Belief Systems in Tribal Societies: Witchcraft
In tribal areas of India, spirit practices are still a common sight. Humans tend to connect with spirits in ‘ditheistic uncertainty’, drawing a parallel connotation between good and bad spirits. The same can be seen with Adiwasi community where they regard white magic as beneficent and black magic as evil. Are spirits really capable of doing any magic?
Adiwasi’s believed that bad spirits worked in synergy with witches (dayan) to construct misery in society. If any unfortunate event occurred in a village such as an epidemic or an instant death (akaal mrityu) or series of deaths (including children), then a rumor spreads within a closed society; normally confined to village, that some-one might be casting an ‘evil eye’ on the community, and the links were related to witchcraft. In such a situation if a person is too ritualistic and devotional towards its faith, it becomes a culprit, normally such devotion is noticeable in woman, as men used to play passive roles in customary rituals. Hence, women were the actual victims of being termed as witches. Women also seemed to have knowledge of herb and plants, their relationships with forests and nature was known in the community. Hence terming them as ‘witches’ served the purpose for the followers and actors of patriarchal society. Women with piercing stares (paeni nazar) were mostly deemed as witches, it was believed they possessed ‘evil eye’ and this may bring all sorts of misfortunes to the village and community. In order to suppress such women, witch-hunting started taking place. The witch-hunts sometimes even turned into a murder, killing or ended up with public trials at manjithaan. In the course of rumors, there was always an aura of suspense amongst everyone in the village; no one knew who the target was. Such humiliations lead to the migration of accused, in search of a different abode. This happened in the case of Baso-Mai she happened to be humiliated by her own children of being a ‘witch’. Since there was a series of death, crop failures, irregular monsoon in the Tupodih village and she was accused of it. Various wrongdoings to her, made her to migrate. Another major reason apart from humiliation is the loss of property for the tribal women. Property rights like ‘right to manage land and yield-share’ were granted to single tribal women; unmarried or widow, thus the easiest way to get land from a woman is to term her as a witch. Parasuraman also states, in context for adiwasi women, the loss of property can lead to extreme marginalization. However all these were not limited to Mundas, Hos or Santhals, there were cases in other communities too. Those who didn’t migrate and survived the trials were taken to local medicine men called ojhas.
Ojhas became the de facto doctors of the village, the folklores suggested and they themselves claimed to have cured people. Such was the trust that sufferers refrain themselves from visiting the developed cities to see English Doctors. Madodari Devi was such Chero Adivasi woman who suffered from Cancer but believed that her suffering was due to sorcerous activities done by her envious relatives.
The faith in Ojhas is still quite visible in the tribal societies. Is it more to do with ‘Placebo effect’ or they really indeed treat people, is a perplexing thought to look upon.
Although, the road to shamanism isn’t easy; it goes through different religions and belief systems. There existed certain lacunae in the tribal belief systems, which others took advantage of in the past. Dalton fostered Christian missionary movements for mass conversations of tribal, targeting specific communities. Meanwhile, hinduisation of tribal also began, it echoed to some group of tribal communities that Hinduism is a better version of their existing value system. However, there were movements from within like Tana Bhagat and Birsa Munda movement that tried to develop their own credence. Even though tribal paradigms contained mutual similarities with other sects and religion, every predominant sect wanted to incorporate them, maybe because of their colossal numbers.
There has been an effort to curb dayan pratha in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, though different state machineries itself gets involved in the activities. The economics of witchcraft is so profound that ojhas, sarpanch, and others worked in nexus to reap maximum benefits from such activities.
The notion of witchcraft can be incorporated into the value-based belief systems, it undulates between paakhand (superstition) and fact (tathya) based thinking. Those who were inclined to factual based thinking were more inclined towards indigenous moment, whereas those disposed towards credulous knowledge, found themselves hitched with superstition.
