India Struggles to Eradicate an Old Scourge: Witch Hunting
The attack, in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand in 2021, was evidence that India is still struggling to eradicate the age-old scourge of witch hunting, despite a raft of laws and other initiatives.
For centuries, the branding of witches was driven largely by superstition. A crop would fail, a well would run dry or a family member would fall ill, and villagers would find someone — almost always a woman — to blame for a misfortune whose cause they did not understand.
Women branded witches have had their nails pulled out, been forced to eat feces, been paraded naked or been beaten black and blue. They have been burned or lynched. From 2010 to 2021, more than 1,500 people were killed in India after accusations of witchcraft, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
One of them is Dukhu Majhi, who lives in a picturesque village a couple of hundred miles from Durga Mahato’s.
In Ms. Majhi’s case, suspicion fell on her simply because she did not conform to neighbors’ expectations. Villagers wondered how a “normal woman” could live by herself with her young children, deep in the forest, while her husband was away for work.
Then they labeled her a witch.
“If someone’s stomach aches, I am blamed. If a headache happens, I am blamed. They would stand outside my house and shout, ‘She is the witch causing us grief,’” Ms. Majhi said. “I would retort: Do I become a witch just because you are saying so?”
Last July, villagers chased her with axes and sticks. She ran home; they banged on the door and tried to break it down.
She and her husband went to the police to complain. Pintu Mahato, a local police official, tried to play down the case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/13/world...nting.html
The attack, in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand in 2021, was evidence that India is still struggling to eradicate the age-old scourge of witch hunting, despite a raft of laws and other initiatives.
For centuries, the branding of witches was driven largely by superstition. A crop would fail, a well would run dry or a family member would fall ill, and villagers would find someone — almost always a woman — to blame for a misfortune whose cause they did not understand.
Women branded witches have had their nails pulled out, been forced to eat feces, been paraded naked or been beaten black and blue. They have been burned or lynched. From 2010 to 2021, more than 1,500 people were killed in India after accusations of witchcraft, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
One of them is Dukhu Majhi, who lives in a picturesque village a couple of hundred miles from Durga Mahato’s.
In Ms. Majhi’s case, suspicion fell on her simply because she did not conform to neighbors’ expectations. Villagers wondered how a “normal woman” could live by herself with her young children, deep in the forest, while her husband was away for work.
Then they labeled her a witch.
“If someone’s stomach aches, I am blamed. If a headache happens, I am blamed. They would stand outside my house and shout, ‘She is the witch causing us grief,’” Ms. Majhi said. “I would retort: Do I become a witch just because you are saying so?”
Last July, villagers chased her with axes and sticks. She ran home; they banged on the door and tried to break it down.
She and her husband went to the police to complain. Pintu Mahato, a local police official, tried to play down the case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/13/world...nting.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
