Of mystical healing and historians

The office seemed to be very spacious. See-through class rooms with projectors, neat furniture and all. The reception guy promptly asks if we are some relatives of the director, I wonder if he was told that we were expected or was used to it.

The conversation starts flowing, the central theme being the enterprising Gujarati and his grand ambition- going abroad. You know Pappu uncle’s institute helps the Patels and the shahs reach their destinations via the legitimate route…he teaches spoken English.

In the flow of the casual talk he happened to mention that there was this seminar in some American university about India, an American lady presented her research on the tradition of mystic healing in India’s remotest places. Apparently the fact that there are people in America who are interested in things which we take for granted amazed both him and papaji.

Being the typical engineer-manager that he is, Pappu uncle went on to dissect the issue analytically, analyzing cases from real life and came to the conclusion that whether or not faith healing is genuine, the kind of faith people have in it demands a closer look at the rural India its superstitions, rituals and ceremonies from a different perspective. A perspective different from that of a person who has spent his entire life in some metro city, indifferent to the realities of the medieval world of Indian villages. Agreed, but then the discussion digressed and the eagerness to examine the issue was substituted with a subtle endorsement of the belief in mystic healing.

Why did that happen? I don’t know and I don’t care to find out either. But I can’t help relating the incident with a general observation, whenever a historian is studying a person, an era or civilization he is more likely to eulogize it than objectively evaluate it.