Deaths raise fear, superstition

“We were so scared,’’ said Kuldeep Singh, 32, village head. “Now we feel better.’’

Amloha has been on a knife’s edge since late December when the first victim mysteriously died. In the last few months, four others followed at fairly regular intervals, in a place where years go by without a funeral. All the victims were young, died suddenly, and displayed no apparent cause of death.

The interval between the last two deaths was 17 days, prompting some to wait nervously to see what would happen Thursday, 17 days later.

Superstition enjoys a long and rich history in India. While some of these practices may seem poetic to outsiders, said Sanal Edamaruku, president of the New Delhi-based Indian Rationalist Association, their prevalence can have deadly consequences. Diseases go untreated, handicapped children are buried up to their necks during eclipses, infants are tossed from balconies and caught to ward off evil, he said.

“Critical thinking is lacking,’’ said Edamaruku, who has tried for the past quarter-century to bust myths, slay ghosts, and quell mass hysteria, but concedes that it’s a daunting task. “That’s the irony of India. We’re a rising power held back by 15th-century beliefs.’’

The factors, experts said, include insufficient education, a prevalence of ancient texts laced with fantastical stories sometimes taken literally, and a desire to understand the seemingly inexplicable.

“When something goes wrong, it’s easy to fall back on belief in the mysterious, which absolves you of responsibility,’’ said Harish Shetty, a social psychiatrist at Nityanand Clinics in the western city of Mumbai. “India has great engineers, but when it comes time for them to marry, they fall into a bundle of superstitions. It’s in our psyche.’’

Roshan Lal, 55, one of Amloha’s village wise men, said he looked for rational answers after the spate of deaths, but none presented themselves. So he and the rest of the community concluded that the village god, Khera, must be angry.

“I always wanted to believe in science, but now I’ve concluded this was the work of alternate forces,’’ said Lal as he chatted with other village luminaries outside the headman’s house. “Our god was angry before, but never like this.’’

The other time was in 1980, villagers say, when five to 10 people were bitten by snakes in short order.

Mohan Lal, 50, whose son Rahul died suddenly on June 15, said Khera might be angry because someone put makeup and other cosmetics into their field four days earlier. Alternately, it could be because someone stored candy in the cremation ground two years ago. Both are considered taboos.

Amloha’s ghostly goings-on were front-page news across India on Thursday. From early morning, the village’s single lane dirt road was clogged with television news crews.