then I tell her we will speak another day.

On the way, everybody I speak to tells me the scary story of the police coming late at night, with their SHOES ON, and disturbing the Dargah. The police seemed to have made more of a stir than the rioters. The rioters are old hat!

Evening

I meet CK outside. He tells me his leaving the Altruist is final. He has given his resignation letter, but it hasn’t been accepted. The Altruist has a hired a new psychologist, a 27 year old woman from Pune. They call her Farida Jalal for some mysterious reason.

I ask if I can meet her.

He says he will arrange it.

We go around meeting people. KP is zipping around, very excited. The Saiyed women have converged on the police station to demand that the men be released.

How many men, I ask.

80, CK says.

I ask KP what will happen next.

He is sure it will get resolved because the whole village is backing the Saiyeds (according to him, an unreliable informant, given how exaggerated his pronouncements are). He zips off to get a photograph of the Collector for a newspaper his friend works for.

The Saiyed will have to hide, says CK. They are only concentrated in this village. Perhaps 1000 (he means, adult men), while other Muslims number in lakhs in neighbouring villages and the others are pissed.

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Again I think this is not a caste conflict. It is a turf war for purely economic advantage. Or not? Is not caste always associated to economic dis/advantage.

Night

At home, my twitter feed shows a TOI article on Unava. 26 people were arrested, according to it, by a contingent of 30 policemen. Aha! The photograph that KP was talking about half an hour ago! I am excited too. My previous searches on Unava had brought up zilch. Can’t believe ‘my’ village is in the news.

SATURDAY

Morning

WB calls me in the morning to ask if I am ok, if I want to shift to his Mehsana office.

It’s all fine, I assure him.

He wants me to visit another village he is working in for the Centre for Development, perhaps on Sunday or Monday.

As usual I am swept up in the pace of my collaborators. I don’t know which village or how it is significant for my research, and nobody seems to have figured what I am trying to do here in Unava. But I never say no to anything. I hope he doesn’t recruit me into anything else, like how he got me to start teaching English. And the petition for a new anganwadi for the Muslim kids.

Afternoon

Ba, MK’s mother has come to Unava for a couple of days. I go to meet her and we hug. So nice, it feels like I have been in physical contact with someone after a long time. She asks me if I have eaten lunch.

Not as yet, I say. It’s not yet 11.

She says she will make fresh rotis for us both.

It’s her lunchtime, I know. I point to the rotis AH has made in the morning. There are plenty.

No, she insists, lets have hot rotis.

I feebly protest but she is already at work, heating the ghee for the rotis. In truth, I like Ba’s food a lot, but I feel like I am betraying AH in liking her mother-in-law’s rotis so much. But Ba is talkative and articulate. She also makes fabulous rotis!

While we eat, I tell her that lot of bawal happened around the Dargah this last week. I tell her that it is horrible that they would think of burning down somebody’s house to make a point. It’s somebody’s life they are burning.

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It galvanizes a story out of her, much to my surprise! She says that when the BJP won, the Patels burned all the houses of the Muslims in Unjha (a larger town 3 kilometers away). The Muslims live sandwiched between two Patel areas and the Patels would usually have to skirt the area to get across. So at that time (and then I am wondering if she means 2014 or 2002), they looted the houses and then set it on fire.

I say that it makes me sad to hear that.

She says that they shouldn’t have done that. The Muslims were chased away and not allowed to enter the town, till the leader of the Muslim came and told them that lets forgive everything in the past and live together. Then they were allowed back into the town.

I don’t know what happened to their houses though.

Evening

I go out to conduct some interviews and come back after a few hours. Finally I have met one person who just… speaks. Wow! I am overjoyed. Everybody is so mealy- mouthed, interviews are usually more of me talking than my participant. Eshan spoke for 45 minutes at a go without requiring any coaxing from me. I don’t know how to show my overwhelming gratitude for the first easy subject in Unava. I hope he will be as obliging next time!

WH calls to confirm the plan on Sunday. Then KP calls to say that Gogoi Maharaj’s bhuva is ready to meet me on Sunday. And then MK knocks on my door to say he has spoken to the Harijan bhuva, who will speak to me on Sunday. While I am struggling to imagine how all this happened in the course of five minutes, I remember I have to meet a Shaikh family (the only non-Saiyed, non-Pathan Muslims I have met from within the village till now) for the psychogeography exercise on Sunday as well. It never rains in Bree, Tolkein would say, it pours. Fieldwork back to normal, it seems after the shutdown three days back.

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APPENDIX VIII – PUBLIC SERVICES IN UNAVA

Below are government-funded public services and policies that I became aware of during the period of my fieldwork in Unava between August 2015 and April 2016 through meeting people in the village who were either direct beneficiaries or were employed to serve in these posts.

