24.0 Introduction
Religious beliefs and practices are a universal trait of human society. The fear of the unknown, the human’s response to it, and thereby his or her attempts to manipulate or overpower it through rituals and ceremonies can be considered as one of the foundations on which religion endures and continues to sustain across cultures.
Scholars like Tylor (1958) and Bird-David (1999) argued that in the ‘savage’ view every man had, in addition to his body, a ghost-soul, a thin unsubstantial human image, the cause of life or thought in the individual it animates, capable of leaving the body far behind and continuing to exist and appear to men after the death of that body. Others conceived religion as a system of beliefs as well as relationships and actions concerning supernaturalism (Chaudhury 1992:3). Yet some define it as “any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices about supernatural powers, whether that power is forces, gods, spirits, ghosts, or demons” (Bhagabati 1998:1). This relationship between human and supernatural powers is maintained and expressed through various symbols and ceremonies, both sacred and profane, with the help of religious specialists who are considered eligible to perform it (Ember & Ember 2002:439). In a tribal society, these religious specialists are often a shaman; the institution of shamanism is its religious system and a healing practice.Shamans are considered as mediators between the individuals and supernatural beings. They possess special characteristics, personality, and training, by virtue of which they are proficient in making contact with or propitiating and influencing the supernatural world. In the available literature, a shaman is defined as, “a person in some religions and societies who is believed to be able to contact good and evil spirits and cure people of illness” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 2000:1176)1.
He is aDOI: 10.4324/9781003516415-31
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1) practitioner who has developed the mastery of accessing altered states of consciousness, controlling themselves while moving in those states, and returning to an ordinary state of consciousness at will;
2) mediating between the needs of the spirit world and those of the physical world in a way that can be understood by the community, and whose mastery of the above is used; and
3) serving the needs of the community that cannot be met by practitioners of other disciplines such as physicians, psychiatrists, priests, and leaders.
(Pratt 2007:xxii)
Shamanism can be defined as a religious belief system in which the shaman is the specialist in traditional knowledge. The shaman knows the supernatural world “and human soul through ‘ecstasy’, the power of an altered state of consciousness, or trance, which is used to make a connection to the world of the spirits in order to bring about benefits to the community” (Walter & Fridman 2004:xi). A shaman is a medicine man, a magician, a psychopomp, a priest, mystic, or poet; and shamanism is a religious phenomenon (Eliade 1964:4). Thus, shamanism can be understood as power possessed by some persons who mediate, control, and manipulate supernatural or spiritual forces for human ends and such a phenomenon is core to the religious belief and practices of the community concerned. They are indispensably associated with the social life of the people from birth to death and beyond. The shaman, along with the institution of shamanism, not only defines the problems of humankind with the universe but also develops some sort of adjustment with his universe, provides a feeling of security in crisis, and acts as an agent of social control by maintaining a moral order as well as peaceful coexistence which on the other hand add to the cohesiveness of group solidarity (Durkheim 1964:47 and Dash & Mohanty 1992:3).
However, religion as a set of beliefs and practices and its representative characters are not eternal or static; rather they change within the ambit of the cyclical time-space.
In this regard, Andre Beteille remarked,Religious beliefs and practices vary and change, and this has to be examined in relation to variation and change in the structure of society. No religion operates independently of specific social arrangements... Maintaining the reciprocity, religious practices and social structure are changed concurrently. Even when the intrinsic structure of a given society is changed with the effect of globalisation, education, emerging socio-political orderings or other economical reasons, it equally effects existing religious beliefs and practices. The society is either affected by the adjacent religious faiths or prevailing faiths have undergone crucial changes.
(Beteille 2006:39)
There are ample numbers of empirical studies suggesting the case variously described as ‘absorption’, ‘assimilation’ (Bose 1953 and Ghurye 1943), ‘acculturation’ (Vidyarthi & Rai 1976 and Beteille 1969), and ‘sanskritisation’ (Srinivas 1952). Such religious transformation, especially of the tribal people not only eroded their collective religious identity but also helped in terminating many of its constituent parts, including the institution of shamanism.
In Northeast India, transformation of tribal belief system is seen on account of unsurpassed contact with institutionalised religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity (see Singh 1982 and Sengupta 2019). In the pre-colonial era, the Northeast experienced the slow bonding of the Mongoloid (Kirata), Hindu, and Buddhist cultures. In the beginning small numbers of tribal population have adopted the growing religious and culture identities in the region (see Das 2006; Majumdar 1968 and Pal 2019). In the case of Khasis of Meghalaya, a massive religious conversion to Christianity exemplified in the second half of the 20th century (see Robinson & Sathinathan 2003 and Down 1983). And as a result of these phenomena, to check the unbridled proselytisation, a series of cultural revivalism movements have been noticed in the region (see Natarajan 1997 and Rongmei 2019).
Of late, tribal societies in Arunachal Pradesh were known to be homogenous groups, living a communal life with little dividing lines concerning various aspects of social life, including their religious belief systems. However, these are changing owing to many factors like post-colonial administrative setups, education, exposure, and interaction of tribal people with neighbouring peoples, development activities, among many others. Tribal religions remained unaffected until recently, though a few tribesmen had come to be affected by Buddhism as early as in the eighth century (Sarkar 2006). During and after the colonial phase, religious conversion had taken place among several tribes and many of them entered the fold of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity and yet many continue to profess their indigenous belief systems and practices. As a result of the conversion processes, many organisations, unions, and community based organisations are formed for the preservation of culture and religious practices (Das 2006). Despite enforcement of various anti-conversion laws in the state, Christianity has now become one of the major dominant forces leading to the massive conversion of tribes in Arunachal Pradesh.
The process and mechanism of change are also varied and its effects and consequences can be perceived in the overall outlook of the tribal people. A close examination reveals ideological and philosophical contradictions and opposing axioms in respect to various issues within the members of a given society. With such a changing situation, the social relation is drastically changing, giving rise to many new reformative social movements relating to the revitalisation and incorporation of new and old traditions, etc. The conversion processes and profession of Christian and Hindu religion by the tribal people in Arunachal Pradesh is nothing but the incorporation of new faith by withdrawing the traditional one. Whereas the emerging trend of institutionalisation process of tribal religion such as Donyipoloism, Rangfraism, Nani Innitayaism, and similar others may be looked at as a revitalisation movement of old traditional beliefs and practices.
In this regard Blackburn remarked,Perhaps the most fundamental change is that animistic beliefs and rituals are undergoing formalisation into a ‘religion’ with new visual images, places of worship, and a formal theology. This systematisation worship of Donyi-Polo (Sun-Moon) places it alongside the other religions known in the area: Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Ritual practitioners have also formed a state wide association of shamans. These changes are fast-paced and largely undocumented.
(Blackburn 2002:22)
Within this process of religious transformations and various movements of religious revitalisation and reformation initiatives, many of the core elements of the tribal religion have been abandoned or else transformed. The institution of shamanism is one such area which raises many questions for its survival and function in the context of changing tribal world today. What will happen to the institution of shamanism once the concerned group of people converts to another religion? What is the role and status of the shaman in the institutionalised tribal religion? What are the factors responsible for changing tribal religion and the institution of the shamanism? What are the processes of religious transformations? These are some of the core areas that this chapter attempts to address with the Idu Mishmi tribe as a case study.
24.1