ABSTRACT
Recent policies for mental health services 1 in India have tended to frame indigenous healers between two modernist but contradictory discourses. One imposes a ‘service-providing’ role to them, including them under the Mental Health Act, a medical Act which governs mental hospitals. The other, typified by a Maharashtra Bill on the eradication of superstition, completely denies them any validity, rejecting their knowledge systems as superstitious and unscientific. Neither of these two contradictory constructions adequately captures the community roles and healing practices of indigenous healers.
