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Witch Branding AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 Predicament of women in India: Witch Branding Author- Sneha Kumari, 10th Semester, BB.A.LL.B (H), Law College, Uttaranchal University, Dehradun. Co-Author- Dr. Vivek Kumar, Law College, Uttaranchal University, Dehradun. Abstract Witch hunting and branding women as a witch is essentially a legacy of violence against women in our society. By punishing those women who are seen as vile and wild, oppressors perhaps want to send a not so subtle message to women: docility and domesticity get rewarded; anything else gets punished. As soon as the women steps out their prescribed roles, they become targets. When women are branded as witches they are made to walk naked through the village, they are gang-raped, at times cut their breasts off, break their teeth or heads and forced to swallow urine and human faeces or eat human flesh or drink the blood of a chicken. There are thousands of women who face such brutal violence in each and every rural parts of India and superstitions are probably made to be the main reason behind all the murders and brutality towards women when the truth is they are simply used as an scapegoats and “superstitions are used as an excuse” only to hide the true motive behind those murders and brutality. This can also be called as a caste based practice where the members of upper caste society try to condemn and deter the poor and indigenous people by branding them as witches. Keywords- Scapegoat, Dayan, Sorcerer, Witch- hunting, Witch Branding Introduction Witch branding are the threat to the society. Women are more often branded as witches in cases where there are issues of draught, food, illness, death of the people of particular locality and witchcraft is the practice of magical skills and abilities which are even mentioned as a profession in the Rig Veda, an ancient Hindu scripture, and was taught at ancient Indian universities but now it has become an unconventional form of female victimisation leading to extreme psychological distress, social ostracism and even murder. Witch branding has become one of the most common forms of violence against tribal women. The concept of branding women as witches and hunting them down has its traces in the past, may it be primitive age, medieval age, modern age and now industrial age, this concept of witch hunting has been witnessed. This concept of witch hunting is considered as an infectious disease which is slowly spreading to newer areas. This concept initially aroused in Europe and till date it is being continued with tragic consequences. It was seen that incidents which could not be answered was thought to be the act of women who were having supernatural power and gradually this concept was bedded in the society and which still has mark able effect in the society. Volume 8, Issue 3, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 7 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 Women, a primary victim of witchcraft A woman who is strong not conventionally but with the strength of her spirit and is fearless. A woman who wants to live the way men of her times were privileged to live with the impenetrable spirit makes the men fear of her bravado and inaccessible spirit. Every women who choose to live the way they wanted got their shares of laurels, for being who they were. Captured, Raped, Tortured, and Strangulated, Socially ostracized, Burnt alive. Indeed, the rewards they yielded were novel and resplendent. This is the fate of women who dared to think and come out of the box to speak, who dared to live life on their own terms. The aforementioned rewards is not merely a piece of prose which are reproduced here, but, an alarming reality-A reality spanning decades, centuries, one year after another, a reality of countless women. These women are killed but more than their murders it is their lives that are a persistent story of violence, abuse and terror. There are countless stories in rural India, where thousands of women across India have become the victims of violence, or been abused, tortured and even executed after being declared as “witches”. Witch hunting is usually associated with the Middle Ages, but in some parts of India women still fall prey to the practice. A law penalizing witch hunting was passed in the mid- 1800, but many in India resisted it. They thought the law was preventing them from punishing wrong-doers. Aftermath also several Indian states introduced laws to prevent it, but activists say that they all are inadequate. Witch-Branding in India In India, people on one hand worship them in name of Goddesses on the other hand kill them considering them as a witch. India has a very long history of witch-hunts since the medieval age and very much prevalent among Adivasis. The practice of killing women in the name of witch is not new for Indian society rather it has deep roots in history. Simply the concept has just changed but the killing of the innocent members of the society is still the dark truth of our country. India is a land where the women are treated as symbol or are considered as a token of their community, family, caste and all other diverse divisions. They are called by different names as ‘Chudail’, ‘Tohni’, ‘Dayan’, etc. Therefore hunting them down is a process of killing these people in order to protect the society from being harmed by them. In the name of witch-hunting people kill innocent women, rape them, to acquire their property and some time it is being used a tool for vengeance. Branding women as witches and hunting them down is basically stigmatization of specific groups of people, which mostly contains widowed women, childless women, old couples, lower caste women. Other than this may of them are even targeted due to local politics. It has also been witnessed in tribal and rural areas that if wild spread diseases occur or famine occurs which results in the death of several animals as well as humans then simply the allegation develops on the most vulnerable people of the society for performing witch craft and then violence. Witch hunting is mostly prevalent in 12 states of India which are situated Volume 8, Issue 3, 2020 http://aegaeum.com/ Page No: 8 AEGAEUM JOURNAL ISSN NO: 0776-3808 in like Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The three Indian states, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha are among the worst hit, each accounting for about 400 deaths in the past 15 years, as per the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) study.1 There are very few cases in India which are reported whereas there are many instances which have never been recorder as due to the fear. It is funny as well as ironical that on one hand our country being a democratic country talks about equality, right to life and liberty but on the other hand it takes away the same rights of others. Misogynistic violence and Superstitions The oppression of witches had nothing to do with fighting evil or resisting the devil. It was simply entrenched social misogyny, the goal of which was to repress the intellect of women. A witch doesn’t fly on a broomstick in the dark or consort with demons. There are most likely to be a woman of superior knowledge. When we say witch, we almost exclusively mean women. Obviously, men have also been accused of witchcraft, but they are by far the minority. Further, when we look upon the words which are used to describe men with magical powers then they are generally refereed as warlock, magus, sorcerer, wizard which doesn’t carry the same stigma as when we talk about the women who practices magic. People who brand women as witches capitalize on deeply rooted superstitions and systems built on misogyny and patriarchy to lay blame on females. Although modernization and access to better health and sanitation facilities have changed people’s beliefs but superstitions still prevails, particularly among the underprivileged communities. Witches are convenient explanations for rising infant mortality rates and deaths from malaria, typhoid and cholera. In many parts of the rural area, elderly widows live in fear of being killed as “witches” when neighbour becomes ill or livestock die unexpectedly. India represents a modern-day paradox. On the one hand, it is the largest democracy in the world and has a rapidly growing economy while on the other hand most of the population remains poor and in spite of being educated or not, often turn to superstition to cure illness, find love, and rationalize bad events. There have been several notable murders involving allegations of witchcraft. A family member illness, crop failure or a dry well are all common reasons for accusing a woman of witchcraft. These all allegations might be made by relatives, neighbours, village leaders or local shamans, and childless, unmarried or widowed women are particularly vulnerable to them. Once a rumour related to any women as a witch spreads, local men armed with sticks and axes often hunt down the women and lynch her. Some of the examples can show us the literal poor and helpless condition of women in all those tribal communities where they are accused of witchcraft like in 2013, a mother and a daughter in Jharkhand were pulled out of their home by the villagers and took them to a nearby forest and slit their throats just because several children became ill in that village and several years before the 1 Dr.
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