 So welcome everyone tonight, it's a great pleasure to act as a chair of this South Asian Institute and central law environment and development event. Maybe many of you know Dr. Mayu Suresh who is teaching here the law department. And his talk is on property fertility and witchcraft, a preliminary ethnography of witch hunting cases in Jharika. So he confides anthropology and law, it seems. As an anthropologist who has worked on the law himself in India and particularly interested in it. And whatever else you want to know so you can read the source on the page. I don't want to take any time out of your brain. So thank you, Philippe, thank you for the South Asia study. South Asia Center has so asked for allowing me to do this presentation. I should say there are several caveats. So this is a product of fieldwork, very preliminary fieldwork which is why there is a preliminary in there. That I did in Jharkhand which is a state in central eastern India over August, September. I'll get into where I went and how it is the fieldwork and stuff. Also you should probably know there's a slight title change. I've dropped the idea of fertility. It's one of those things when you write the abstract you over promise. And then when you actually write the paper you think okay maybe fertility doesn't work. But we'll see how kind of fertility may come across. You'll probably see again the reason end of the presentation of why I don't think fertility works as a concept. But with that I'll start. So just to give you kind of a sense of the scale of the problem in India and why I think it's a worthy subject. It just from the NCRB that's the National Time Records Bureau in India. And the statistics end at 2017. On the side note the present government doesn't like statistics which is why we don't have any more. But they end in 2017 and so the figures I mean are every death is a bad death. But in terms of absolute numbers it's not incredibly high. It's 19 in one year. It's downed considerably from 54 from three years before that. In all and all over 500 women were killed on allegations of being witches in the 15 year period between 2001 and 2016. I'll come to what other kinds of violence there are. But I just want to give you the official picture of what's happening. And so witchcraft for either the various reasons why people are giving me this. Is that either because a greater media attention or just a greater number of number of cases of which allegations of witchcraft being violence on the basis of allegations which have been reported. It's tend to come up a lot more in India media. So the state of Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Chhateshkar, Telangana all have high high incidences officially reported of witchcraft related violence. This is violence against people who are accused of being witches. And of course as you can see most of them are women. And also some of the states, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Chhateshkar have specific anti-witch hunting legislations in place. The scale of the problem kind of increased in 2016. So in 2016 a law was proposed, a national level law on witch hunting which kind of lapsed with the dissolution of parliament. But there was kind of increased debates around witch hunting and anti-witch hunting legislation in India. So I just want to give you kind of a maybe more of a kind of a structure of witch hunting allegations in India. So many of the people who are accused of being witches are mostly women. At times it's just a form of circulation of rumours that there are rumours in, there are rumours going on in villages in small towns that certain such version is a witch. These rumours escalate and ultimately the forms of violence occur and we'll get down to the forms of violence in a bit. Kind of the other way is more structured in a certain sense. There are different players involved and this is the other way. So some people told me in response to the question of how do you know someone is a witch, the one standard answer is because everyone knows a person is a witch. There are certain forms of rumours circulating that forms of rumours circulating in local communities. There's a lot of logical literature on how rumour can become fact and rumour blur the distinction between fact and fiction. The other answer that I got in response to how do you know someone is a witch is kind of this structure over here. So usually it starts with and there are kind of three moving parts to this. It usually starts with a victim of witchcraft. This person is either sick, has several accidents, crops fail, animals, livestock become sick. And so this person goes to a person called the Oja. Translated to me, this person is often translated as a witch doctor. This person is often a man and in the village the position of the Oja is often inherited. So the father of an Oja, the son will be an Oja as well. And there are different things that this Oja does. The Oja is not just about identifying witches, but it kind of operates as a local mendicant. So provides kind of herbal remedies, forms of ritual practice, conducts marriages and also does stuff on, does rituals to identify who the witches are. And often, so basically a man, a person who is sick or ill or has some issues with the land, goes to the Oja. One of the responses of the Oja is you have been affected by witchcraft. Then the Oja does some religious conduct, some sort of ceremony where, and I'll get into that later on, and has to do with a lot of the land and identifies this person who is the purported witch. So kind of just some sociological things maybe to note is often the victims and the land purported witch are from the same kinship groups. Mothers in law, doctors in law, can be cousins. They are very often in the same village, which often means that they're often similar or the same caste group. Very rarely in kind of the sociological studies on witchcraft you have witchcraft transcending caste or community or kinship groups. And the important thing is the identification of the person as a witch leads to kind of escalating patterns of violence. There was a UN repertoire on extraditional killings who had a section on witchcraft and his kind of finding was that often the identification of someone as a witch has kind of violent effects. So it's not just the violence that's obviously violent, but the identification itself is a form of witch, the identification of someone as a witch leads to certain forms of violence. And this is kind of some of the headlines that are pulled out. There are a couple of pictures that haven't put those obviously. And so you have a range of things, right? So obviously in the first thing you have within a family group and Orissa, there's obviously death. There's forms of assault, forms of violence. And also just form of humiliation, right? I'm not sure if you can see this one over here. But basically the woman was a traitor to witch, her face was blackened, she was garland with shoes, and a traitor to the village. Often the identification of someone as a witch leads to a social boycott, that is people do not talk or interact or have any economic relations with that person and identify as a witch. Forms of public humiliation, like over here. Other instances are being paraded naked. The woman is stripped and made to walk through the village. Obviously forms of assault, grievous bodily harm. Often people abandoned their village, abandoned their homes, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. And obviously forms of torture and eventually murder or lynching in certain cases. So the state of Jharkhand and some other states in India have enacted witchcraft legislation. Most of these came in, I'm not sure what the impetus was in around 2000, but most of them have between 99 and 2001. This is when most of the legislations came in in various states. So it operates almost akin to the schedule cast Schedule Tribes Protection Civil Rights Act. So if you know it, the naming of someone is itself a crime. So in the SCST Protection Civil Rights