Is Witch-hunting a Gender-centric Crime?

In a nation that codes satellites and debates artificial intelligence, women are still burned alive for crimes invented by power, greed and fear.

India is universally described as the largest democracy in the world. If this be true, debatable in the current Indian polity, why is witch-hunting still prevalent in India? In a country currently dogged by the AI debate, the return of the second Indian from space back to earth, the omnipresence of a digital world, what can one say about the terribly inhuman crime of labelling women ‘witches’ and burning them alive beyond any and every law statute? Why? 

In West Bengal, the menace is becoming stronger in districts like Malda, Midnapore and Bankura where some tribal women are forced to live under police protection. In most cases, state intervention is necessitated by raids on their homes during which other family members are killed. Sociologists suggest that the old practice is being resorted to in a big way to grab land which has gained in value with development work in the countryside. Money plays an important role in the entire operation because none of the victims are more impoverished than the others in the village.

Democratic Paradox

Killing a woman on suspicion of witchcraft is illegal since 1999, including specific laws against witch-hunting in several states and general laws against murder and violence. Several states have specific legislation, such as Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha and Assam, while other states like Maharashtra and Karnataka have laws that broadly cover witch-hunting along with other superstitions. 

It would not be right to state that men and children are exempted from becoming victims of witch-killing. But figures are minimal - 98 per cent of women next to 2 percent of men and children sacrificed at the altar of witch-craft is certainly gender-specific. Women are the main targets and men and children may be merely collateral damage or selfish interests. 

Witch-killing was prevalent since the last years of the 18th century across the world. It was easy for village leaders, tantric and ojhas to label some chosen women as ‘witches’ as they showed signs of some evil power or black magic or responsible for the evils dogging the village. The locals, illiterate and believers in superstition, were easily swayed and supported the killing of the labelled woman. Among the punishments were physical torture, tonsuring of hair, rape, declaring them outcasts, throwing red chilli powder into their eyes and finally, murder. History tells us that many more women in India were sacrificed at the altar of witch-hunting than women killed for Sati. One woman, named Kunku, is said to have been hung from a tree head down, with her hands dipped in boiling oil. This happened in 1886. 

The story goes that in ancient times, when tribal men were annoyed by talkative, questioning and disobedient women (the adjectives strictly defined by the men themselves), they prayed to the Forest God to teach them how to control these women. When the women got wise to this, they tricked the Forest God to teach them some incantations that would empower them to 'eat' men. But the Forest God, realising that he had been tricked, taught men to hunt these 'witches' out. 

Dalit women are extremely poor, completely uneducated and believe in unscientific things like superstition and black magic the veracity of which remains unproved to this day. But there is another dimension to this. Widowed women who have inherited vast tracts of land when their husbands die, fall victim to greedy relatives who find it easy to dub them ‘witches,’ get them killed and appropriate their inheritance and no one turns a hair. In fact, records state that around 32% of women in India victim to witch-killing were women deprived of normal access to equal opportunities in education, health care and basic livelihoods making them easy victims of witch-hunters. 

Records show that around 65 percent of women killed on suspicion of being ‘witches’ and then killed came from Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. Between 2000 and 2016, the NCRB report states that 2500 women labelled “witches” were killed and between 2016 and 2021, 663 women were killed on the same ground. The 2022 records state that in Jharkhand alone, the rate of witch-killing reached the staggering figure of 3 killings per day despite the law against it passed way back in 1999. Bihar is no exception. In 2023-2024, around 75000 women were living in the mortal fear of being killed on suspicion of practicing witchcraft.

Land Grabs

In their book ‘Women, Land Rights and Forests,’ Gobind Kelkar and Dev Nathan reveal a detailed study of changes sweeping across Adivasi communities in Eastern India with special reference to the adivasi communities of Jharkhand. Jharkhand spreads right across Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and includes some portions of Madhya Pradesh. The study traces the shift in the economy from hunting-gathering to agriculture which brought a corresponding change in the status of women from one of dominance and power to one of subordination and weakness. 

Originally, say Kelkar and Nathan, unmarried daughters, wives and widows enjoyed two kinds of land rights. One was a life-interest in the land which covered the right to manage land and its produce. The other was the right to share the produce of the land which included a maintenance right. 

In other words, this implied that the woman had the right to a share necessary for her own maintenance and upkeep. The unmarried daughter enjoyed the additional right to share produce greater than her maintenance needs. This included amount needed to buy ornaments, utensils or even to sell them and lend out the money if she so wished. This became too much for the men to bear after they discovered that land was also a source of accumulation of individual property when economic lifestyle underwent changes. But they spared the rights of the unmarried daughter and the wife whose husband was alive. They directed their attack at the rights of the widow when she would stand to inherit her husband's land upon his death. 

Threats and charges of witchcraft occur in a number of Indian states that have large tribal populations with traditional beliefs about witches. The media periodically publishes reports about women who, after being accused of being witches, have been beaten, had their heads shaved or had strings of shoes hung around their necks. Some have been killed. 

Witch-hunting is also a political weapon in areas where men with political ambitions arranged the murders of women, they had had liaisons with and also had these murders labelled 'witch-killing' in order to root out the possibility of a sex scandal in the face of a forthcoming election. Such killings included the killing of pregnant women and young widows because they were more vulnerable to such liaisons. Sometimes, they were even pressurized into such liaisons with political bigwigs. The labelling of women as witches therefore, according to these researchers is an essential part of the process of establishing authority of men in a culture where authority was originally shared between men and women. 

Local tribals do not need to be convinced about the labelling of some of their own women as ‘witches.’ They are illiterate and ignorant. They are also blinded by superstition and superstitious beliefs. They go by an ancient mythical tale.

If witch-killing is legally banned, then why am I writing this?

(The author is a noted film scholar who writes extensively on social issues. She is a double-winner for the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema. Views personal.)