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The problem of witch hunts is recurrent in the tribal areas of northern and eastern India. Groups of men murder women, sometimes even entire families under cover of superstitions. Local authorities and associations are trying to fight the phenomenon while the number of such crimes is growing.
On the evening of 24 January in Sundargarh, a remote and tribal hamlet in Odisha State, eastern India, a group of men enters Mangri Mundi's home. They murder this woman , along with her four children aged 1 to 12, with sticks and axes, before throwing their bodies into a well. These assailants accused the mother of being a witch and cast a spell on her two recently deceased daughters. The police quickly arrested four members of this bereaved family, as well as a healer, who allegedly convicted them of Mangri Mundi's guilt.
First trigger : lack of access to care
This kind of crime is unfortunately common and apparently growing in this state of Odisha: 99 attacks against so-called witches were recorded by the police in 2017, resulting in the death of 18 people, against 85 assaults for 25 deaths in 2016 These assaults have been counted as full-fledged offenses since the Odisha enacted a specific law in 2013 that punishes anyone who accuses someone of being a witch of three years in prison, chases or leads a group. to embark on a witch hunt. This scourge strikes many tribal areas of the north and east of the country, and other states such as West Bengal, Jharkhand or Assam have also passed laws to repress these acts.
The primary cause of such violence is the lack of access to quality care in these remote areas, resulting in dependence of these populations on local healers. The latter, unable to diagnose or treat the ravaging diseases like malaria or typhoid, will, as in the assassination of the family of Odisha, play on the superstitions of the afflicted persons. And manipulate them. With constant motivation: to accuse women of being responsible for the evils of the community, with the aim of lowering them to a dominated position and / or seizing their lands.
" The witch hunts are often the result of conflict between widows and her in-laws over land control ," says sociologist Soma Chaudhury in her book Witches, Tea Plantations and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India (Lexington Books). 2013). " In the states of Jharkhand and West Bengal, for example (East India, ed), the right of a widow to inherit land from her deceased husband may be denied if it is proved that she is a witch. "
A misogynistic weapon
This researcher from the American University of Michigan is analyzing studies on the subject in 20 years in different parts of India and shows how, in these patriarchal societies, accusations of witchcraft have served to resist emancipation women. " The women of the tribes of the Santhals, Ho or Munda fight so that, if they have no son, the lands of their deceased husband go to their daughters. But the resistance to breaking the patrilineal model is very strong and these land issues are one of the first reasons behind the accusations of witchcraft in this region 'of north-east India, says Soma Chaudhury.
In general, the witch hunt appears as a deeply misogynistic weapon: single, widowed or divorced women are perceived as wild, free and therefore threatening. It then becomes easy to accuse them of witchcraft and " acceptable " to kill them to recover their land. For many, these witch hunts are more common in tribal areas, as these communities depend on the land for their livelihoods and so the tensions for their appropriation are further exacerbated.
Theater plays to exorcise the problem
The association Anandi , based in Gujarat (west), fights against these practices through, among other things, plays: women victims of this harassment climb on the boards of villages in the state to tell their story. " The message we are trying to convey to communities is that women's assertion does not result in the destruction of the family, unlike witch hunts, which put these women and their families at risk, " says Jeevika Shiv, co- director of Anandi.
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These representations also break the silence that often surrounds this issue and allow other victims to express themselves, while raising awareness of law enforcement. The association is now fighting for this state of Gujarat to also pass a law against witch hunts, which will give a better visibility to this scourge while putting pressure on the police to act.