Act, if you call someone a low-caste slur or you use the forms of use of language that itself is criminalized. So similarly, the naming of someone as a witch becomes a crime. So calling someone a witch using any forms of epithets for that person as a witch is also a crime. It's also interesting as criminalizing the use of magic or rituals to cure a witch. And in this sense, those provisions target the person called the witcher, the person who does the witch-curing ceremonies. Importantly, it's linked to the idea of mental or physical torture of the person who's the body to be a witch. So those are the kind of two provisions that this and other anti-witch prevent witch hunting legislation criminalizes. And this is just my kind of rough translation of it. But the offence is purely on identification. So the title is about identification if the calling is the naming of someone as a witch that is criminalized. And in a sense, this kind of follows or presages later on human rights ideas in 2016 where basically some of the human rights committees basically said that if you must criminalize or you must stop the naming of a person as a witch to stop the violence that subsequently arises from that identification. So the evidence that we have, we kind of saw the statistics at the beginning of this presentation. Those are the cases in which these witchcraft legislations was actually invoked. So the police will, in cases where there is a murder of a woman or woman, will, on the allegation of witchcraft, not only register a case under murder or assault, but will also register a case under this particular enactment. So this particular enactment is actually only used as far as we know when there is assault or murder of a person. Whereas the act should be used preceding that, in a sense, should be used before the actual murder of a person is meant to protect against that. It's never used in that way. What we do know of this anecdotally and from local level surveys is that witchcraft allegations are extremely common. There was one survey conducted in 2018 which was in one village just outside Ranchi which estimated that at least one in ten women had had an allegation of witchcraft made against them. So clearly the use of the law and the actual incidences of witchcraft allegations don't actually match up. So that was kind of the background of what I wanted, of what this study was trying to do. It was intended to be, excuse me, an ethnography of witch-hunting trials. So trying to understand how knowledge practices, witchcraft knowledge practices are conceptualized by the law. How do they understand each other? And how are these claims adjudicated in court? How does the law understand forms of witchcraft on the witch-hunting and also the magic quote-unquote used by the Ujhas? And that was the plan. So I spent six weeks in Jharkhand in towns and villages. These are the main towns I went to, Ranchi, Jamshetpur, Chakratpur. I also did kind of visits to villages close by. I spent time with lawyers, NGOs, community-based organizations. And actually community-based organizations were kind of the mainstay of this presentation. These were public health organizations and livelihood organizations. And some public education organizations, simply because these were the organizations or community-organized groups that dealt with women. These are the groups that kind of organized women, trained women, interacted with women on their daily lives. And so these are the kind of groups that are responding to these forms of violence and responding to witch-hunting allegations by producing research about them, so their main focus isn't on witch-hunting allegations. So when I asked why witch-hunting allegations occur, these were kind of the common responses. Or why does witch-hunting occur? I mean, it's a circular answer. But the circular answer, first one is andrishas or blind belief. Why do they occur? Because blind belief leads to witch-hunting allegations. It's just the way it is, basically. That was one argument. The NGOs and kind of community organizations gave other answers as well. One is obviously the lack of education. You can't explain something, and therefore you attribute it to some supernatural or mystical reason. Public health service and many pointed out that often witch-hunting allegations occur when people fall ill. There is no idea of disease. There is no idea of something just happening to you or fate. It has to be caused by something else. And your illness has to be caused by a witch. So there's no idea of you just fall sick. Rather, you just get cursed by a witch, which is why the witch-hunting... why you fall ill. The other common answer is property disputes. And this is kind of the focus of the rest of the presentation. So there's an assumption. If you go to Indian Khanum, which is kind of the Indian legal database, and do witch-hunting allegations, you will find many of these cases will narrate property disputes into the judgment. And this is kind of the assumption that I want to unpack in this presentation. So let's take one of the cases that I came across in my fieldwork. And this is, I changed the names over here and the places, changed the names. So this is the case of Jagat Munda. He, and this is an excerpt from the first information report that he submitted to the police. At about 9.30 at night, the village headman and three other people, he names them over there, forced the way into my house. They told my wife and I that you have both put black magic on my son, Soma, because of which he has fallen from a tambourine tree and sustained bad injuries. I told him that your son has fallen a month ago. Then they became violent and started breaking things around my house, like the roof and pots and the fireplace. They also told us that we had put black magic on another person for Goa Munda two years ago because of which he had a illness and died. They told us today that we have been saved, but we would not be saved in the future. They began to kick us so badly that we ran into the forest to sleep. We stayed in the jungle all night and then for 12, 13 days thereafter they came out of the jungle and then they filed a police complaint. So, very kind of typical story that something has happened in the village. The village headman's son fall of a tambourine tree. There's no conception of fate or accident. This has to be a product of witchcraft. The other thing you'll notice over here is there's no ojhan wand. I'm not sure why, but there is none, so it might be just an allegation. But there's no idea of fate. There's no idea of accident. So the falling of the village headman's son from the tree must have been a product of witchcraft. Forms of threat follow from the farm identification. Again, like we said earlier, they left the house temporarily because they feared for their lives. They spent two weeks in the jungle and then finally came out to file the police complaint. I spoke to the lawyer. I never met this person called Jagat Munda. According to the lawyer, they didn't know why there were being witches, but the lawyer told me in conspiratorial tones that I know the reason why is because of a land dispute. His argument was that as this property the village where this dispute took place or this allegation took place was close to Ranchi, there was an increased... Ranchi is the biggest town in Jharkhand and it's growing rapidly, as you can imagine. As it was growing rapidly, there was a land mafia behind it. And these are some excerpts from the interview. So he says basically, first thing he says, this is not an FIR, but I know the truth for sure, imagine you are a widow and you have land but you're not going to sell it. Whatever the people want to do, they'll try and get through the system but you will fight it. Then what they do is to hatch a conspiracy that we will do this, that we will brand this person a witch because we know that witches exist in our culture. Then everyone agrees, meaning that they spread this news. Then you take any incident that happens, like this