In a vast, multi-ethnic, multi-religious country like India, it is to be expected that we have several world-views operating at the same time in people's search for health and healing.

Recent studies examining British attitudes and ideologies which structured colonial policies towards 'outcaste'2 and 'deviant' groups in indigenous society, have suggested that the groups who were marginalised included those whose activities were conceived of as 'threatening' to new normative def