EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Vol. II, Issue 6/ September 2014

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Traditional Health Beliefs, Practices and Healers

among the Kuki Tribe of Manipur

HAOKIP NEMNEIVAH
Research Scholar
University of Delhi, Delhi
India

Introduction

Every society irrespective of their ethnicity, geographical

location, modernism and innovation has their own traditional
medical beliefs and practices. Though western medical system
is fast developing today, people still opted for traditional way of
healing. This traditional beliefs and practices are mostly
associated with the way the people diagnosed their illnesses
and chose their healers according to their illnesses. When an
illness first show its appearance, the victim or the family try to
explain it in their own terms and through their experiences and
beliefs they classified their illness to be natural or unnatural.
All these beliefs and knowledge about the way they perceived
their health is interwoven with their respective culture. E.B.
Tylor (1871) definition on culture could be recollect where he
defines culture as ‘That complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of the
society’. From this definition we learned that culture teaches
oneself how to live within them; with the other culture and how
to identify illnesses into natural and supernatural. As the
culture of the world are different the beliefs and interpretations
of a particular illness is also varies. The influence of culture in

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their traditional beliefs and indigenous knowledge is still

constant upon the people that they cannot fully accept the new
advancement of western medical system. Looking into the
whole health care system of the different cultures of the world,
we find that there is combination of both the western medical
system and the traditional way. People depend on the
traditional healer at times of trouble mostly with psychological
problems. This does not mean that western medical system is
not satisfying the people desires, the dissatisfaction lies when
the medicine given by the doctors could not give an
interpretation of certain illness which are cause by black magic
and witchcraft. According to Allan Young (1976:10), “The
layman willingness to defer to the understanding of the
specialists is possible only in societies where a significant
amount of medical knowledge relating to serious sickness can
be called esoteric (that is, the secret or privileged
understanding of special people), and where the owners of
esoteric knowledge are able to demonstrate their uncommon
medical powers. The people opted between various medical
systems depending on the way how their culture defines and
explains that particular illness. The same kind of illness can be
explained with different interpretation by different culture.
The practice of depending on traditional healers is highly found
among many tribal and rural people of India. Khare (1963)
studied the medical beliefs of the people of the Indian villages
and impact of this medical belief which is contrasting to the
modern medicine. Opler’s (1963) studied the rural area of
Uttar Pradesh in India saying that the medical beliefs are part
of the values and thinking of the culture. It is true that all
these beliefs and practices could not be ruled out from the lives
of the people as it will always exist in their culture and there is
continuity of this cycle which paves way for the new generation
to continue with the traditional beliefs and practices.

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Universe of study

The Kukis are an ethnic group that scattered throughout the

Northeastern region of India, Northwest Burma and
Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. In Northeast India they
settled in all the seven states except in Arunachal Pradesh. The
Kuki tribe is an amalgamation of different sub-tribe and
numerous clans. These clans share a common past, culture,
customs and tradition. They speak in dialects that have a
common root language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman group.
The Kukis have Mongoloid features and are generally short-
stature with straight black hair and dark brown eyes. The
different Kuki clans are recognized as scheduled tribe of India.
This tribe recognition is based on the dialect spoken and region.
In northeast they are most scattered in Manipur, Nagaland,
Assam and Mizoram. Kukis is composed of many different clans
and further divided into many sub-clans. The Kuki tribe has
their own indigenous religion but an important breakthrough in
the history of the Kuki people with extensive change in social,
cultural and political effects is the arrival of missionaries and
the spread of Christianity among the Kukis. The acceptance of
Christianity marks a departure from their many tribal customs
and traditions, and along with the spread of English education,
the coming of modernity is seen within the Kuki people. The
main occupation of this tribe is agriculture and horticulture but
with the impact of western education many people are in
government jobs. The present study is conducted among the
Thadou speaking Kuki tribe of Manipur. This paper is based on
all my field work experiences about the traditional health
beliefs, practices and their approaches to traditional healers in
three different districts of the Kukis. It is conducted in
Sapormeina of Senapati district, Moreh an Indo-Burma border
in Chandel district and Chassad Avenue in Imphal.