one. You say the child fell from the camera and tree and then you blame the widow. There's a story here and there. You tell one person and another. Then you get the panchayat together and then you have a conspiracy. Everyone will believe it. This person is obviously not a tribal. Everyone will believe it because the accusation, these tribals amongst whom the allegations are said to be prevalent, are very naive. You tell them one thing and they believe it. All the tribals chase the witch out of the village. All the tribals go to jail. Then you take the property. Behind this idea of the property dispute is this idea of the conspiracy. There is something real behind this property dispute that behind this allegation of witchcraft lies this idea of a land grab. There's some sinister controlling authority behind this allegation which can come in and take the property away. You see this logic at play. This logic of the grand conspiracy at play are in different reports and social legal texts as well. This comes not only from policy and law but also from certain victims speaking through the policy documents themselves. In a study by Ali that's association, I forget what the full second is, but for legal initiatives, which is basically a legal NGO in Iranchi and in Lucknow, they did a report in 2017 on why witchcraft happened. One of the reasons they came to conclusion was the property disputes. Again over here they quote a man whose wife had been shot dead. Basically the man in their words said that this was a property dispute, that someone wanted the title used in the house, he didn't agree and therefore they shot his wife on the allegation that this person was a witch. Again another public policy, this is public board, we call the Dartmouth State Library and Promotion Society. It's kind of a quasi-governmental organization that promotes economic credit amongst women. Like I said these are some of the organizations that are having to respond to allegation of witchcraft. Basically again say that the real motive is the acquisition of land or property. Like I said earlier court cases often narrate this as a thing as well, that property is an underlying cause for these witchcraft allegations. Interestingly there was a study done by the Partners for Law and Development in the legal NGO in Delhi. They analyzed 88 FIRs from three states, Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. What they did was basically they looked at the FIR, that's the initial complaints made to the police officers and then they went and interviewed the survivors of the victims of witch-hunting violence. They often found that even though it was narrated in the FIRs as the motive for this witch-hunting allegation, often the victims themselves never narrated as a property dispute. So what might be happening over here, and this is not something they suggest but I suggest, that the only way the state or the police can rationalize this offense to the court is by naming it as a property dispute. There's no, there's very little conception of belief or magic that the police are able to rationalize or put in some kind of rational text that the courts or they themselves can legitimately write down in their kind of documents. So as I suggested earlier, I think the discourse of property disputes as behind witch-hunting allegations is one of a conspiracy. Behind the witch-hunting witchcraft allegation is the idea that there is a grand conspiracy and then there's witch-hunting allegations are orchestrated by people in power just to get, to dupe the naive tribals into getting that property. So during my time in Ghatberat, I spent time with the Asha volunteers. When I read Asha volunteers, those are accredited social health activists. Again, accredited by the state to do public health initiatives. And many of them were my primary sources, primary interlocutors over here. And so many of them disputed this account. They disputed the account of the idea that there's a property dispute at the heart of it. Simple logical reasons. One is that if you wanted to take my land, there's no, you could just chase me off of the land. There is no, there are very few systems of land records. And often land works by possessions, you just take possession of the land. And also they point to the other end. So sometimes someone who's accused of being a witch, when they're either killed or chased off the land, the land is left empty. As if it was, you can't go close to it. There's something dangerous about the land over there. So the idea of property disputing at the heart of a witchcraft allegation doesn't quite go enough, go far enough to explain why witch-hunting allegations happen. And the other thing is it doesn't explain the horrific nature of the violence. If it was just a land dispute, you would chase them off, beat them away, and once they're left, it would be okay. But there was one case in 2016 where five women in a village were stripped naked, taken to the local, they call it Akhara, it's a local ritual place. According to police records, at least 35 people of the village, a village of 150, went there and basically lynched them to death. So the idea of property dispute doesn't quite take into account the scale and the viciousness of the violence that happens in these cases. So I'm kind of interested in this idea of land. I do think there's a connection that the land has to witch-hunting allegations, but I don't think it's the idea of property. So what I'm trying to say in this presentation is an idea. So moving away from land as property, so when you say land as property, it involves some sort of, you imagine land as being productive, as you take land as a form of wealth. You capture land in order to become richer, to make your life easier, to produce more, et cetera, et cetera. So the idea of land as productivity. I think the link between land and witch-hunting is that something goes in a slightly different direction. One is that land becomes, and I'll show this later on, I realize I've taken a lot of time, as later on in the presentation, is that land becomes kind of indexed potential threats. It tells the people on that land where the threat lies, and it's just not a physical threat, as I've shown in a second. And land also becomes kind of a legible text. So you have to read the land in order to figure out where the threat lies or what kind of threats exist. Land also provides a way in which to deal with those threats, and I realize it's kind of ambiguous now, or vague now, but hopefully it becomes clearer in a second. So this is the kind of idea I want to move away from. So thinking about instead of land as property as productive, but to land as kind of a legible text tells you what kind of threat exists in your social world. So the first thing to note, I guess, is that witchcraft is only one part of this kind of ecosystem of belief. This is only one of the things that forms a part of the kind of the supernatural world, if you want to call it that, of kind of the milieu in which this happens, right? So the land is also inhabited by ghosts and spirits. There are other supernatural beings that play. So one of the Asha workers kind of on the board over there, he narrates how he felt sick when he was younger. He went to the Ojha with his mother. The mother said, and then the Ojha asked him, did you go to that place which has a row of coconut trees and a tax truck which basically identifies a particular part of the land. The Ojha said that place has a spirit, a creed in it, and that's fallen on to you, that's why you're falling ill. The Ojha did chart poop is, I'm not sure what exactly it means, but it's a form of, I imagine there's some form of broom, well there is a broom I know, but there's some kind of ceremony that it does to get rid of the spirit. Another Asha worker told me about how ghosts can enter you. So over here again, the problem is the ghost can enter you through the navel, how do you prevent that? You take the dung of your goat, you mix it with your land, and you put it in the baby's umbilical