Amidst the swirls of grief and regret, daily life goes on. Rambai Baiga comes home from the kirana (daily needs) shop in Bandhwa Khurd village with no more than a katori-full of cooking oil. Her husband Harsh Lal Baiga sits on the floor of their mud house with their two sons and a daughter. It has been 21 days since the couple in Madhya Pradesh’s Umaria district lost their son, Rajan, 45 days old. The infant, born in November at Shahdol District Hospital, about 15 kilometres from the village, had pneumonia. To ‘cure’ the illness, he was branded on his abdomen with scalding broken bangles.
“I was then in Bakeli village [in the same district] at my parents’ house. One morning Rajan had difficulty breathing, so I called the neighbours,” says Rambai. The dai (midwife) also showed up and suggested the branding. “My father and brother had gone to work. I was home with my mother. We did not have a mobile phone to call them or an ambulance, or any means to get to a hospital.” She resisted the dai’s idea, but finally relented, she says. “After two or three marks I asked her to stop, because my son was crying so badly, but she did not listen.” On December 21, the baby was taken to the hospital he was born in. He died about a week later.
Daagna (branding) is a practice among some tribal communities of Madhya Pradesh, most prominent among the Baiga (traditionally priests), Kol, and Gond (traditionally rulers) tribes in the State’s three eastern-most districts: Shahdol, Umaria, and Anuppur, all part of Shahdol Division. Areas of Mandla and Dindori districts of Jabalpur Division are also affected. Many from the tribal communities, government officials, and researchers say that the practice has been passed down generations.
