Witchcraft is given a spell in India’s schools to remove curse of deadly superstition
Witchcraft is being put on the curriculum for India’s primary schoolchildren in an effort to debunk superstitions that are behind scores of gruesome murders every year.
A belief in witches and the evils purportedly wrought by them — from famine to sporting failure — is widespread among tribal communities in the country’s impoverished rural hinterland. It is estimated that 750 people, mostly elderly women, have been killed in witch-hunts in the states of Assam and West Bengal since 2003.
Wicca / WitchcraftOur Witchcraft news tracker includes news items about a wide variety of diverse movements reported in the media as ‘witchcraft.’ It also includes news articles on the plight of alleged witches.Research resources on Witchcraft / WiccaComments & resources by ReligionNewsBlog.comIn one the most horrific recent cases, a family of four of the Santhal tribe in Assam were stoned and buried alive for allegedly cursing a relative of the village chief. At least one attack in Assam culminated in the severed heads of two “witches” being taken as trophies and paraded in the streets.
Advocates for a change to the syllabus say that beliefs must be altered early if India’s witch-hunts are to be stamped out. However, the approach is being challenged by academics who say that witch-hunts are an economic phenomenon. Pointing to modern day Africa and Renaissance Europe, they argue that pensions, not education, are the best means of curtailing a belief in black magic.
Studies suggest that more “witches” are identified in lean years. In the 16th and 17th centuries, an estimated one million women were killed in Europe for dabbling in the black arts. The height of the slaughter coincided with a “little ice age” that made life much tougher, the historian Wolfgang Behringer has suggested.
Today, in the Meatu district of Tanzania, half of all murders are “witch-killings” and almost all of the victims are old women from poor households.
Raymond Fisman, a professor at Columbia University, told a recent seminar: “In Meatu, there are veritable witch epidemics now and again — certainly any time there is a bad crop year. Witches are the scapegoat of first resort. He suggested that “witches” were killed to make resources stretch farther. “Who are you going to knock off? You want the person who is the greatest consumer of household resources relative to that which they produce . . . it turns out that it’s grandma.”
Thus, the quickest way to eradicate witch-hunts is to introduce pensions for elderly women — to transform grandma from an economic burden to a wealth generator.
The tactic is credited with virtually ending “witch-killings” in the North Province region of South Africa in the 1990s.
16-yr-old girl lynched in West Bengal
Kolkata: A 16-year-old girl was beaten to death by villagers in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district, who accused her of practising witchcraft and entrancing the son of her former employer to marry her, the police said.
“Tulu Dolui was dragged out of her hut in Ghoramara village around 11.30 pm by at least eight people, who then tied her to a tree and beat her with sticks for over three hours,” an official at Sagore police station told reporters.
He said police intervened to rescue the girl, but she succumbed to injuries on the way to the local health centre. She had sustained serious head, abdominal, chest and back injuries.
The official said the villagers alleged that Dolui was a witch and had hypnotised the son of a rich grocer’s son, who decided to marry her against his parents’ wishes. She was working there as a servant until the grocer came to know of the relationship and sacked her.
No one has been arrested so far in this incident, he said.