Superstition, Godmen and the Law

Harm to the person: human sacrifice, which is rare and which is the extreme case the law names; the beating and confinement of persons said to be possessed; branding, and the forced consumption of substances as cures.

Harm through the withholding of treatment: the substitution of ritual for medical care in serious illness, which kills chiefly children and women, and the treatment of psychiatric illness as possession, which is a substantial and under-reported field.

Harm to women: the accusation of witchcraft, which in parts of India has led to killing, expulsion and dispossession, and which frequently attaches to widows and to women holding land; and sexual exploitation under the claim of spiritual authority.

Economic exploitation: extraction of money against promises of cure, progeny, employment or the removal of misfortune.

Harm through the caste order: practices that a subordinated community is compelled to perform.

Why it persists

Naming the conditions is more useful than deploring the practice.

Failure of the alternatives. The correlation is with the absence of accessible health care, credit, policing and legal remedy, not with religiosity as such. Where the state's institutions do not reach a person, something else does, which is the same proposition as in [Legal Pluralism].

Poverty and insecurity, which raise the value of any promise of relief.

Illness for which medicine has no cure, and terminal or chronic conditions in particular.

The status of women, which makes accusation and exploitation possible against those least able to resist.

Education, and specifically the absence of the scientific temper the Constitution names as a fundamental duty of every citizen.

Charismatic authority's own structure, described above: no institution, no rules, no discipline, and disciples selected for loyalty.

Media, which has amplified the reach of individual figures enormously.

Community pressure, which makes complaint costly: the complainant is frequently the neighbour of everyone who believes.

The response

Law, in outline. The general criminal law reaches the harms directly: culpable homicide, hurt, wrongful confinement, sexual offences, cheating and extortion, and the offences protecting children. To it are added special statutes, and the Indian instances usually named are the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act 2013, and the corresponding Karnataka legislation of 2017, both of which proceed by enumerating specified harmful practices rather than by legislating about belief; the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954, which prohibits advertisements claiming magic cures for specified conditions; and the provisions on unlawful assembly and on the promotion of enmity where the practice becomes communal.

The drafting technique is worth noticing and is exactly right sociologically. The statutes do not prohibit belief, faith, worship or the ordinary practices of any religion, which they expressly save; they prohibit enumerated acts that cause identifiable harm. That is how a legislature acts against a practice in a plural society without legislating about religion, and it is [Law and Social Change] applied.

The limits of law, which are those set out in that chapter: it acts after the harm; it depends on a complaint from a community that believes; witnesses are the complainant's neighbours; and the practitioner frequently commands more local standing than the complainant.

Society, which the question also asks about. Rationalist and anti-superstition organisations, whose method is public demonstration of how a claimed miracle is produced, and whose Indian record includes the murder of prominent campaigners; health services within reach, which removes the occasion; education and the scientific temper; media that does not promote such figures; and women's organisations, which have been central against witchcraft accusation because they can support the accused where the village will not.

A worked example

A child in a village develops a fever that does not settle.

The sequence that produces the harm. The nearest health facility is fourteen kilometres away, has no doctor on Fridays, and the household has no money for a private clinic. A local practitioner offers a ritual for a fee the household can raise. The child is treated for four days. By the time the household reaches a hospital, the illness is beyond it.

Read against the chapter. The entitlement to health care existed and was unreachable, which is the analysis in [Population, Food and Hunger] and [The Welfare State]. The practitioner supplied consolation, an explanation and an immediate response, which are the functions of religion listed earlier. The belief was real in its consequences whether or not it was true. And the criminal law, which would reach this after the death, could have done nothing before it.

The interventions that would have worked, in the order of their effectiveness: a functioning health facility within reach, which removes the occasion; an ambulance or transport; awareness that fever in a child is an emergency; and, last, prosecution. That order is the chapter's argument, and it is the honest sociological answer to a question that invites a moralising one: the practice recedes where the alternative arrives, and the law is the smallest part of the remedy.

Quick revision

1. The subject is exploitation and identifiable harm conducted under religious cover, not religion. Sociology takes no position on religious truth.
2. The godman is a case of charismatic authority from Weber: personal, outside institutions, recognising no rules, with disciples chosen for loyalty. Every feature that makes it powerful makes it unaccountable.
3. Followers are not merely ignorant: consolation, meaning, belonging and an immediate response are real functions, and people arrive after other institutions have failed them.
4. Thomas's theorem: a belief need not be true to produce real payments, obedience and injury.
5. The harms: to the person; through the withholding of medical treatment; to women, through witchcraft accusation and sexual exploitation; economic; and through caste-imposed practices.
6. Why it persists: the absence of accessible health care, credit, policing and remedy; poverty; incurable illness; the status of women; the absence of the scientific temper; the structure of charismatic authority; media; and community pressure on complainants.
7. Law: the general criminal law, plus statutes such as the Maharashtra Act of 2013 and the Karnataka Act of 2017, which enumerate harmful practices and expressly save belief and worship, and the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954.
8. The practice recedes where the alternative arrives. Health services, education and organisation do more than prosecution, which acts only after the harm.

Test yourself

1. Why is the godman best analysed through Weber's concept of charismatic authority? Because every feature of that type fits: authority rests on devotion to an exceptional individual rather than on an office or a rule; it attaches to the person, so it is not transferable and not reviewable; it recognises no rules and no jurisdiction; and it is administered by disciples chosen for personal loyalty rather than by officials with qualifications and duties. The analysis explains the pattern without asserting anything about any particular person: the very features that make such authority powerful are those that leave it unaccountable to any institution.

2. Why do people follow such figures? Answer without condescension. Because the functions religion performs are real, and because the people concerned have usually been failed elsewhere. Such figures offer consolation, an explanation of suffering, belonging and an immediate response, to people who come with illness medicine has not cured, with debt, with childlessness or with a family crisis. A person for whom the hospital is unreachable, the police station unhelpful and the court unaffordable is not behaving irrationally in going where help is promised, and an explanation that treats followers as merely ignorant accounts for nothing.

3. How have Indian statutes on this subject been drafted, and why is the technique significant? By enumerating specified acts that cause identifiable harm, such as those listed in the Maharashtra Act of 2013 and the Karnataka Act of 2017, while expressly saving belief, faith, worship and the ordinary practices of religion. The technique is significant because it allows a legislature in a plural society to act against demonstrable harm without legislating about religion, which would provoke exactly the resistance described in [Law and Social Change] and would also be constitutionally objectionable.

4. What are the limits of law here? That it acts only after the harm has occurred; that it depends on a complaint from within a community many of whose members believe in the practice; that the witnesses are the complainant's own neighbours, who bear the social cost of testifying; and that the practitioner frequently commands greater local standing than the person complaining. These are the general limits identified in [Law and Social Change], and they are unusually severe here because the offence, the complainant and the witnesses all belong to the same small social field.

5. What reduces these practices most effectively? The arrival of the alternative. A functioning health facility within reach removes the occasion for a ritual cure; accessible credit removes the occasion for a promise about debt; education and the scientific temper reduce the plausibility of the claim; organisations that demonstrate publicly how a claimed miracle is produced reduce the authority; and women's organisations can support a person accused of witchcraft where the village will not. Prosecution matters and comes last in order of effectiveness, because it operates only after the harm has been done.