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Methodology

As the work is done on the traditional health beliefs and

practices, the research requires doing an in-depth interview on
the concept and experiences of the people regarding health and
how they are still believing on their indigenous health care
practices. An interview and case study is conducted among the
traditional healers concerning the diagnosis and therapy they
adopted. An observation is also done to witness the way the
healers used in carrying out their treatment processes inorder
to see the satisfaction of the people.

Objectives

The main objective is to explore on the existing traditional

health beliefs and practices found among the Kuki tribe. It will
also find the different type of traditional healers found among
them and their way of diagnosis and therapy. It will further
find out similarities between the Kuki tribe with other culture
of the world in terms of traditional healing.

Concept of Health

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-

being and not merely an absence or infirmity” (WHO, 1948).
But recently this statement has been enlarged to include the
ability to lead a ‘socially and economically productive life’. So
health covers a large domain of a person’s well-being and we
can’t judge a person by only the physical well-being. Therefore,
it has been always said “when health is well everything is well”.
Every society has different concept of health. The Kuki tribe
perceived themselves as healthy as long as they can work
physically whether in the field or household, carrying out their
daily routine and in good shape in outward appearance. Among
this tribe, the perception for healthy person is that he should be

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void of any deformities or illness apparently and

psychologically. The local term for health is called ‘damthei’ or
‘tahsa pha’. When a person is called damthei, he is tension free,
physically active, mentally undisturbed and financially well off.
Another perception is that good appetite is a sign of
healthiness. Being a tribe, consumption of meat is extremely
seen among the people and those who are not indulging in this
practice are notified as unhealthy by the people. When the all
these are missing in one’s life he is term as sick and the local
termed for sick is ‘damlou’. A sick person among them will
always get deviant from work which is similar to the
observation made by Talcott’s Parson’s (Alland 1970:16-17).
The role play by the sick person is to get refrains from regular
work and the intensity of his sickness is measured by the time
the sick person is abstaining from his work. The family,
relatives and the community play a major role in identifying
and selecting of perfect therapists for the sick person. In their
philosophy there are only two kinds of sickness exists; one is
occurring naturally by seasonal change or poor diet or
environment or weak immune system and the other is cause by
some powerful supernatural agents. From the signs and
symptoms of the sick person, they will categorize the illness to
be cause by natural or supernatural power.

Beliefs and Practices

The health beliefs and practices of the Kuki tribe are

interlinked with their culture and religion. Illnesses are
classified in terms of natural and supernatural. Natural is
associated with that of naturalistic medical system as term by
Foster and Anderson (1979:53) and supernatural is similar with
the personalistic medical system. In Naturalistic system, illness
is explained to be cause by natural agents like air, water, wind
etc. For this type of illness, the villagers concern medical
doctors and depend on medicines. In Personalistic system

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‘illness is believe to be caused by the active, purposeful

intervention of a sensate agent who may be a supernatural
being (a deity or a god), a nonhuman being (such as a ghost,
ancestor, or evil spirit), or a human being (a witch or sorcerer)’.
Those illness caused by ghost or evil spirit are locally called
‘gambol’ and those caused by evil eye and witchcraft are called
‘kaobol’ and those caused by sorcerer are called ‘doibol’. The
belief of personalistic illnesses is still very strong among the
villagers. One such case of believing in personalistic system as
narrated by the people in Moreh is that a 7 year old girl child
suddenly started having high fever and her parents consult
various medical doctors who give her medicine for treatment.
At first, they thought that the changing of weather or the food
which the child had intake is the reason for the illness. In spite
of taking various medicines, the illness continues for a week
and at last the child passed away. When the doctors and
medical science failed to explain the illness, the villagers
started to believe that the illness is caused by some
supernatural agents. So, they started to check on the history of
the last few days of the child before her illness and found that
the child happen to play inside the forest. Therefore, the people
started assuming that the ghost in the forest killed the child
which is locally termed as gambol. Problems like crying of
babies at night or sudden stomach ache are related with the
work of evil eye and they called it as kaobol. For treatment of
these illnesses the villagers turn to traditional healers. Many
traditional healers are mostly found in and around Kuki
villages. Most of the processes adopted by the traditional
healers for treatment of personalistic involve magic and rituals
though Christianity does not permit it. This contradicts the old
indigenous practices and the new religion or we can say an
amalgamation of both the religion. Besides these, they used
different types of green herbs found deep inside forest. Many
traditional healers bow down and pray to God before
performing their indigenous way of healing illnesses.

