Down will come baby

Toughening up infants or offering thanks for a child...a bizarre ritual binds two hamlets together

SOLAPUR: There’s something Michael Jackson fears that villagers in Solapur, Maharashtra and Bijapur, Karnataka, don’t: babies at heights.

The reclusive pop star learnt his lesson after precariously dangling his infant son Prince Michael II, from the third floor window of a Berlin hotel in November 2002. A German newspaper called the act “foolish”, a British tabloid termed it “lunatic”, and yet another labelled him the “mad bad dad”. The uproar forced Wacko Jacko to apologise, saying he was caught in the excitement of the moment and would never intentionally endanger the lives of his children.

But residents of Musti village in Solapur and Nidoni village, Bijapur don’t just dangle their children from heights, they nonchalantly fling them to be bounced off bedsheets below. And they don’t mind if the ritual makes the government, non-governmental organisations or anyone for that matter, madder than a wet hen.

Generation after generation of the faithful descend on Musti, a remote village in south Solapur district off the Mumbai-Hyderabad highway, every year. They flock to the Shaikh Umar Sahib Dargah, five days after Hanuman Jayanti, for a two-day religious fair whose prime attraction is the baby bouncing ritual. Devouts throw their one-year-olds from the top of the 30-feet high dargah in the belief it will bless the babies with strength and long life.

The dargah’s caretaker and member of the Shaikh Umar Sahib Yatra Samiti, Gundupasha Mehmood Mujawar, said office-bearers of the shrine have nothing to do with this ritual. “Throwing babies is completely a personal matter of the devotees. They think if their baby is thrown from the top of the dargah, it would make them stronger,” Mujawar said, adding the devotees are adamant about continuing with the practice and are in no mood to see reason.

In fact, a large number of devotees are upset with all the media attention the ritual attracted when it recently made world headlines. They maintain the child-throwing practice has never harmed any baby and all infants thrown have been caught safely by devotees who hold a bedspread at the foot of the dargah.

Deputy sarpanch of Musti village, Ravikiran Mehta, was more circumspect: “If the government bans the ritual, we will respect it.”

The origins of the strange ritual are a mystery. All that village elders can recount is that they too were flung by their parents from the roof of the dargah. Mehta said an Arab sufi saint named Shaikh Umar Sahib came to the village some six centuries ago. After his death he was buried at the spot of the dargah according to Muslim rituals. “It is not known who constructed the dargah but folklore has it that it was built in a single night,” he said.

He said the ritual is undertaken entirely voluntarily by devotees. Only those babies who are at least a year old and are not suffering from any ailment are allowed to go through this ritual. “Members of the local religious fair committee collectively decide which baby can be thrown,” Mehta said.

An angry Nagarbai Chafe, a devotee, said no one, including the government, had the right to interfere with religious rituals. Another devotee, 47-year-old Mutanna Jamadar, pointed out that all his three children had been thrown from the top and are in good health.

Mehta too was irked with the media for sensationalising the practice. “I myself was thrown from the top of the dargah and so were my four children, but all of us are hale and hearty,” he said. He sees the shrine as a place of communal harmony where both Hindus and Muslims participate in the ritual.

“Despite this if the government feels this practice should be banned, we will respect the decision. But before that, we would like officials to visit the place, observe the rituals and only then take a decision,” Mehta said.

Interestingly, the dargah at other times counts the tallest of politicians from Solapur such as former chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde, former minister Anandrao Deokate and legislative assembly member Siddharam Mhetre among its regular visitors.

Although just one hour during the fair is meant for this ritual, it often extends far beyond that.

The matter was first highlighted by the Maharashtra Andhashradhha Nirmulan Samiti—a voluntary group crusading against superstition. The samiti’s district executive president, advocate Govind Patil, told DNA that the ritual has no scientific basis and could cause serious injuries to babies, if not death.

“We are trying to create awareness among devotees but have yet to receive any satisfactory response from government authorities or the police,” Patil said. But he admitted he had not heard of any untoward incident caused by the practice.

Paediatricians have reacted to the footage of infants plummeting and bouncing back from the cloth with varying degrees of concern.

“Of course there is risk of injury in this practice. Missing the stretched cloth might be fatal and even landing on it wrong might cause a limb fracture,” Dr Joseph R Zanga, past president of the American Academy of Paediatrics and a professor at the Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, North Carolina, said on a website. “I would not suggest we try it in the US, but if they have been doing it for 500 years without any injury I’d be wary of stopping them,” Zanga said.