cord to prevent the ghost from entering. So that's another type of kind of supernatural being that exists on the land. Particularly like this one, I've told several narratives about, I have two names for him as well, Chundru and Chamaak. One, this type of very short, has a ponytail, takes your, he can be a nice person, so basically if suddenly you have 20 people coming home, this person, Chundru or Chamaak, will help you cook rice for those, for the number of people. He's also vindictive. If you don't set aside rice for him, he will basically take a grain from your stores and give it to someone else. So witchcraft exists in this milieu, and I'm sure there are more which haven't been told of, which haven't come across, but witchcraft exists in this milieu where there is a constant threat. There are other forms of threat being on the land itself. And you can again see the link between the idea of witchcraft and land through the figure of the Ojha. I mean the Ojha quick recap is the person who's the witch doctor. And so the Ojha, like I said earlier, is a position that's quasi-inherited. There's nothing in any law or rule that says the Ojha son becomes an Ojha. It's just that the Ojha son is trained to become an Ojha. And to kind of, what I've been told was that the Ojha learns how to make certain medications from these plants and how to perform certain rituals. The Ojha is also told to look for threats in the land. So looking for certain signs in the land, this could be certain types of trees, arrangement of rocks, direction of the house, conditions of certain type of plants. So one of the witch hunting allegations that I heard was that the Ojha told this person, you have been affected by witchcraft. If you dig up a certain type of plant, or which type of plant it is, and you find a bunch of certain types of rocks, or rocks arranged in this pattern. And this is what the Ojha said. So the Ojha enables you to read the land in order to search for kind of threats. The Ojha also makes the land legible. And what do I mean by that? So there are certain things with the Ojha will say, look at that tree. The position of this tree means that you have been affected by either a booth or a priest, different types of spirits, or a witch. But sometimes the land is not immediately legible, so it needs to be made legible. So this is done by performing certain rituals on the land. This is one of the rituals that I heard of, and this was narrated by Asha Walker, the first one. Her marriage was not going well. So he, that is the Ojha, drew a design on the ground. He threw some mirrors on it and some seeds way to the next day. Obviously the seeds weren't there. And so the problem was that the marriage was not performed in the correct place. And this is later on in the same interview. And so basically they re-performed the marriage. The bright side walked from their village, and the groom's side walked from their village with different Ojhas. Wherever they met, apparently it was predicted that they would meet under a certain tree. And that part, that tree would be the correct place where to do the marriage ceremony. So the land itself has to be made legible. So either it can be read on its face, or you do certain things in order to know where the thread lies and how to ameliorate that thread. And the thread includes the idea of witchcraft. So you can read the land in certain ways in order to look for ideas of witchcraft. So this is one of the narratives given to me as an example. Imagine a person for a little has an accident. They go to the Ojha to determine what the cause was. The Ojha performs a ritual on the land itself. At times it can be a specific part of the land, person's home. The two rituals that were described to me, one was, of course, I saw earlier the drawing of a design on the ground and the throwing of objects on it in order to render the land legible. And the other one was the boiling of lentils. So certain types of lentils were boiled and then read. Not sure how that happened. That wasn't demonstrated, but that was one of the ways in which you could read a thread from the land. And like earlier itself, you could also tell a witchcraft allegations from just certain types of plants, arrangement of stones, direction of the home. So upon reading the signs, the Ojha may declare that you have been afflicted by witchcraft. One of the options is you've been afflicted by witchcraft. The other options are, of course, you've been affected by a boot or a pleat or something else. But one of the options is that you've been affected by witchcraft. And I found this kind of phrase interesting because it was never very rarely was it that someone has put black magic on you or something else. It's like the witch is eating you from the inside. And I found this kind of particularly evocative because it suggests the opposite of fertility, but that's why I talk fertility anyways. But it's just this, I found this idea that something is eating you from the inside, it's taking your life away from the inside. Evocative or something, I'm not sure exactly what yet. So the Ojha can suggest that you do some rituals to counteract it, right? So this usually involves animal sacrifice. Again, involving you sacrifice a goat or has to be a black goat or a chicken. There is something that I've never seen this. I'm not sure I'm relying on secondhand descriptions of using the blood on the ground again. And again, use of similar designs to counteract that. If that doesn't work, you can do certain rituals to kind of violently affect the witch itself, witch herself. And I particularly like this one. We are not that kind of people because this was a narrative said to me. So basically, obviously the first thing didn't finish, the first thing didn't help ameliorate the illness or the illness affecting the afflicted person. So the Ojha says, you know, we can perform another ritual where you can have violence on the witch, right? And the person involved said, but we are not that kind of people who do violence on other people. So this idea that you can, that usage of witchcraft has to be only for defensive, not offensive purposes, I think was quite interesting. So if that finally doesn't work, if that finally doesn't work, what you can do then is, what the Ojha then does is perform rituals which can identify who the witch is, right? So you have the first step where you kind of try and counteract what the witch does. The second step is kind of affecting the witch herself. And the third step is ways in which you can identify who the person, who is allegedly the witch is. Again, this is not done directly. So the Ojha will never say the person X or person Y is the witch. Instead, again over here which I found interesting was that the Ojha has to read certain signs which will give you the identity of the witch. So it's never this person over here. It's instead, is there a person near your house who has a house facing in a particular direction? Does a person near your house have this particular type of tree? Is that person's house along a long path and standing alone, right? So these are, the witch's identity itself is revealed through the reading of the text. So the reading of the land as a text. And I'll quickly finish over here. It's just to rethink and maybe it's a rather non-conclusion but a summary. Just rethink the idea between the link between land property and witchcraft, right? To think of land, not in terms of a land dispute but about how land can index certain threats. And how in the kind of the attention to the way in which witchcraft allegations occur reveal that land becomes indexes certain forms of threats can be something that's read and can eventually reveal who or what kind of threat it is and if it is a witchcraft threat how the witch can be identified. And I'll end there. Thank you very much. Well thank you very much for this interesting talk. To start the discussion off I would like you to ask a very simple question. What group are you actually talking about? I apologize. I usually have to