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Though with the coming of Christianity, the existence of

supernaturalism or personalistic medical system may be
ignored but it cannot be rule out when they face certain
diseases mostly of psychological problems which cannot be cure
by doctors. The belief is stronger when sudden misfortune like
accidents or death is happens in the family. In one of my field
called Sapormeina, there is a mountain called Koubru in the
western side and it is consider to be an abode of deities by the
non-Christian of Manipur. Thus, many non-Christian pilgrims
visit this place every year to pay respect and offer prayers to
these deities. But the villagers have different perception about
who reside in that sacred mountain. The people of Sapormeina
assume that it is the abode of malevolent and benevolent
supernatural beings. In the cosmology of the people of
Sapormeina, they believe that in that mountain there are
agents who affect people psychologically and bodily. The most
vulnerable of this kind of attack are grown up boys and girls.
The age group of girls who are just attaining puberty are
susceptible to have this kind of problems. The basic symptom of
supernatural ailment affliction is somatic ailment with vision
and hallucination. No medicine would work and it would only
start working when supernatural affliction got fading away.
Whenever they face these problems they turn to the local healer
who deals with supernaturalism.
The belief in evil eye is a look that is believed by many
cultures to be able to cause injury or back luck for the person at
whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike. An evil eye is
generally produced because of jealousy and grudge. Those
people who possess evil are capable of causing any harm to the
people they hate. The effect can be in the form of making
someone sick, insane, miscarriage, skin rashes etc. The Kuki
also believe that the one who possess evil eye can eat the body
parts of the stomach of a person. According to my respondents
these people mostly enter a weak person and terminal patients.
There is also a belief that sometimes a person passed away but

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his body remains alive due to the intervention of such people.

The most common way of creating evil eye is through the
mechanism of food. Therefore, they throw some portion of the
food in the ground before taking it as a sign of offering them so
that that they won’t get any attack but the practice is not much
followed today instead they pray before eating food to drive out
the evil spirit as taught by their Christian religion. Most of the
people now accept that with the coming of Christianity all these
believe are eventually fading away and those of whom that
possess this negative personality also loses their power with the
intervention of the new faith. Among the contemporary Kuki
tribe, there is believe that morality, ethics and duty towards
God protect them from getting hit by various illnesses and
misfortunes especially those cause by personalistic systems.
Illnesses are explained according to their belief and
understanding. An illustration could be when a person is
having skin rash; the medical science might explain it as an
outcome of the climatic condition or an allergy. But this people
explained it to be a cause by some supernatural power like
witchcraft or evil eye. Therefore, instead of giving them
medicine, they did it with their indigenous knowledge by
cutting the hair of the victim and burn the hair and apply it on
the effected skin. During the incidence of sudden stomachache
after food, the people often thought that it may be due to an evil
eye as the victim does not offer the food he intake to the person
creating it. This may be explain by medical science as food
poisoning contrasting to the traditional beliefs. All this
practices are still vastly common among the Kuki people. Khare
(1963), where he studied medical practices in the framework of
‘parochialization’ and ‘sanskritization’ demonstrating how the
upper castes try to relate their etiology in terms of great
tradition whereas the lower castes define them in terms of
lesser gods and deities. I argue with him in this point because
among the Kuki tribe there is similar existence of beliefs and

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practices of health commonly among the rich following the

great tradition and lower people following lesser tradition.

