A Protective Fortress: Psychic Disorders and Therapy at the
Catholic Shrine of Puliyampatti (South India)
Brigitte Sébastia

Abstract

The shrine of Saint Anthony of Puliyampatti is frequented by patients affected by troubles that are classified in biomedicine as biological, neurotic or psychotic disorders, but which are interpreted as consequences of evil spirits or sorcery. To confirm this aetiology, the relatives oblige the patient to confront every evening the power of Saint Anthony in order to reveal supernatural entities. As this article shows, the pressure exerted on patients by their relatives coercing them to be possessed, and the ease with which some patients submit to their will, call for a definition of the place religious therapy assumes in a plural medical context.

An opportune event

On 6 August 2001, a fire broke out taking twenty-eight lives in the Pātusā mananalakkāppakam, one of the seventeen mental homes that have been established around the dargāh in Ervadi (Ramanathapuram dt.). ii Press photographs showing charred and chained bodies gave rise to indignation. The government of Tamil Nadu decided to introduce a number of measures to ensure that the Mental Health Act of 1987 would be respected. Following instructions from the District Collectors of Tamil Nadu, teams from the social welfare departments and the health service in each district were assigned to visit the shrines frequented by the “mentally ill persons” and to ensure that the new instructions were namely: 1- to close the mental homes or hostels managed by private individuals not having the necessary authorizations, 2- to remove the chains from the patients, 3- to present the patients suffering from a mental pathology before a magistrate in order that he undertake their admission to the psychiatric hospital in Kilpauk (Chennai), 4- to oblige the families of patients little or not at all affected by a mental disorder to come and fetch them, and to entrust persons abandoned or without families to various institutions.
Thus, on 17 August, the Catholic shrine at Puliyampatti received the visit of the director of the department of social welfare of the district of Tuticorin, accompanied by her secretary and a police officer. In her report, she noted that the sixty-two patients counted were all accompanied by their relatives and they lodged in rooms rented out by the church, and that twenty-one persons had been freed from their chains. With the exception of three patients who still resided in Puliyampattiiii at the time of my stay, those who had been chained have returned to their homes.

The shrine and its patients

Puliyampatti is a small hamlet in the village of Akkanayakkapatti in the taluk of Ottappitaram, located in the district of Tuticorin. The imposing church, inaugurated in 1959 following the extension of the small original chapel containing the miraculous statue of Saint Anthony of Padua, reflects the renown of the place. According to tradition, it is said that a nātār family, taking refuge in Puliyampatti subsequent to a caste dispute in its village, founded the small chapel in which to install Saint Anthony viii. One of the nātār families ix from Puliyampatti, although there is no indication of its precedence, maintains that it descends from the founders of the shrine. The story of the founding of the shrine includes a miraculous healing, that of the founder’s thirteenth child. However, the nature of the illness from which the child suffered is not made clear, so that tradition does not establish the categories of patients who visit this shrine. Nevertheless, a connection is found by considering the representation of Saint Anthony of Padua. While the latter is invoked above all in Europe to find lost objects, in India, and more precisely in Tamil Nadu, his fight against the demon conferred upon him his reputation as an exorcist. He shares this reputation with several other saints, among whom are Saint Michael, Saint Anthony the Hermit, Saint Sebastian, Saint Francis-Xavier, Saint John de Brittox. Although these saints, with the exception of the Archangel Michael, are not represented in Puliyampatti, a few patients allude to their ability to cooperate with Saint Anthony in the exorcism process. While these enumerations of saints call to mind that the conception of Indian Christianity is shaped by Hindu values, they also underscore the difficulty in fighting off the virulence and tenacity of malevolent spirits. The association of the saints in the therapeutic process is moreover a central fact in Puliyampatti; it comprises the whole originality of the shrine.
The patients in Puliyampatti are from the district of Tirunelveli or, in lesser numbers, from the district of Tuticorin to which the village is attached. From the religious point of view, they are essentially Hindus and Catholics, but a small minority of Protestants belonging to the CSI (Church of South India) are also to be found, along with a few rare Muslims. The strong presence of Hindus is not only to be explained by their toleration in venerating all divine images, whatever their denominational adherence, it is explained by the fact that, within a radius of 100 kilometres, the shrine of Puliyampatti benefits from the best reputation as regards the treatment of psychic disorders. The patients belong to a variety of castes that are well represented in the region, divided between the śudra varna (maravar/tēvar, nātār, kōnār, ācāri, paravar) and the category of untouchables (pallar). While the śudra still behave very discriminatorily towards the untouchables, as the recent acts of violence that broke out in the region show (Manikumar 1997, Patil 1997), the segregation of patients based on the criterion of caste is not very pronounced because their social profiles are quite similar: schooling that rarely goes beyond fifth standard; a very low economic level. Some complain about the recurrence of discourse on caste, but it should be noted that this criterion interferes neither in the choice of frequentation, nor in the choice of co-residents, where caste difference entails transgressions and pollution (bathing, storage of ingredients and goods, cooking)....
 

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