Keoladeo National Park (Bharatpur)

Mehandipur Balaji Temple

Mehandipur Balaji is a Hanuman temple in Dausa district, built between two Aravalli hills, and it is not a place to visit for its architecture. Mehandipur itself is small and, to one visiting writer, otherwise nondescript. What brings people is ritual healing and exorcism: they come, the trust that runs the temple says, to pray for relief from mental and physical suffering and from spirit affliction. Balaji, the child form of Hanuman, is worshipped here with Bhairav and Pretraj Sarkar. A paper published in 1981 described the vermilion Balaji on the ground floor, Bhairav as a stone slab with a carved eye in a small annexe, and Pretraj upstairs. What happens around them can be hard to watch. The paper described some patients going into a trance called peshi after the first offerings, some of them striking the walls and iron bars or laying heavy stones on their bodies. Its authors examined 100 patients, a sample of the sick rather than of every pilgrim, and 76 had a neurotic or psychotic diagnosis; about a quarter improved. The same visiting writer, in a 2018 piece for The Diplomat, found exorcisms in a dark hall next to the main temple, and people kept chained behind it, which he called inhuman. Do not assume that has stopped. The trust is plain about its own part: its priests give the sick no help, and devout darshan is enough.