Human and spiritual agency in Angami healing

Despite the thought-provoking theological and philosophical implications of the adage urging the healer to heal him/herself, medical anthropology has, with some notable exceptions, given relatively little attention to the problems of well-being experienced by healers themselves, as distinct from those of their patients. This paper focuses on the conflicts experienced by men and women who become healers and how they try to resolve them. The case taken is of the Angami people of Nagaland, northeastern India. There are broadly two kinds of healer, each of whom is subject to contrasting pressures and conflicts. Shamans depend on tutelary spirits who may at various points control the shaman him or herself, who may have been initially reluctant to become a shaman. Other healers such as herbalists and masseurs may sometimes use but do not rely on tutelary spirits and draw instead on their own non-divinational skills. An increasing number of such healers have become Christian and are obliged to adapt their practices accordingly, including the divinity of a new God, sometimes denying a previous personal or family connection with shamanism. At issue in both cases is a struggle between human and divine agency, which, writ large, is a struggle between human self-determination and external forces of control, this being possibly reflected in the fact that Nagaland has for many years been the scene of an armed struggle against the Indian government for political autonomy.