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Healing in
South Gujarat: Conceptions, practices and restricted medical
pluralism
Purendra N. Prasad
The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether larger masses in
India have the greater choice in terms of accessibility,
affordability, efficacy of health care due to supposedly
existing pluralistic medical tradition in India. The study
findings indicate that there are certain illnesses for which the
rural communities depend exclusively on healers irrespective of
caste and class. The normative questions that Indian modernity
has raised about the scientific credentials of these healers
(biological efficacy) or about them propagating retrogressive
social values, for example, actually camouflaged the essential
meaning and efficacy of their practices. These questions have
hijacked the social anchorage of folk healing and therefore
fostered its understanding in narrow biological and moral terms.
Keywords: Healers; Medical Pluralism; Illness; Rural
India |
