Skip to main content

Howwzat?

"Believe it or not, rice can diagnose your ailment"

Source : OTV Bureau
published on : 3/18/2009 11:32:24 AM
Rayagada: You must have heard of tribal people resorting to medicinal plants to cure themselves of different diseases. Witchcraft is another remedy for these illiterate inhabitants. Now, rice can also do wonders on patients. 
 
Believe it or not, Dandasi Senapati, a tribal ‘doctor’, as he is widely called, of Sirikana village near the district headquarters town of Rayagada gave a queer definition of medical science by adopting the unique healing method - rice treatment - in the tribal dominated region. Be it superstition or firm faith, Senapati’s rice treatment has many takers in the locality. 
 
Senapati’s healing style is quite funny. Patients are asked to bring a handful of husk-free rice and Rs 20 as doctor’s fee with them. And then Senapati prescribes medicine, mostly medicinal herbs and shrubs for any physical ailment. 
 
What is more interesting is the diagnosis procedure of Senapati. Unlike other doctors, Senapati does not examine the pulse or any other body parts of patients to diagnose the ailment. Nor does he ask the patients about their suffering. Rather, he can scan a patient thoroughly by examining the rice they brought while meeting the tribal ‘doctor’. 
 
“I put the rice brought by the patient on the ground and give a close look at it. Then I can detect the disease,” Senapati quipped. Senapati denied of practicing witchcraft or black magic to cure diseases. “I also do not offer prayer to any deity nor perform puja,” Senapati said. “Patients have firm faith in my healing method. People from far off places come here to avail my therapy,” he added. 
 
Chiranjibi Rao, a relative of a patient claimed to have come all the way from Parbatipuram in Andhra Pradesh to meet Senapati. “My son was suffering from bad cold and cough. I had heard of Senapati’s miraculous therapy. So I came here with my son,” Rao maintained. Some other patients also corroborated what Rao said. According to villagers, patients often wait in queue to get the appointment of Senapati. 
 
The patients, who have an unflinching faith on Senapati, ruled it out as superstition. But the professional doctors describe Senapati’s practice as nothing but sheer superstition. “This is clearly a superstition. The practice may put the lives of patients in danger,” doctor VN Prusty of Rayagada district headquarters hospital said.  
 
Interestingly, like Senapati, the Sirikana village is also home to another god woman, Gurumai. Gurumai, a woman priest of the village, is the harbinger of truth and prosperity for the locals in the vicinity. She has been frequented by people, including patients, everyday with problems, be it personal or social. She resolves their plight by worshipping the village deity.

Popular posts from this blog

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...
Read more

Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde   Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement , led by African Americans , organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation.  These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South.  The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures. These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by l...
Read more

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...
Read more