first describe the exact context in which you live, in which place, etc. You mentioned tribals. I mean all these customs change from place to place. How does that... Are you talking about one particular group? How does that relate to the statistics that you initially presented? And number three, how does it explain the intensity of the violence which you find puzzling, right? What was number two? Which tribe? How does it relate to the statistics which is rather broad? Is it related to a specific group? So that's a good question. Thank you. I didn't do any... It's very preliminary. It was more kind of an ideal survey rather than a depth within the communities. The predominant group, the ASHA workers were from the poor tribal community. But mostly from the poor tribal community. A number of them were from broadly identified, shaped caste communities. And so that's an open question. I don't know sometimes who the rich communities are. Can I just answer to that point? Do you have the information from lawyers or from the information from the village? Because my experience is that lawyers usually haven't got a clue, but they work within the context of the law. Yeah, so it's mostly from the communities themselves. Often the legal documents are basically sanghundah or monkey, which I don't... It's not... It's more of a status within the village rather than a community. The people who I met are mostly from the poor community, I would say. One which identified herself as OVC and I was told a lot of people who identified themselves as caste. In terms of who is generally affected, the statistics, I have to say first, there aren't that many statistics on which hunting allegations or which trap allegations. It's mostly ethnographic work. So in terms of statistics, I'm not sure, to be honest. The PLD report that... that I cited earlier basically, they really hate FIRs that they're a very standing sample. Again, relying on the state records. But when they went back, they found that most of the people who are broadly identified as scheduled crimes and there is a desegregation of that in the report I can't remember now. So it was again across three states, remember. So it was again across Charcon, Bihar, and Chattisgarh. So it doesn't give us a sense statistically where it happens most often. Even amongst the actual workers who are part of the whole community, basically said it happened amongst those tribal communities. Why it happened amongst tribal communities? They said it's because of disbelief. But they also interestingly said that they were spreading to other communities as well as if we stuffed up the power that could be transferred between communities. But in terms of statistics, it's an open question. I'm not sure what you know. As far as I know, no one is sure. In terms of the intensity of violence, I think it's just... the idea that the presence of the witch essentially affects the community. So often what you hear is that this person first... So it isn't just usually just one allegation of witchcraft. These kind of build up. So the Oja is involved. One person goes, the other person says that the Oja says this person is a witch. I mean he doesn't say this person is a witch, but the community summarizes that person acts as a witch. And in 2016, the event that I narrated basically, at least in the police records, is that the violence or the allegations went back at least 10 years. This is the one where the five women were lynched in the village. So the daughters basically escaped. They went to the main prosecution witnesses. The board records that it was about going back 10 years and that their mother was the first accused of being witches. And it doesn't say what the allegations were or why the allegations were made, but it just says why the allegations were made. So I think that maybe kind of explains part of the intensity of the violence. Any further questions? You mentioned very briefly that does that, do they often get involved on the side of the accusers rather than the victim? And if they do get involved on the side of the accuser, how does that influence the success of the prosecution and the official investigations? So in the lower part there's Westingham, for some historical reason, and everyone said, I asked why to a local actress and they forwarded me a scan of a document. Long story, but for some historical reason that a police complaint would only be registered on the complaint of the village headman. And so if the, like we get in Jagad Munda where the village headman himself is making the allegations, a police complaint becomes nearly impossible. So the people, some people who were also in Westingham again, the women tried to go and file a police complaint. So what happened was, there was an allegation of which some men came and tried to threaten the women. The women involved went to a social health worker they both went to the police station. They went to the police station and the police station says you haven't got, where's the Munda? Where's the headman? And so they had to go back and get the Munda to come, the Munda refused to come. And then finally they went to the local district headquarters which is Chai Baza and got a lawyer to file a complaint for them. But I think that's the problem. When the police do come and it's more of a sorry, to go back on the same story, they went to the police. The police first time said, you know, they just call you names, just forget about it, that's not an issue. So they threatened you, what's the problem? And they kind of did some sort of like, kind of mediation. It wasn't treated as a criminal offense, treated as a minor altercation where if we just get parts together they'll be fine. I'll just say this few. So often the Pantayat will often leave the social alteration thing where they'll say that the certain person has to leave the village because the person is a witch, or the family is the ability for the person to be a witch. So, yeah, it's the official stage to kind of feed off Pantayat and kind of the militant man system. Was there another question? People remind me of a kind of a follow up. Like, in any women sort of on the Pantayat and sort of does that affect how that works in that area so that women get authority in specific societies? I don't know. Oh, it's a question. It's a simple question to ask. But despite the Pantayat institutions in the areas which weren't visible, the official one, at least, what people tended to refer to in the narratives was the head man. And they have another unofficial position called traditionally official position for the monkey, which is basically a person who's above the militant man. It's kind of the local district head man, so to speak. And there's a council of head men. So in the narratives to me, the Pantayat was not something that often came up. You know, there might be some things of Osha deletion, but it's often used in almost synonymous with the council of head men. That's pretty soon. Thanks, Maria. First my question is a follow up please but from a different context. Is there enough information to identify the gender discrimination of the people who are essentially accusable, whether it's maybe predominantly women, or men, or if it's both. And also the age, the information of the age of the group of the people who are accusable are the Yama people, middle-aged, all the women, all the men. Is it all across that range? So again, the PLU reports are excited. They're the only people who don't like statistical work on it. I think something like 98% of all accusations were made against women. Jabid Munda is a man, but even his lawyer says that he was an outlier but often it's mostly against women. In terms of age, it's used, it's anyone above age of puberty basically. The logic is that, that sort of story was that a woman only becomes a witch after puberty, that she's only educated in witchcraft after puberty. And often, at the time of becoming a witch, the person is improperly trained in becoming a witch around puberty is then the person goes crazy. So often