Rabies is the most lethal infectious disease on Earth and, when it becomes clinically diagnosable, it is incurable. Only preventive dog vaccination and post-exposure human vaccination can stop its spreading and save human and animal lives. In India, rabies kills about 21.000 people a year, more than in any other country. In rural Gujarat, a “Mother of rabies”, Hadkai Mata, is worshipped by some socially and economically marginalized communities who, in case of a dog bite, rush to her temples to seek protection from infection. Even though provisional research shows that faith/traditional medicine and biomedicine do not necessarily exclude each other in this context, the way rabies is understood at Hadkai Mata temples is hardly reconcilable with the concept of prevention through dog vaccination and immediate post-exposure human vaccination. For Hadkai Mata believers, people who suffer from abysmal caste-based discrimination, poverty and health inequality, dog bites and rabies have a morally and socially normative function that intersects only very marginally with the biomedical understanding and management of viral infection. In this socio-cultural milieu, the challenge lies in eliminating rabies deaths through vaccination but, at the same time, saving the meaning of Hadkai Mata for her believers and the role she plays in alleviating the burden they bear as a resource-limited ostracized community.