Social Myth and Social Exclusion

Few years back my wife and I were in a village in Senapati district as usual. My wife being a paediatrician was giving free medical consultation to the local population then whenever required. One afternoon a couple brought their child to my wife for consultation. The child was indeed ill. The parents narrated that a spell was cast on their child by a person with an 'evil-eye'. Upon careful examination the child appeared to have chest congestion due to pneumonia. Further examination revealed that it was a case of pneumonia, and the illness had nothing to do with 'evil-eye'.

It is a common belief in our society that if a person from such a family of 'evil-eye' casts a spell in the form of a compliment or something of that sort, the person upon whom the cast is spelled would fall sick. And in certain cases the so-called victim would even die. One of my elder brothers was considered to have been 'attacked' when he was 2 by a person with such 'accursed power' that he remained physically and mentally challenged till his death at 32. If there was such a thing as 'evil-eye' I have a valid reason to consider such people as social nuisance for bringing such hardship and suffering in the life of my parents and their children specially my brother who was the 'victim'.

There is a slight variation between different communities about how 'evil-eye' works; how it is transmitted across generations and how to do away the so-called spell. In the community I come from, it is believed that the 'power' is transmitted from parents to children. And suppose a 'clean' person marries such 'unclean' people, then both of them eventually become 'unclean', and their children will also become 'unclean'. The implication of such belief is that 'clean' people avoid marrying such 'unclean' people. And eventually a kind of caste system prevails in the community. One group is considered clean and the other unclean. This continues to the next generation, and the next and so on thus erecting a wall of social exclusion in term of inter-marriage across different sections of the people.

I have now come to believe that this story that some people possess power to cast spell on others is a myth. If a word or a speech can cast a spell that could make another person sick, how could that power be transmitted from the DNA of the parents to that of the children? This makes no sense at all. But if it is transferred from parents to children like sickle-cell anaemia or HIV is transferred how could it possibly then give power to a person to cast a spell on another person? This too does not make sense scientifically. Someone would counter saying that it is the power of the evil spirit that make such things possible. However, if it is the evil spirit that works then how could the evil spirit possibly be transferred from parents to children? Evil spirit is not in a 'thing' that could be passed on through gene from the parents to the children nor could the power of the evil spirit or any such 'supra-natural' power be transferred from parents' DNA to children's DNA. This belief about the natural transmission of evil spirit from one person to another person is both scientifically and theologically untrue. However, if anyone invites the evil spirit and asks power from the evil one, then of course the issue is altogether different! Otherwise, one can rest assured that a person who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ do not have such power from the evil spirit to cast spell on other people. In Christ there is no ancestral descent that is unclean; all are clean. One does not have to be morally perfect to be pronounced genealogically clean; it is rather the other way round – that once one is cleansed, Christ tells a person to live a morally upright life. And this spiritual journey to be morally upright in His sight continues till death calls a person home. Considering a family lineage unclean – possessing a power to cast spell on others – is scientifically absurd and theologically incorrect.

I believe the traditional story has been passed on from one generation to another. And even today the same story continues about those people about whom the story has been told. And because we typecast such people, we find incidents where it appears that people about whom society tell stories for generations cast a spell on certain people. And in a close knit societies like ours where interaction between members of the community is extremely frequent such 'unclean' people interacting with other members is bound to happen, and when some sickness occurs we just attribute it to such 'unclean' people. And so this story continues in the neighbourhood. However, given that the God of the Bible cleanses all people when anyone calls on the name of Jesus Christ and also the kind of understanding provided by scientific enterprise makes it unintelligible, one can confidently bury such belief about 'evil-eye' as social myth that no longer makes sense in this generation. 

NB: This article appears on The Hornbill Express on 1st December, 2014.