SARANGPUR, INDIA — A long-haired woman named Sangita sits cross-legged on the ground as a priest dressed in white violently shakes Sangita’s head from side-to-side. The priest, a healer at the Shri Hanuman Temple in this city in Gujarat, talks to the woman – or rather, talks to the spirit inside her.
“In the name of Lord Hanuman, leave the body. Leave the mind of Sangita!” the man says.
For many Hindu devotees, mental illness is the result of evil spirits possessing a mind rather than a medical or emotional condition. Treatment is based less on counseling or drugs and more on exorcizing spirits.
In October 2014, India introduced its first national policy surrounding the issue of mental health, including provisions for more institutions and trained professionals. In a country where only 0.06 percent of the total health budget is spent on mental health (compared to U.S.’s 6.2 percent and England’s 10.82 percent, according to the World Health Organization’s Mental Health Atlas of 2011), the issue of mental healing has, like most facets of Indian life, taken on a religious tone.
While India’s population stands at 1.2 billion, it only has 3,500 licensed psychiatrists, according to the WHO. With this deficit in medical resources, temples and the gods they house have become an acceptable way of curing mental illness.
“Religion acts as a very important class of understanding and expectations for many people within cultural psychiatry,” said Dr. Neil Aggarwal, a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute who focuses on how cultures affect illness, treatment and engagement in mental health services.
The idea of going to a temple or a religious healer for exorcism based on certain symptoms is very old in South Asia and has a long historical precedent. In mental health texts within the Ayurvedic tradition, there are clear examples of spirit possession, where one spirit or one set of spirits may produce a certain set of symptoms in the person who is afflicted, Aggarwal said.
“Religion can be a way that people understand their suffering,” said Aggarwal. “People who are depressed may not see their symptoms as a biomedical set of problems that need treatment in mental health services. They may see their experiences as a part of an existential set of problems that requires greater fortitude, prayer, or communication with god to understand their illness.”
There is abundant evidence of this at the Shri Hanuman Temple where hundreds were awaiting the opening of the temple’s doors on a recent spring Saturday afternoon. As Saturday is the day dedicated to the Hindu god Hanuman, it has become the time for special rituals performed on those affected by evil spirits.
Many Indians turn to Hanuman to treat illnesses like depression and psychotic disorders.
Supreet Patel is a teacher from Mumbai who frequents the temple. She said that problems in the family or a child’s misbehavior are often characterized as a sign of evil spirits.
“So if we see anything which is wrong, which is not practical, which is not natural, we come over here,” said Patel.
A golden statue of a monkey shroud in jewels and flowers with a thin moustache and teeth bared sits at the front of the temple. Under his foot is a female demon. A woman in a blue sari stares at the image while she clasps her hands in front of her face, experiencing darshan – a ritual act that stresses the importance of both seeing and being seen by the image of a Hindu deity.
Portrayed in the form of a monkey with a red face, Hanuman is a central character in the Hindu epic of Rama. He is known for his courage, strength, selfless service and loyalty. Temples dedicated to him are believed to keep the surrounding area free of demons, demi-gods, evil spirits and other negative energies that Hindus believe in.
According to legend, when Gopalanand Swami – a saint of the Swaminarayan Hindu sect – first arranged for an idol of Hanuman to be installed at the Gujarat temple, he touched it with a rod and the image came alive and moved.
“Basically there is power in that statue,” said Kalpesh Adhiya, a worker at the temple. “Whoever has any of these problems, they come in here and it removes whatever possessions are there. Many people have been cured like this.”
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