there was one narrative in this village outside Chakra where they told me about how this person went simply crazy because at the age of 13 or 14 her witchcraft training hadn't happened properly. So I think it's above a certain age. Again, the statistics are anyone, I mean, I can't really talk in my head, but basically anyone above the age of puberty and onwards. Most of the women go up to like 60 or 70, but again, one of the similar narratives I just talk about people like women who are 81. Interesting enough, again, they didn't find any economic indicators of who becomes a witch or education indicators of who gets accused of being a witch. So according to their study at least, according to my informants at least, there's no reason for someone to become a witch. So thinking of witchcraft in terms of statistical pointers doesn't actually help because it's at least in the mind of my informants and the limited statistics we have, there's no objective indicator who might be accused of witchcraft. When I googled this, I was interested in the law itself. It was called maybe wrongly into witchcraft prevention act. Is that the real name of it? No, it's Diane, Diane, Pratap, Pratisheh, Radhime. So the prevention of witch identification act. So it goes by in various translations. The prevention of, it's an interesting act because it normally prevents identification of the person as a witch, but also prevents against the use of witchcraft practices that the practices of the witch are to identify the witch. As far as I know, no one has ever been convicted on the back and I don't know how the court conceptualizes what the practice of an witch are is, but usually the witch are is kind of criminalized along with conspiracy to commit these crimes. So it's not a separate act as the use of witch traffic identify witch. So apparently in the UK law this there exists a precedent. I was surprised, you said this is the first time such acts have been devised in India, is that true? No. So there's a general provision under the Indian code which basically says if you call someone to be put under fear of harm or supernatural impact or something like that, that terminology of it, you can be convicted. And so that provision has been used in certain cases to convict, I don't know, I wouldn't say convict, but along with this prevention of witch identification I often the police put that charge as well to say that you have put someone else under the impression that they are under some sort of supernatural power. So I didn't know about the witchcraft prevention in the UK law, but something I would definitely look up. Yeah, I just want to, you might have preferred this at the start. Did you, the land grab aspect that you mentioned and you said the healthcare workers story versus the lawyers, is your reading them that it's not about the land, it's not about the land grabs or it's too simple to say it's the land grabs. And then the other questions, I have a broader question because this is preliminary what your next steps are. Yeah, so that's basically the argument I think in relation to the land. It's too simple to say that it's a properly dispute. Simply because it doesn't, if it was a properly dispute there are other ways in which you can take over the land in terms of possession or ownership or whatever. It doesn't need to be by its mechanism. It also doesn't account for the fact that sometimes that as I said earlier that the land of the purported witches often left empty after the witch, a hunting allegation is made or witchcraft allegation is made. So it doesn't take into account, I haven't statistically verified this, but this is what I've been told. So in some cases where this, one of the Asha workers told me was that where the witchcraft allegation is made the person is left and no one is taken over the land. So where was the witch hunting, where was the witchcraft allegation? Or why was it made? So I think there is a connection to land but I don't think it's with regard to a property dispute. I think the property dispute narrative is built in by the police and the courts to kind of rationalize any rational, what they say is an irrational practice. But I don't think it's a good objective justification for it, if that makes sense. In terms of next steps, my plan hopefully is to, I mean the plan has changed. I wanted to do kind of both the metanography of how these witch hunting cases are brought to court and I still would like to try to do that. So the plan is to go to this place called Chhaibarshan Chakradarpur. Chhaibarshan is a district headquarter. They have about 50 cases under the Witch Hunting Prevention Act, which identification of the prevention act going on. So observe those. But along with that, look at the social health workers close by because they do a lot of activism and kind of awareness building in pure strategies to counteract witch hunting violence. So kind of those two animals in which I'm going on. So maybe kind of a legal consciousness type project slash court of ethnography. But it's still in early stages of movement. So I'm trying to figure out what to do with it because my initial plan of going to courtrooms and looking at these cases, it didn't actually pan out because A, they're spread out geographically. The courtrooms that is, the cases aren't heard as regularly in a big other city. So within the span of time, the very short six weeks I had, it wasn't possible to find five cases. So that's the plan. I want to point out that besides witch hunting being targeted towards women, which is obviously very gendered, isn't it also something to do with the attack on shadow cast and shadow tribes under the shadow cast and shadow tribes prevention of atrocities act. It clearly mentions there regarding witch hunting. It's mentioned there. So basically, what I know from my knowledge and I've seen friends who work in Orissa, it's generally targeted to, it's more of a caste issue, you know. And definitely like you said, it's related to property, but more of a caste issue like witch hunting in most of these states because it's also practiced in Assam and things like that. And you know, they link just like this way. It's mainly on the shadow tribes, we shadow cast shadow tribes. Thank you. I didn't know it was mentioned in the prevention of atrocities. Thank you very much. Something I should know. So as I said earlier to Peter, again, I'm not sure which, if I can name the communities, which kind of communities I practice witchcraft. You know, there are also tribal communities, the whole community, certain SCST communities also practice witchcraft, witchcraft allegations are prevalent to use kind of the lingo in those communities. One of the interesting conceptualizations that I thought, so in this village called Chai Bazaar, Chai Shakadarpur, the kind of social health, community health organization, basically the survey of violence-related issues that come up regularly amongst the community. The first was domestic violence. The second was witch hunting allegations. So those are the types of violence that are prevalent in the community. And they conceptualized it as a form of domestic violence. So that was quite interesting. So they knew about the Domestic Violence Act and they knew that because it happened within kinship groups, within family groups, within caste groups, amongst relatives. So they thought of it as a form of domestic violence rather than form of inter-cast or caste violence, so to speak. But that might just be in that milieu. I'm not sure how it works outside there. Yeah, but thank you for the comment on the SESU Convention on Justice Act. Just to assume at the beginning you were talking only from within tribal communities, but clearly you're talking about MIGS, there is a caste dimension that comes. There is a caste dimension. So it's not... Is there religious dimension or not? Intervenal. No, as far as... I met this one... One activist back in the... And he was instrumental. He claims, or how people have claimed, in kind of helping or pursuing the