Treatment through exorcism – When will the Indian Medical Association wake up?

To become an MBBS, one has to pay fees ranging from Rs 10.5 lakh to Rs 60 lakh. In India, there is one doctor available for every 1700 patients. This is government data. If seen properly, there are 1700 doctors for one patient. Because the business of exorcism is flourishing double day and quadruple. But instead of focusing on this, the Indian Medical Association of the country is sitting in the Supreme Court with a petition against Ayurveda. Whereas on the other hand Baba, Bengali Baba Ojha, is infusing the power of healing by blowing fire in the healing meetings. And the poor section of the country is losing religion, sometimes life or even money and respect in faith and superstition. It may be a shock for an ENT doctor who spends lakhs of rupees and spends years studying medicine. But business for Baba and devotion and faith for common people.

The biggest thing is that those people need treatment according to psychiatry. He himself has become a doctor. Some are doing treatment in the name of mother, some in the name of exorcists, some are treating people by pretending to be snake baba and some Maulana is making a business out of children’s toys.

Science has undoubtedly made great progress. Found cure even for incurable diseases. But people still believe in miracles against many diseases. If this is studied in the true sense, then in India there is a game going on to provide more treatment in tombs than in hospitals and crores of rupees are being cheated. You can understand this from just one news that Hakim Imran Baba, starting with exorcism, started treating cancer and defrauded lakhs of rupees.

A report by the National Library of Medicine shows that still 40 percent of the people in the country believe in the evil eye. The report shows that the condition of those diabetic patients who believed in witchcraft instead of taking medicine was found to be worse. Additionally, the report noted that superstitious beliefs do not follow medical treatment instructions properly. Even epileptic patients used exorcisms to treat their disease rather than following medical instructions.

You must be wondering who is responsible behind all this? The people visiting these places or the exorcists sitting at these places, the Mullahs, Maulanas, Baba Fakirs, or the hope for miracles, or faith in divine power?

Actually, first of all, one thing is responsible and that is fear, apprehension of something happening, which in the language of psychiatry is called OCD obsessive compulsive disorder. In this disease, many types of thoughts start coming in the patient’s mind. For example, if a family member has gone out, something may have happened to him or he may have met with an accident. These patients start believing in miracles more than medicine. They start singing more devotional songs. Starts emphasizing on worship. Starts talking about faith and miracles. Generally these patients will appear normal. You would think this is religious or religious. But the fear growing inside the patient gradually increases. In such a situation, he starts scaring the family and the people around him by telling them about ghosts. OCD sufferers reject medical science and start claiming that there is an evil spirit or even divine power nearby.

The hunters taking advantage of this fear are the so-called miraculous Bengali Baba, Baba Peer Mazar, dressed in the robes of religion. And then the news comes that in the name of curing the disease by exorcising, two lakh 60 thousand rupees were cheated. In the news of fraud, the name of the sick patient is Trilochan Gop and the name of the robber Baba is Mo Salim.

Understand another aspect of these news – mental illness is not accepted in India. Because a mental patient never accepts that he is a patient. Even the family members do not believe in such a situation and consider it to be the effect of divine wrath, ghosts or witchcraft. Often people going through such a situation fall into the trap of Tantra-Mantra. They perform many types of rituals ranging from black magic, whereas this is a mental disease called schizophrenia. But instead of getting it treated, people often fall into the trap of exorcism considering it to be the effect of ghosts, spirits and witchcraft.

Not only do they fall victim to it, but many times the entire family has to bear the brunt of it. On July 1, 2018, 11 people committed suicide simultaneously in Delhi’s Burari area. In which even innocent children were included. The police admitted that the deaths were induced by delusions and psychosis, that is, 11 people died simply because one person in the family was mentally ill. Who was engaged in worship in the morning and evening and in the rituals of apprehension and fear of some untoward incident. If the family had taken him to a good psychiatrist in time, perhaps the entire family would have been alive today!!

That is, this game of superstition, auspicious-inauspicious, happening-unhappening or miracles starts from the mind of the person, who transfers this fear to other people also. The reason is that we are often afraid of those things which we do not understand or do not want to understand. For this reason, this game of treatment is going on from every village to the peer shrines and dargahs. At some places women are being tied with chains and at some places they are being burnt with hot rods. People’s thinking has become so blunt that recently Tantrik was seen treating two patients in the emergency ward of Mahoba District Hospital. Because instead of trusting the treatment of doctors, patients believe more in the exorcism done by Tantriks.

On March 2 this year, the Bombay High Court sentenced Bengali Baba Mehndi Kasim Zainul Shaikh to life imprisonment for raping six minor girls. Mehndi Shaikh kept raping a woman along with six minor Hindu girls for more than five years. Not only rape but property worth more than Rs 1 crore was also taken away from the family. The court clearly stated in its decision that the so-called Tantrik or Baba not only take advantage of people’s weaknesses by extorting money, but also sometimes sexually harass the victims in the guise of giving solutions.

All this happens under the guise of divine fear, cure and miracle. But the encounter of science and superstition often gives rise to resistance and anger. The fearful victims of the divine, the mentally ill patients or the people who loot the society through the business of fear, miracles and superstition, dismiss those who show the right path as unrighteous atheists. So that the business of fear continues and people keep falling into their trap. Whereas in our Vedas and Ayurveda, there is no mention of miraculous cure of any disease. But the network of miraculous babas, shrines and dargahs is spreading so much that in the coming days, these babas will be seen instead of hospitals and doctors and the Indian Medical Association will be found sitting in the court against Ayurveda.

BY-Rajeev Choudhary