Anthropologists generally warn us against ethnocentrism. Witchcraft then is alien to you and I but as normal as normal can be to certain peoples. The celebrated Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande by E. E. Evans-Pritchard was a seminal work in understanding sorcery many years ago. His finding was that witchcraft is used as a manner in which the Azandes explain the misfortunes that befall them, using a form of logic different from ours. There were many studies conducted after Evans-Pritchard and with this came more theories including functional and structural ones. A lot of these works were however restricted to Africa.
Move now to the Indian scene. Witchcraft is rampant in many parts of the country, mostly rural but by no means restricted to these parts. “Witches” or diens as they are commonly known in India, make for interesting, often sorry tales. I don’t profess this post to be by any means a comprehensive appreciation of the problem but it could serve as a sample of what exists.
My first brush with witchcraft was in rural Rajasthan during an internship. The rest came with reading some of what little literature exists.
The problem is one of “witchcraft” and not “wizardcraft” for a reason; it is largely faced by women. There are broadly two kinds of diens. The first is when a woman is called a witch by a witch doctor. The second is when a woman proclaims herself to be a witch. The systems that allow for either situation to occur are intriguing to say the least.
A witch doctor identifies widows with property and pretty young women as witches; the former in order to help her family evict her from her property and pocket it and the latter to feed the girl into the vicious world of sexual abuse. Thus, the doctor or ojha is generally a cog in a wheel of exploitation with everyone benefitting while the witch is decried by a society that will go great lengths in ostracizing her; many a time going even to the extent of killing her.
On the other hand, even as their sisters are being accused of being witches, there are those women who pretend to be possessed. This other kind of witch tells us a story of empowerment, albeit one rife with risks. When a woman pretends to be possessed, she must of course be appeased. This would include letting the woman off without performing household chores, feeding her the choicest delicacies and buying her favourite things. Thus a woman unable to find for herself the respect and reward she seeks in lieu of the work done for the family, takes to be a dien. The risk involved is that she is then taken by the family to a witch doctor, who far from curing her of the “ailment” will go on to sell her into a life of sexual slavery. Besides, the woman cannot keep up this charade for long.
Let’s now take a look at the situation when the law steps in, if at all. Thus, the most that is done is to file a complaint under the Indian Penal Code for causing hurt which does not root away the problem itself, taking on the consequence and not the cause. Although there have been many organizations that have lobbied for an act against witchcraft much like the one against Sati, there is no such central law. There are however laws against witchcraft in a handful of states like Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. Rajasthan has a bill waiting to become law but the lobby for the propertied class is strong enough to stall this from happening anytime soon. Although these laws are a great first step to putting an end to a grave crisis, they hardly have the teeth to achieve much. This is partly because the punishment offered is not too expensive and partly because the laws have not been used to the extent they could have been. The three states with the law still have several instances of witches being killed in the most heinous of ways.
So while the anthropologist of yonder could have looked at witchcraft as a peculiar system endemic to particular tribes, today one cannot escape from the fact that this is a system that is artificially enforced to achieve dubious ends.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Facebook comments:
Powered by Facebook Comments