A Mecca to Shed Spirits of Evil

Shrieking in anguish, Farida Banu savagely swings her matted hair and throws her head backward and forward.

Watched over by her 8-year-old son and a crowd of relatives, Banu has been crying hysterically for nearly 10 days, alternating between beating her chest and whimpering.

She’s at Mira Datar, a Sufi Muslim saint’s shrine in the western Indian state of Gujarat. It’s a place Indians come to exorcise evil spirits.

Following the shrine’s rituals, Banu, 29, flings herself on the ground and thrashes around yelling obscenities. Her in-laws want to take her son away from her, she shouts.

Her relatives look on, unperturbed. The cure is at work, they say.

Each day, dozens of troubled women, and some men, visit the shrine desperate to rid themselves of their mental torment.

Many have treatable mental illnesses, doctors say, but severe poverty and a lack of public health programs lead them to the shrine. Doctors think that some of the women are driven here by the numbing drudgery of toiling in house and field.

But there are men with troubles too.

A sullen Fateh Mohammed sits in the sprawling shrine, his feet and hands shackled with a heavy iron chain. The keys to the padlock on the fetters are with his wife, Shakilabanu.

Near Mohammed are 12 of his 14 children, each of them wearing lighter iron chains fastened around their necks with a small padlock.

The padlocks act as a talisman to prevent evil spirits from entering their bodies, said Shakilabanu, who also wears a chain with a lock on her feet.

Four years ago, Mohammed had a flourishing construction business in Bombay, India’s financial hub. But he took to gambling and, as his debts mounted, his business fell apart, his wife says.

Shakilabanu blames an “evil eye” cast on Mohammed by jealous relatives. She persuaded him to visit Mira Datar nearly a year ago, and the family has been living at the shrine ever since. Occupying a tiny dingy room, they survive on food given by the trust that runs the shrine.

“A priest in a local mosque in Bombay advised me to take my husband to Mira Datar and hand him over to God,” Shakilabanu said.

Outside the shrine, troubled women slather themselves with mud from a nearby canal in a purification ritual. These women from a conservative village culture would ordinarily cover their heads with saris when outside the home, but here they seem to shed all inhibitions and lie in the sun wearing little but a thick coat of mud.

Clerics say people who come to the shrine are able to express their anxieties and thus behave in strange ways.

“Most of the people who come here, especially the women, are those who are harassed and tortured by their family,” said Saiyed Aiyaz Miyan Hazi Nizamuddin, a cleric at the shrine.

It is not just Muslims who visit the 600-year-old shrine, Nizamuddin says. Hindus, Christians and Sikhs also come, drawn by a faith that they will find relief.

“For years, I have suffered in silence,” Farida Banu said. “Now when I shout, I feel someone, somewhere, is listening. I feel I have a voice.”