1. District Mental Health Programme (DMHP) for Mehsana District

Work in the Mehsana programme has seemingly begun only in January 2016 by the Mental Hospital of Ahmedabad and the Non-Profit Organization (NPO) The Altruist. According to a DMHP report survey conducted by them and ACMI in 2011: Altruist has been involved in the field of mental health since 2007 in Gujarat and has worked on various projects with the Government of Gujarat (GoG), one of them being the compilation of WHO-AIMS Gujarat. More importantly, Altruist have also worked with the DMHP projects in Bhabhar Taluka, Deodar Taluka, Palanpur Taluka and Vadgam Taluka of Banaskantha district to create awareness in the field of mental health through various IEC activities and facilitation of trainings of Medical officers, Para medical staff, village leaders, social workers and other relevant people of the society. Altruist has also started a Pilot helpline program in the city of Ahmedabad ‘Aadhaar’ to rescue wandering People with Mental Illness (PwMI) with the GoG and the local Commissioner of Police. Although the objective of this helpline is to receive public calls regarding the homeless wandering PwMI, calls are also received for Emergency and Crisis Help for which ambulatory services are provided by the Altruist.

2. Dava and Dua (D&D) programme

D&D is run by the Altruist, mentored by the Mental Hospital of Ahmedabad and (part) sponsored by the GoG. Psychiatric services, including medicines, are offered free of charge to all those who come to the D&D clinic.

3. Anganwadi Workers (AW) in the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)

According to the website of the All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers85: The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme is a central Scheme under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of

85 http://www.aifawh.org/aifawh 240

India, which aims at the overall development of the children under six years, through anganwadi centres. It provides supplementary nutrition and referral health services to children under six years and pregnant women and lactating mothers and also to the teenage girls. It also provides pre-school education to the 3-6 year old children. Started in 1975 in 33 blocks, there are nearly 10 lakhs anganwadi centres functioning all over the country. The anganwadi workers and helpers are grass root level workers who impart these services to the poor and downtrodden. But the government does not recognize them as workers but calls them ‘voluntary social workers’ and give them a pittance in the name of ‘honorarium.’

4. Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) of the Ministry of Human Resource Development86

With a view to enhancing enrolment, retention and attendance and simultaneously improving nutritional levels among children, the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP-NSPE) was launched as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme in 1995. The MDMS entitles every child in primary and upper primary levels in all government and government-assisted schools in all parts of the country of a clean, nutritious, hot-cooked meal during school days in a minimum of 200 days. A provision on the scheme which covers the cook at the same time helper says that one may be engaged by a school with 25 enrollees, two with 26-100 students, and additional one for every 100 students. Each cook vis-à-vis helper has to receive Rs. 1000 per month as payment.

5. Primary Health Centre (PHC) workers in the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM):

PHC is the first contact point between village community and the Medical Officer. The PHCs were envisaged to provide an integrated curative and preventive health care to the rural population with emphasis on preventive and promotive aspects of health care. The PHCs are established and maintained by the State Governments under the Minimum Needs Programme (MNP)/ Basic Minimum Services Programme (BMS). At present, a PHC is manned by a Medical Officer supported by 14 paramedical and other staff. It has 4 - 6 beds for patients. The activities of PHC involve curative, preventive, primitive and Family Welfare Services. It acts as a referral unit for 6 Sub Centres. The Sub-Centre is the most peripheral and first contact point between the primary health care system and the community. Each Sub-Centre is manned by one Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) and one Male Health Worker MPW(M). Sub-Centres are assigned tasks relating to interpersonal

86 http://mdm.nic.in/ 241

communication in order to bring about behavioral change and provide services in relation to maternal and child health, family welfare, nutrition, immunisation, diarrhoea control and control of communicable diseases programmes. The Sub- Centres are provided with basic drugs for minor ailments needed for taking care of essential health needs of men, women and children.

6. Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) of the National Rural Health Mission87:

Selected from the village itself and accountable to it, the ASHA will be trained to work as an interface between the community and the public health system. She will be the first port of call for any health related demands of deprived sections of the population, especially women and children, who find it difficult to access health services. She will counsel women on birth preparedness, importance of safe delivery, breast-feeding and complementary feeding, immunization, contraception and prevention of common infections including Reproductive Tract Infection/Sexually Transmitted Infections (RTIs/STIs) and care of the young child. ASHA will also mobilize the community and facilitate them in accessing health and health related services available at the Anganwadi/sub-centre/primary health centres, such as immunization, Ante Natal Check-up (ANC), Post Natal Check-up supplementary nutrition, sanitation and other services being provided by the government.

7. Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) of the National Rural Health Mission88: The JSY emerged out of the National Maternity Benefit Scheme (NMBS) of the National Social Assistance Programme89. Introduced in 1995 the NMBS was designed for pregnant women from BPL households. An amount of Rs. 500 is expended to these women 8-12 weeks prior to delivery for each of their first two births towards nutritional needs during pregnancy. The NMBS was modified into JSY in 2005. The JSY is aimed at reducing maternal mortality and/or infant mortality through promotion of institutional deliveries through the intervention of ANMs and ASHAs. Under the scheme, irrespective of the number of births, women who have institutional deliveries are entitled to receive assistance of Rs. 1,600 (to meet the cost of delivery, as well as a small, additional cash incentive). The ASHA receives Rs. 600 when accompanying a woman to a health institution for delivery (to pay for her board and lodging whilst staying with the pregnant woman), as well as a cash incentive per delivery (after she has made her final postnatal visit to the beneficiary and the baby has been immunized against TB).

87 http://nrhm.gov.in/communitisation/asha/about-asha.html 88 http://www.pacsindia.org/projects/health-and-nutrition/jsy-maternal-health-scheme 89 http://www.sccommissioners.org/FoodSchemes/NMBS.html 242

8. Mission Managalam of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission90:

NRLM started by then-CM Narendra Modi in 2010 (replacing the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) implemented since 1998) is working in the mission mode to organize the poor into Self Help Groups, build capacity in them, nurture them, link them with microfinance and eventually link them with sustainable livelihoods. Under NRLM, every State is required to form its own State Livelihood Mission and a dedicated structure to implement the mission at the state level. Mission Mangalam would be the State Livelihood Mission for Gujarat and Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Company Limited (GLPC) would be its implementing agency. Mission Mangalam would adopt certain innovative state specific initiatives within the broader framework of NRLM.

9. Below Poverty Line (BPL) Ration Card:

BPL is an economic benchmark and poverty threshold used by the government of India to indicate economic disadvantage and to identify individuals and households in need of government assistance and aid. It is determined using various parameters which vary from state to state and within states. In their annual report of 2012, Reserve Bank of India, for Gujarat the figures are as follows:

State or % of Persons Poverty line % of Persons Poverty Union (Rural) below (Rs)/month (Urban) line (Rs) Territory poverty line (Rural) below (Urban) poverty line

Gujarat 21.50 932.00 10.14 1152.00

Those issued BPL certificates and ration card are entitled under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS)91 to receive basic commodities i.e., wheat, rice, sugar, and kerosene at affordable prescribed prices through Fair Price Shops (FPS). In 2000, the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) scheme92 was launched for the poorest of the poor of the BPL. Identified destitute households or an individual under particular social groups is provided with an Antyodaya ration card to enable them avail a food-grain quota at subsidized price. Each household is entitled for 35 kilograms of wheat or rice or combination every month, pegged at Rs. 2/- per

90 http://www.livelihoodportal.org/showpage.aspx?contentid=3 91 http://www.sccommissioners.org/FoodSchemes/TPDS.html 92 http://www.sccommissioners.org/FoodSchemes/AAY.html 243

kilogram for wheat and Rs. 3/- per kilogram for rice. The National Food Security Bill of 2013 had yet to be implemented in Gujarat (in 2016)93.

10. Post-Matric Scholarship for Scheduled Caste Students94:

The objective of the scheme is to provide financial assistance to SC students studying at post matriculation or post-secondary stage to enable them to complete their education. Scholarship will be admissible to the children/wards of Indian Nationals who, irrespective of their religion are either presently engaged in manual scavenging or was so engaged upto or after 1997 or the date on which the "The Employment of manual scavengers and construction of Dry latrines (Prohibition) Act 1993" came into force in their State/UT, whichever is earlier, or are presently engaged in Tanning and/or Flaying.

11. Pulse Polio Programme of National Health Mission95:

With the global initiative of eradication of polio in 1988 following World Health Assembly resolution in 1988, the Pulse Polio Immunization programme was launched in India in 1995. Children in the age group of 0-5 years administered polio drops during National and Sub-national immunization rounds (in high risk areas) every year. India has declared that it has been polio-free since 2011.

93 According to a news report in the Indian Express on Feb 2, 2016, the SC issued a stern warning to GoG: “What is Parliament doing? Is Gujarat not a part of India? The Act says it extends to whole of India and Gujarat is not implementing it. You want to break away from India. This law was passed by Parliament but the states are not implementing the central law. How can a state say that it won’t implement the law? Tomorrow other state would say that it won’t follow IPC, CrPC,” observed a bench led by Justice Madan B Lokur. Nine states and two Union territories have so far not implemented this social welfare legislation, but Gujarat earned the apex court’s wrath as its name topped the list of the defaulting states”. 94http://vikaspedia.in/education/policies-and-schemes/scholarships/post-matric-scholarship/post- matric-scholarship-for-students-belonging-to-scheduled-castes-sc#section-1 95 http://www.nhp.gov.in/pulse-polio-programme_pg 244