Divining Evil: The State and Witchcraft in Bastar

Abstract

This article examines witchcraft accusations in Bastar, a predominantly adivasi or ’tribal’ area in central India. In the European witchcrazes of the 16th and 17th centuries, which set the tone for much work on witchcraft, witches were predominantly women. In other Indian adivasi areas like Jharkhand or the Dangs, witch accusations have effectively been used to dispossess women, often widows, of land. In Bastar, while belief in witchcraft and sorcery is widespread, as part of a wider cosmology in which all unnatural actions, whether good or bad, are attributed to the work of the earth, spirits, or motivated humans, my evidence suggests that both women and men are equally targets of suspicion. Suspected practitioners of the ’occult’ need not fit any pattern of gender, age, dependency, or kinship. However, all accusations appear to follow a series of illnesses. Accusations of occult malpractice, therefore, seem to be a way of coping with the uncertainties of human existence and attributing agency to local actors in a context where, in practice, people have little power. While the state has concentrated on coercive measures like imprisonment for those who have killed practitioners of the occult, it has done little to redress the concerns that give rise to such violence.