Walking on women - what Indian women are ready to do for the sake of a child (6 photos)

Do you want women to fall on the road in front of you, fall down and fold themselves into rails so that it would be easier for you to walk on them? Then there is only one path for you - to become a Hindu priest in Chhattisgarh. There, such things are commonplace.





Why trample women

At the local fair, something similar happens every year on Diwali, women come themselves. About 200 women lie down on the road every year, while tribal priests and "healers" walk on their backs.

It's actually part of a fertility ritual that's been going on for over a century.

Women themselves ask priests to walk on their backs, believing that it will "bless" them with a child. And almost every year, videos from a strange festival called Madhai Mela, a Hindu holiday, go viral.



No, it's like he's stomping on your spine! It's a good thing he's skinny

Usually, the women who are desperate and can't get pregnant are there. There are also older women who haven't been able to conceive for 17 years and have already been to the clinic (they're not some kind of savages, right?). It is curious that even women after unsuccessful IVF lie down at the feet of the priest - this is how deeply rooted such beliefs are even among the advanced population of India.

- Several years ago I took part in a ritual, and the next year I gave birth to a boy, - one of the participants in the ritual shares.

As a rule, such stories immediately go viral at the fair and are passed on by word of mouth, inflating to incredible proportions.





Women run from the beginning of the "path" to its end, so that they can be trampled twice

Women lie down in the path and allow priests to walk on them on their way to the temple, because they believe that priests are possessed by a Hindu goddess named Angarmoti.

And since tribal priests are possessed by a Hindu goddess, they can walk on the backs of women without causing them pain. She is a spirit - essentially weighs nothing.

This doesn't work!

Of course it doesn't work, there aren't even any herbal infusions that could have an unstudied effect. But when these women are told something like that, they react very aggressively, that they are simply jealous of those who see the real power of the goddess.



I feel sorry for the girl in the white sari, she lies right on the ground

This is not the only wild ritual for increasing fertility. It is better not to write about completely dark magical rituals with eating various body parts, otherwise the article will be banned.

But there is a funny Indian ritual - women are tied with their hands behind their backs and forced to eat food from the floor so that they will be more fertile in marriage.

Fertility rituals exist all over the world, somewhere they have turned into wedding traditions (for example, putting an egg under the pillow the bride sits on at the wedding). But in India, these rituals fall on fertile ground.



Expelling evil spirits from women in one of the villages of India

The fact is that until a woman who has come to a new family has given birth to a son for her husband, she is “not quite a person.” And she will be reproached if she gives birth to a girl or does not give birth to anyone.

Here women in despair seize any, even stupid, opportunities to conceive. Because there are no rituals for men to lie under their feet in order to conceive a boy in India.



A herd of cows is driven over men lying face down on the road.

But, to their credit, they lie under the hooves of a herd of cows to get good luck for the next year. Believers also get their share of trampling…

Do you think we still have such strange rituals or has everything sunk into oblivion long ago?