The Traditional Healers

As diagnosis of illnesses is personally done by the people

themselves on the first onset and options of treatment depends
upon them whether to go for allopathic or traditional. The
causation of the illness gives an idea to which kind of medical
system to adopt and the diagnosis for causation of the illness is
done by the people itself. This practice leads me to the opinion
of Allan Young about ‘Assimilation’ since choosing of traditional
remedies inspite of developed western medicines among the
tribe could be due to the this process. According to Young
(1976:10), “assimilation refers to instances where people utilize
certain alien medical practices, but to the extent that they are
knowledgeable about alien medical beliefs they tend to
assimilate these to homologous notions in their own medical
system”. Therefore, there is still an existence of plurality and
amalgamation of western and traditional medical system. The
healing with traditional remedies started in the domestic
household. The mother or the female members of the family are
the one taking care of family health. A plant called ‘anphui’
and the leave of passion fruits are eaten as vegetable which is
highly used in controlling diabetes and high blood pressure.
Another plant locally called ‘nongmangkha’ is also used for
treatment of cold and cough. Honey, ginger and lemon are also
of medicinal value. They also consume a plant called ‘nakuppi’
for protecting from kidney problems. All these plants are serve
in the house by mothers or female members ensuring good
health to their family. Some animal products are also belief to
have high medicinal values. The liver of bear is used for
stomachache and some people keep it for safety. They soak the
liver of bear in water, keep overnight and drink the water
whenever they have stomach pain. Sometimes a lay person also

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plays the role of a healer in some incidence of when a person

assuming to be caught by an evil eye or by witch. They do it by
pinching both the toe of the victim while he is in deep sleep and
asking ‘Who are you’. The people assume that toe is an exit
point of those possessing evil eye or witchcraft and by pinching
them the accuse person will also feel the pain. The belief is that
when the accuse person finds it unbearable, he or she have to
surrender and leave the victim. Another practice is by trapping
the victim with fishing net in order to catch the accused and
make him surrender. Sometimes they also cut the hair of the
victim to identify the accuse person because they assume that
the accuse person hair will also be shorten similarly.
The treatment of a professional traditional is different
from the domestic treatment. They collect herbs found in the
deep forest area and they made into liquid or tablet form. The
blood and meat of dog is used for treatment of illnesses caused
by supernatural being, witchcraft or evil eye. Scorpion and a
unique type of lizard locally called ‘to-ke’ are used for cancer
treatment. There are many patients who gets cure by them.
The traditional healers deal with all kinds of diseases starting
from simple illnesses to the one which they believe to be caused
by supernatural power. The traditional healer at my field area
Sapormeina is called Paokhongam (Ngampu) Kipgen. He is
brought up in a Christian family and every step he takes in his
work is done according to the will of God. He is taught this
traditional way of treatment from Pakho who was a pastor in
the church and gifted with the making of herbal medicines and
treating of illnesses that is believed to be caused by
supernatural power. After he passed away his work is
continued by Ngampu, the local healer of Sapormeina village
and the tradition is still carried on today. Though in this
contemporary world allopathic medicines are gaining its
highest place, the use of traditional medicine still persist on
many lives.

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The type of herbs he used is not found adjacent to the

