Toil and trouble
RANJITA BASUMATARY does not look much like a witch. Outside her home in Udalguri, a dusty town set amid the sun-baked plains of India's north-eastern state of Assam, she hangs a green gamosa scarf around your correspondent's neck and invites him in for tea. Five years ago, in early 2007, Mrs Basumatary was driven from her original home in a nearby village after her neighbours accused her of being a dain—the local term for a witch. Around 100 villagers surrounded her home and beat her with sticks, leaving her badly bloodied and bruised. After receiving death threats she fled, accompanied by her husband and her three young children.
In rural Assam the ojha, a traditional medicine man also known as the kabiraj, is revered for his supposed skills at countering black magic. According to traditional folklore, the medicine man learns his skills. Witches, however, are said to be born with their powers. This is a convenient distinction in what are typically patriarchal communities. It is rare to find a female ojha. "When a woman practices [traditional medicine] it's considered to be something evil," says Anjali Daimari, an expert on witchcraft at Gauhati University in the state's noisy capital, Guwahati.
In early-modern Europe and North America, witchcraft accusations often surfaced at times of great tension (the last witch panic in England took place during the Civil War). This corner of Assam, situated north of the Brahmaputra river, where India's plains rise up into the foothills of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, has been embroiled in a decades-old struggle for statehood by Assam's largest tribe, the Bodo (pronounced Boro).
A convoy of military vehicles drives along National Highway 52, which leads towards Udalguri from Guwahati. Soldiers in camouflaged fatigues patrol the mist-shrouded rice fields and jungle thickets that border the roadside. Later, the highway fills up with hundreds of student activists demanding the creation of a separate state. They ride on bicycles festooned with flags, their peaked caps and shirts emblazoned with stirring slogans: "Divide Assam 50/50", "No Bodoland No Rest", "To Do or Die for Bodoland". Security has improved in the past year or so, a result of co-ordinated campaigns against the separatists' bases in neighbouring Bhutan and Bangladesh. Several rebel leaders have been arrested and the insurgents are beset by infighting.
In the case of Mrs Basumatary, a devout Christian who does not believe in witchcraft, some local jealousy seems to have prompted the accusations. Her family had prospered and leased livestock to other villagers. This led to resentment. When children in the village fell sick, the ojha accused Mrs Basumatary of casting spells, after his own charms, potions and mantras had failed.
Sadly her case is not an isolated one. According to local reports, at least 17 people were killed in witch hunts in Udalguri and the three other districts administered by the Bodoland Territorial Council (a self-governing body established as part of a 2003 peace agreement between the government and the now-disbanded Bodo Liberation Tigers).
Nor are accusations of withcraft confined to Assam—a point that people here make repeatedly for fear of being branded backward by their neighbours on the other side of the Siliguri corridor, as the narrow strip of territory that connects the relatively poor north-east to the rest of India is known. Still, Assam's authorities are growing increasingly concerned by the attacks.
In September 2011 the Assam State Commission for Women, which has a wide-ranging mandate to improve women's welfare, presented draft legislation to criminalise witch-hunting to the state's chief minister. "The criminals are not getting proper punishment," says Mridula Saharia, who stepped down recently as chair of the women's commission after serving two terms. "That's why we feel the legislation must be there." Three Indian states already criminalise witch-hunting: Bihar, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand. But convictions are not common, perhaps because witnesses fear that sticking up for supposed witches might lead villagers to turn on them.
Five years after fleeing their former home and abandoning most of their possessions, Mrs Basumatary and her family have rebuilt their lives. Today they live together in a small but comfortable concrete-built house opposite the primary school where Mrs Basumatary works as a teacher. But the long-lasting hurt inflicted by the ordeal is obvious from Mr Basumatary's teary eyes as he tells of his wife's beating. The family is still too scared to return to their old village.