state of Bihar that then was to implement or enact this law. And he had always the argument written about him. He was very big producer in 1999, 1998, 1997 when finally kind of the dark came out. His argument was it's... that it's put a bluntly is because of the Christians and Muslims. But amongst the community themselves that was never the case. They never said that. He was the only person who said it. I put that comment aside as a slightly weird comment to make. But it's usually not between castes or between tribes within tribal communities and within caste groups. So one of the community health workers who just described himself as OVC basically said that there's an OVC OJHA like in their village. So it's usually not between castes. It's usually not a case that the OJHA is some other community as far as I know. But usually it's within the tribal community or the caste group. So it's not intercaste or inter-tribal or between tribal castes. This is the last question. So from the title, the act itself, it does not go into the argument whether which craft exists or they need to prevent it or prevent any discourage in the attempt within those practices. The title almost comes from a point of view that probably it exists or maybe it doesn't but we're just preventing these particular people participating in this craft from identifying people they believe to be witches. What made a difference if maybe there was a prevention of witchcraft act in addition to the prevention of identification of people who essentially participate in it? Would it make a difference? I mean the prevention of identification is one thing but that means the practice essentially is a way or there are people who believe in the practice. So when I asked, the question I asked was are there people who self-identify as witches? And there was only one answer amongst the community groups the kind of the community workers and groups and it wasn't as if people said they themselves are witches and then we did witchcraft. So that was an external naming of that person as a witch who did do witch practices witchcraft practices of the witchcraft. So the witchcraft did kind of witch doctoring practices where this person did rituals pure illnesses whatever through various rituals. So would it make a difference of which my instinctive answer is to say no because then what would happen is that the victims of the witchcraft would just file cases against the purported witches. And it wouldn't help with anything else. I mean the act is also kind of if you kind of know Indian law especially intercast violence. It's the naming of someone as a cast identification of someone's cast that is seen as the originator of violence. So the naming of a person as a certain type of cast is where the violence is seen to stand from. And the distinction made. And so the act kind of follows that same logic that if you the moment you kind of identify someone as a certain thing then certain violence consequences will follow. And you need to step down at that point of time by identification. And that's kind of the logic of it. In terms of preventing more witch practice I mean I asked the lawyers obviously said increase the punishments because that's what lawyers tend to do. But because the punishment if I talk to my head if I remember correctly it's not very high. It's like 100 rupees fine. A couple, I think maximum 2 years or 3 years imprisonment. So the lawyers will say you don't increase it to like life or whatever. But the community act was actually the same village in Chai Baza. They were basically treated as a form of domestic violence. So domestic violence act gives the person the right to go to court. It's not a criminal offense. It's more of a criminal process where you get protection orders. You get the courts to order the cops to do certain things or not to do certain things. It was interesting from another point as well a sense of legal consciousness point of view. So the idea was that it was almost as if so in this kind of observational point it was almost as if when you asked about how which practice has happened and the role of the Ocha people were very animated by it. It was an idea that we it was obviously something that we're familiar with and very everyday. But when you ask about the cops and the police and the courts it was almost like a distant like this magical thing that happened somewhere else. So from a legal conscious point of view it was kind of a flip of what one might imagine though one shouldn't of how kind of different knowledge systems operate but one that the law is seen as distant and we are in a magical and incomprehensible whereas witchcraft practice is seen as something that's relatable eminently every day something that's totally understandable in the milieu. So has there been any injuries particularly successful community organizations in sort of addressing black imbalance mostly more generally addressing much part? So the the same in Chai Prasad it's an organization called 8joot which means together they do something called a pure learning pure learning activity so their their aim is not to pedagogy from above that's not their aim their aim is to kind of see what the problems are which is why they ask community what they think are the main problems are they kind of kind of engender solutions found within the community and they've taken that approach to maternal health to they've had one project maternal health had one project on post-natal care and I think the branching into branching into the Bible and we're kind of getting because of this necessity getting into shows of domestic violence and violence sharing trying to reach craft allegations and they have an article in the land set which talks about their work on maternal health and that approach the pure learning activity approach to giving them maternal health issues I guess they're trying it out with witch hunting allegations as well to see what kind of things are online but everyone was like what's the point one of them said what's the point of going to the courts and so I also because because these things are quite remote they're quite distant it's difficult to get to public transport and pay in the village and there's no police station in every village you have to go to the block headquarters or to the district headquarters to get to make a police complaint or file a case so yeah those are kind of the structural issues that play Thank you for your presentation I've often had delays I don't have to get with it and I'm not sure how tangential this is but with regards to like what do you find out about sexual violence and because I come from India so the idea of which is is somewhat portrayed as a promise quiz woman you know so like how is like how are they targeted with regards to sexual violence what is the status after they go to the police or you know they'll seek help like do they come out cars have they accepted violence into society that's kind of an impression so so in terms of as far as I know there was no sexual violence are committed against a person actually right there was sexual violence that's form of sexual assault there were form of sexualized violence in the sense that they were forced to go naked the faces are black and one of the interesting projects I heard behind it was that the moment because the essence of a witch lies inside the person and that essence of the witch also has a form of shame right so if the person is walking naked the essence of the witch gets shamed and leaves the person's body there's another logic and one I was told of one narrative where the the woman was cut and her blood fell on the ground and then the violence stopped apparently so what I was told and the logic is that the essence of the witch came out with the blood the moment the blood falls on the ground it's it's the for lack of where it comes the witchness goes out so but that's forms of violence again that they're kind of inbuilt into the logic of the witch can't believe the in turn what was the other question sorry so again the