On other occasions, the relationship between ritual healing and biomedicine is
seen as more problematic. The healing power (s´akti) of gods is sometimes spoken
about in nostalgic terms, as in the sentence that gives this paper its title, and the
blame for the gods’ diminished power to heal is put on the spread of biomedicine.
This argument is often adopted by both priests and lay persons to explain and justify
ritual failures, as for example when an exorcism or a healing ceremony does not
prove efficacious even after a long time and several attempts. People often explain
the persistence of the problem with a discourse that entails a circular feedback loop.
Increased recourse to ‘modern’ ways of healing, and increased adoption of a modern
lifestyle generally, diminishes people’s faith in gods and induces devotees to forget
their ritual duties towards them. This in turn lessens the local deities’ power to heal, a
power that is perceived as based on a relationship of reciprocal exchange between
belief (s´raddh a) and celebration (p uj a) on the people’s side and the bestowing of bliss
and healing by the gods. The weakening of the deities’ power to heal induces more
90 S. Bindi
recurrent ritual failures, which in turn increases demand for biomedical remedies. In
this reasoning, modernity, in the form of biomedical power, is thought to have
broken a rule of reciprocity on which the moral economy of ritual healing is based.
This rule, which has been widely recorded in other Hindu contexts, governs both
spiritual and human relationships; the superior being (for example a god or a human
being of higher status) receives veneration and respect, and gives bliss and help in
return.