Omar Rashid 
New Delhi: The majority of women who face witchcraft-related violence are married and living in joint families, according to a recent survey in Bihar. The survey has also found that among the most significant factors driving accusations of witchcraft were a visible increase in the income of women or their families and women assuming leadership or representative roles.
This debunks common perceptions where ‘witch-hunting’ is seen merely through the lens of illiteracy and superstition.
Over 2,500 women have been killed in India on the charges of witchcraft since 2000, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Over the past year, NGO Nirantar Trust, in collaboration with women’s federations and other groups in Bihar, conducted a survey on witchcraft-related persecution in the state. The surveyors interviewed and studied 145 women from 114 villages in 10 districts of Bihar who had been victims of violence after being labelled as ‘witches’.
Also read: West Bengal: Tribal Women Assaulted, Stripped, Tied Up and Beaten to Death on Witchcraft Suspicion
The survey found that the majority of the women surveyed – 121 out of 145 – who faced violence related to accusations of witchcraft were married and lived with their husbands and children in joint families. This meant that 83% of surveyed women who were married could not protect themselves from such violence.
In other words, marriage as an institution failed to guarantee them dignity or security, the survey said.
Higher Income Leads to More Witch-hunting
The survey report, which was released in New Delhi on December 9, also said that a majority of the women (56%) who faced such violence were holding some form of a leadership role. Apart from the visible increase in the income of women or their families and women assuming leadership roles, among the most significant factors driving accusations of witchcraft were deaths caused by poor health and malnutrition, such as deaths of individuals, children, or livestock within the family or community.
Around 42% of the women surveyed said that jealousy over the improved financial status of their families led relatives and neighbours to accuse them of witchcraft.
“Essentially, economic progress among very poor families fuels envy and resentment, which manifest as accusations of witchcraft in an attempt to prevent economic or social mobility,” stated the survey by Nirantar Trust.
Out of the 145 women, 61 said they were targeted due to an increase in income, while 40 said they faced persecution after someone in their family or neighbourhood fell ill.
The survey also said that a majority of the women surveyed – 108 out of 145 – were between the ages of 46 and 66. “This indicates that women past reproductive age are more vulnerable to being accused of witchcraft,” stated the survey.
The report said that the most common perpetrators of witch-hunting are often family members.
Forty-three per cent of the women reported that the accusations of witchcraft originated within their families. Next in line were neighbours, with 19%.
The survey also found that an alarming 78% of the women reported enduring several mental harassment, while almost a third were subjected to verbal abuse or taunts and 28% faced social ostracism and boycotts. The women accused of being ‘witches’ also faced economic violence, forced consumption of human faeces, head-shaving, sexual violence and even murder, said the report. Around 84% of the women also said that they suffered from physical and mental illnesses since being labelled as witches.
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Witch Hunt A National Issue
At present, only a dozen states have laws related to witch-hunting. This includes Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Assam. However, activist Ajay Jaiswal says it is not a problem of just four or five states.
“It is a national issue and needs a law at the national level,” he says, adding that even in states with laws even the police were hardly aware of these legislations.
Jaiswal, lawyer and founder of Jharkhand-based NGO Association for Social and Human Awareness or ASHA, recalled an incident from the state where five women were killed on the accusations of witchcraft in a single night. One of them was the mother of a BSF jawan and had opposed alcohol use in the village. Jaiswal, who was instrumental in shaping one of the first anti-witch hunting laws in Bihar and Jharkhand, said that women labelled dayan or ‘witches’ often feared they could be killed any time.
“In Jharkhand, we often get calls from women who cannot sleep from the fear of being killed in the middle of the night,” says Jaiswal.
The survey also found that caste and class discrimination plays a significant role in the violence committed in the name of witchcraft. Women not only face domestic violence but also social, caste-based, religious, and economic violence, the report said, adding that 97% of such women belonged to Dalit, backward caste or tribal backgrounds, with most from landless households.
Representative image of rural women. Photo: Human Rights Watch
Mamoni Saikya, a social activist from Assam, who has over 25 years of experience working on gender-based violence, referred to an incident to highlight the deep-rooted problem of witch-hunting in her state.
“One night, 2-3 women were mobbed and killed on suspicions of being witches. When I went to the village to speak to the people and asked them who would bring these dead women back now that they had been killed, a young boy stood up and asked me, ‘Who will bring back the dead 25 people who these witches have eaten in the past year in our village?’ That’s when I saw how deeply entrenched the superstitious beliefs surrounding witch-hunting are, even in young people’s minds,” she says.
Lakshmi, a grassroots activist from Bettiah district of Bihar, says that in some cases, even the women panchayat members were targeted with witchcraft-related violence.
“It was not easy to do this survey. Sometimes, women would cry narrating their ordeal to us — of being paraded naked in the streets, of their heads being forcefully shaved. We too would break down listening to them. A lot of them did not open up to us out of fear of news spreading in the village and of being further demonised,” she says, reflecting on her experiences during the survey.
Archana Dwivedi, the Director of Nirantar Trust says, “Witch-hunting is both domestic and public violence. It can start out at home, in the family or in the neighbourhood, and stem from domestic reasons or discord, but culminate in a public display of violence.”
To tackle the problem, the activists of Nirantar Trust said it was necessary to hold accountable ojhas or traditional healers, particularly at the panchayat level, since they were the first to confirm and further perpetuate witchcraft accusations. They also said that the accountability and role of panchayats in cases of gender-based violence should be strictly determined.
“Witch-hunting prevention committees should be formed at the Panchayat level to support victims, survivors and their families. They should also carry out awareness campaigns to combat superstition,” Nirantar says.
The NGO also demanded that the laws against witch-hunting be made more effective and a state-level dedicated helpline be set up for women facing or at risk of facing such violence.