village and he gathered the herbs from the inner part of the
forests. He integrates them for making herbal medicine. He
does not reveal the type of herbs he used for his work therefore
it was not known to others except to his close ones. The types of
medicines he make are in the form of syrup, tablet and paste.
Sometimes he sacrifices animals like dog, chicken for curing
illness which are serious and believe to be caused by
supernatural powers. Therefore he has authority to treat any
diseases he is capable of, according to the needs of the people in
and around the village. Many people rely in him for various
treatments which they believe to be done by malevolent or
benevolent supernatural agent and so on. The type of illness he
dealt with comprised of epilepsy, injuries, abdominal pain
which he termed as Kaobol, psychological problem which he
termed as Gambol, various gynaecological problems like
infertility, miscarriage etc. Most of the cases he dealt are
psychological problems. The first ritual performed for treating
Kaobol and Gambol is by chanting a prayer and then killing a
dog. The blood of the dog is then sprinkled on the patient. This
is done to know the exact cause of the illness and treatment is
followed by giving the medicines made by him. Another major
case he dealt with is infertility. He said that there are many
barren women who are healed by him. He used to massage the
womb of the barren woman and sometimes he said that the
womb is filled with many filthy things or sometimes the womb
is not at the proper place. After putting the womb at the right
place and after driving all the unwanted substances from the
womb, the barren woman becomes pregnant. He is well known
in and around the village.
Another traditional healer is called Thongkholun of
Moreh, an Indo-Burma border. He inherited the knowledge of
ethno medicine from his father and starts practicing in 1982.
He also consult the book on ethno medicine written by Pu
Lalkhohen, a famous ethno medicinal among the Kukis during

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the 60s and 70s. He started his first practice by healing

children’s illness like convulsion, asthma and baby crying at
night. He diagnosed illnesses by touching with his own figure,
checking the temperature and make medicine according to age
and illnesses. He treats all kind of illnesses like sinus, white
water discharge, gastric problems, anaemia, sleeplessness,
piles, malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, BP, TB, ENT problems
cancer, etc. He made medicine by mixing herbs found from deep
forest or high mountain. Most of the medicines are in syrup
form and tablet. He makes sure that if a patient take his
medicine he should not mixed with allopathic and homeopathic
medicine. He had different kinds of detector for diagnosing
illnesses. For detecting blood pressure, he used a stone locally
called gip which is brown in colour. For detecting all kinds of
sickness he used Kehchang which is black in colour. For
detecting personalistic problems, he used the liver of bear. The
detectors are kept in the feet for knowing the illnesses and
according to that he made syrup and ointment. For treatment of
liver problem, he used pumpkin which is of two years old, cut in
the middle, mixed with tamarind and sugar of equal weight and
kept it for 2 days and 3 night and then peel it off. The bone
crack or fracture is massage with the mixture of oil of
Ngalvang, honey and ginger. For menstrual cramp or white
discharge he mixed the outer over of wood with straw and
brown sugar. He treats heart disease with pomegranate and
honey. For urinary tract infection he mixed raw papaya boiled
with sugar and a plant called ponkap che. There are also
different types of medicine he made for treatment of diabetes,
cancer, dysentery, etc.
Another traditional healer is called Veilam of Imphal.
She gained her knowledge from her husband who was also a
well-known traditional healer during 70s and 80s. Most of the
medicine she used is made by integrating herbs found in forest
and the medicine is in tablet form which is of different colours.
Previously when her husband was alive the medicines were of

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more than 10 varieties but now she can make only three
different tablets. Her area of treatment is only on personalistic
problems like evil eye, witchcraft and magic. She said that
whenever she made medicine and dry it, half of the medicine
get lost. She said that it is done out of anger by those who
practice evil eye, witchcraft and magic. She also said that
whenever she treats a patient, one of the members of her family
always got an attack in the night in the form of stomach-ache,
fever and unconscious. She can diagnose any personalistic
problem by looking at the patient eyes and by touching her
pulse. She also can tell the person responsible for the attack but
she cannot reveal the name. Most of her patients are children
and for children’s security she hangs her medicine in the
stomach with the help of a thread. Another way of detecting
illnesses, she used a stone and put it on the patient stomach.
One case of her treatment is a pregnant woman being attack by
witchcraft. There is concept that as pregnant women are weak
there are high chances of being victim to witches. The incident
happens when the one who perform witchcraft went to ask for
financial help to the sister of the pregnant woman. When the
victim sister is willing to give the money, the victim oppose to
this idea telling her sister to give only half of the amount of
what the accused ask for. The belief of the Kuki people is that
the witch can hear all the gossip about them if there is no river
that falls between the gossiper and the witch. Therefore, the
witch hears all their conversations and thus performs
witchcraft out of grudges. The pregnant woman started to have
psychological problem by crying endlessly. At this time, the
family of the victim called the traditional healer and once the
healer press her pulse and give the medicine she make, the
victim gain conscious. But they could not save the child in her
womb because they belief that the child is eaten by the witch.
There are many more incidence and illnesses treated by this
healer.