two instances I can point to one is the case of Jagat Munda the person I spoke about he's back in his village apparently I never met him so I don't know but I was told by the lawyer that he's back in his village in terms of so one of the big kind of social health for public health organizations public educational organizations the deal with the issue of witchcraft and founded by a possible accuser being witchcraft and she spoke actually about how she was forced out of the thing which is back in the village in public health public education initiatives statistically again I think people come back to the village if they are if they're not killer they're badly assaulted but I think of the of the 88 cases that the PLB report talks about most of the people are back in the same village after a period of living but again this is a limited statistics limited sample just based on police complaints so and do you have the impression that these are traditional practices which the media and the legal system are just focused on recently or is this a huge phenomenon so I mean I ask the question I mean I hesitate to put tradition with that it's also the baggage along with it it's evident that I think it's going along going on for a long time I asked when to start most of the tribal community interestingly said it's always been with us other people I spoke to from the tribal community it's always been with us it seems to have moved more recently again there's no date on it but I think it's the conception that it has moved more recently into the SC and OBC communities and why are the media picking it up right now I'm not sure it's been well I mean it's been in the community for a while so like if you set up a Google every day you're getting something on making news something comes through on which which I think and it's evidently been a problem so the person I spoke to in my chair for the person who claims to be instrumental passing the law has papercutting going back to the 80s 70s and 80s I mean it's a anthropological joke isn't it you know witchcraft witchcraft and magic but I mean I was intrigued we didn't talk about the fertility argument we didn't make that at all I know since this is also about the environment I wonder whether you're trying to make a link somehow I just assume you know if the land you know is global warming it dries up et cetera do you assume according to your theorizing that the witchcraft accusations will rise I mean reading the land I find this fascinating and have you studied how a person reads the land no because I didn't I didn't read it I saw a witchcraft because one of the first persons told me that person was a witchcraft but all the magic is what the witchcraft does on the second hand from people who either visited the witchcraft or have seen what the witchcraft does the magic of the magic was quite a person who was married the person was ill because the priest was because they went to the witchcraft and so I never actually saw a witchcraft as that's one of the aims when you go back to the fields hopefully you just kind of can't sense that more whether or not that's a good question actually and which is why I don't think I think the argument fertility I stretch to it in the abstract I don't think I can sustain it the idea was that if the land itself kind of fails is there an argument that to be made around witchcraft is there some link to witchcraft most of the allegations of witchcraft came up because of illness on accident what we would call an accident right so following up a tree was another instance where and this kind of is the randomness of the argument of witchcraft is that this guy was an alcoholic so certainly it was that person was coming back every day drunk on his wife he would fall fall over obviously he was drunk he had several accidents after a period of time it was it was like you fall once because you're drunk that's fine but you fall multiple times it must be because of the witchcraft so it's a link to the idea of health so maybe there's an angle over there in terms of health just not fertility of the land but fertility or productivity of the person fertility broadly conceived rather than productivity of the land many of the cases weren't about fertility of the land itself none of the cases actually none of the narratives that came across were about fertility of the land they were about looking at certain signs of the land or arguments or can tell us why they must replace but that's an interesting argument to make there's an argument made by I can't remember the Federica Fellini which talks about kind of witchcraft arising because of the enclosure movement this is Europe obviously enclosure drawing a link between enclosure capitalism and increased witchcraft allegations it's not something I feel like the material lends itself for the moment but it's something I'd definitely like to explore in the future so when you say witchcraft do you think the people believe that the witchcraft has some speech of power yeah so basically that's what they believe that the witchcraft has access to knowledge and can I don't know what spiritual but has access to knowledge and way to deal with spirits or deal with kind of these supernatural threats and I think that's what the belief system is is that the witchcraft can tell you whether it's a food or a faith that's effectively or can tell you why your grain is suddenly going away or whether it's a witch who's done something to you so people when they yield or some bad person they go to Oja to get some advice yeah they go to Oja to get advice on on why they do what they can do to ameliorate that illness and it depends on the nature of what what causes the illness so other cases I mean of people who already know that who the witch is before going to Oja yeah so like I said in the first time it was tucked away on the top was that there are cases where the symptoms of Oja are involved right that it is just generally known in the village that a person is a witch again if you spend half-time I don't know how that knowledge come about or why a certain person gets called a witch so on that kind of aspect I don't know it's my own self but a lot of the anarchists involve the figure who is treated by the community are they like humiliated or humiliated or have some so that's a good question because what kind of the law doesn't take you account is kind of the badly failed collateral damage and would cut the allegation like what happens after what happens to the salami people what happens to the children so usually the husband is only beaten up as on the way right not in the sense sorry it's about treating but usually it's not not the sort of other thing so the in one one of the narratives that I heard was that so basically this woman is being was accused of being a witch they what they first did was is they in order to get to the woman they had to kill the man they tried to go in once the man beat him away I'm not sure how but he beat him away they went away then what they did what I was told they did was that they pretended to be friends with him got him drunk put some medicines in him took him to the River Cross by drowned him over there and then took the wife and drowned her the killer and then put her body in the water so there are kind of knock on effects or again a bad thing but I don't think the the men are usually not the kind of target they are just targets when or the husbands are usually targets unless they themselves are accused of being a witch in which case it's a different thing but where the wives are accused of being a witch then it's they're not the kind of target and even in the case which I mentioned earlier about this person who's who's wife gets shot in the narrative that the report builds up at least he had gone off they had timed it in such a way that he had not gone off the field and she was home alone so but they again they themselves are always back in the village right it seems we have run out of steam thank you very much indeed for this interesting talk and discussion