Snake Charmers on Parade

Abstract

Abstract Festivals have often been described as ritual occasions in which members of a community get together and overcome internal divisions and conflicts. The festival of Jhāṃpān (or Jhāpān Melā) provides a different definition of festivals as mirrors of social dramas and hierarchical divisions. The Ojhās of Bengal are low-class rural healers specializing in curing snakebites. The Bedes (or Bedias) are tribal snake catchers who extract venom and sell it to private clinics. Both groups perform snake charming, a popular entertainment as well as a ritual practice, during particular religious festivals, such as the Jhāṃpān. The diffusion and government support of Western medicine and education have seriously compromised the indigenous knowledge of these groups and attacked it as irrational superstition. Some of the most popular Jhāṃpān celebrations have been coercively stopped, and yet the festival is still celebrated in several districts and practitioners have developed strategic narratives to protect their knowledge. This article analyzes the changing role of snake specialists in Bengali rural society through a historical and contextual study of the Jhāṃpān. The decline of this festival mirrors the crisis of the transmission of indigenous knowledge, which can be understood only by considering the intersections between healing, ritual, and entertainment.

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