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Parallelism in health beliefs and practices with other

cultures

Many societies of the world are sharing some similarities in

terms of their medical beliefs and practices. Though there
might be cultural barriers, language differences and differences
in religion beliefs, there are some similarities in the traditional
health beliefs and practices. One problem of Kuki women which
is similar with other culture is the gynaecological problems
especially barrenness. These problems of women are found to be
somewhat similar to the word ‘caught’ coined by Victor Turner
while studying the Ndembu of Africa. According to Victor
Turner, “Being ‘caught’ means to be afflicted with bad luck at
hunting in the case of men, with reproductive disorder in the
case of women, and illness in both cases” (1957:292). The Kuki
women also believe that when they are barren, they are caught
by evil eye or witchcraft. For this treatment, the Kuki
sometimes rely on allopathic medicine or consult the herbalist
or traditional healers. The rituals performed by the traditional
healers in treating gynaecological problems also shows some
similarity with that of the rituals performed among the
Ndembu of Africa. Similarity is also among the Kuki tribe with
the Nupe, a muslim community of Africa. According to S.F.
Nadel in his study of Nupe Religion highlighted that though the
Nupe community get access to the European medical system,
they think of it as ‘hopeless and their remedies to be no better
than the indigenous healers locally called cigbecizi’ for the
treatment of impotence or sterility or to procure sterility
(1954:162). The barren woman among Kuki tribe also depends
on traditional healer believing that they conceive when the
healer keeps their womb in the correct position. The Kukis
believe more on the traditional healers than the medical doctors
for the treatment of sterility. Another similarity found is in the
way of diagnosis of illnesses between the traditional healers
among the Kukis and Deowar (traditional healer) of the Korwa

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tribe of Chattisgarh. Both the healers of the two tribes

diagnosed the patient by feeling his or her pulse and
accordingly announced the reason of illness to be natural or
supernatural by the pulse movement. There is similarity exists
between Azande of Africa with the Kukis. They both relate
dreams with withchcraft. Azande beliefs about bad dreams and
shows that they regard them as real experiences. Likewise the
Kuki also belief that whenever they saw a dog in a dream, they
believe that it is a sign of an attack that is going to happen.
Another similarity is also found with that of the people of
Junga in Himachal Pradesh. The people of Junga also
diagnosed their illnesses firstly in their home which is similar
with the Kukis. On the onset if illnesses homemade remedies is
used firstly in both the culture. Both the culture used mixture
of ginger, honey and hot water for treatment of cold and cough.
Both the culture categorised illnesses to be cause by two agents
either by personalistic agents or naturalistic agents. Looking
into all the above examples we can say that though people are
living in different geographical location having their own
unique culture, customs and languages, they somehow share
similarities in terms of traditional health beliefs and practices.

Conclusion

The study on traditional health beliefs, practices and healers

among the Kukis shows how indigenous knowledge is still instil
in the heart of the people. Though the Kuki people witness
many changes in the form of modernization, globalization, food
habits, dress pattern, etc, there is still continuation of culture
in terms of health care system. It can also be concluded that
though medical science is progressing, the Kuki people still like
to go for treatment in their indigenous way of understanding
and practices. It can also be concluded that health is totally
interwoven with a person’s notion, culture and society. The
diagnosis of any illness is done by the people itself and the

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option for treatment is also done by them. The traditional

healers also play an important role in the health care system of
the Kukis. In fact they are the one who satisfied the people
quest for sudden illnesses or peculiar type for illnesses. It can
also be concluded that though the Kuki are small tribe living in
North-east India and some parts of Burma and Bangladesh,
they share common beliefs and practices in terms of health with
different culture of the world.

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