We Indians believe in God, religion, supernatural powers, myths, ancient stories and every superstition which you can possibly name in the book. And I don’t have any problem with people having their meaningless faith and ridiculous beliefs, no matter how stupid they may sound. After all it’s their own business, what does it have to do with anyone else?
Sometimes it does and that is exactly the case here.
I am talking about 210 innocent women who were being tortured to death because they were accused of being witches by some local ‘pundits’ and ‘ojhas’. I know you must be wondering how juvenile and insensible this is and could it even actually happen?
The answer is yes, it happened in Chhattisgarh around 13 years back. Almost 1500 incidents were reported in the name of witchcraft; women were being severely assaulted, tortured, beaten up badly and even paraded naked in front of the whole village. People thought these women are witches. It’s a matter of utter shame for me to report such an incident, how can I say that my country is developing and moving forward when incidents like this still happens and that too on such a large scale.
If you are thinking that it’s all in the pages of history now, then you are wrong. Over the last six months, Chhattisgarh has witnessed almost 30 cases of girls being brutally humiliated. Out of those thirty, 8 of them even ended up losing their life. This is just statistical figures which I am talking here, the actual number can be much higher than this.
Being a secular country, Indian government has given me the right to practice my religion in whichever manner I want, but does that make my right absolute?
No, it doesn’t.
Any right in the state is not at all absolute, if there is one then it’s only right to life. You have absolutely no authority to infringe on someone else’s right just because the government has given you the freedom to believe your religion. How is killing 200 women based on some superstitious belief justified by any religious standards?
Our government feels the same and that is why they installed Chhattisgarh Witchcraft Atrocities act in the year 2005 to curb such incidents. But my question is, is it enough? Will reporting an FIR against such atrocities solve the problem? Seeing the way things have panned out after that, I still see us miles away from reaching our destination. When this incident happened almost 13 years ago, three survivors managed to bring this gruesome act in front of the public. They lodged an FIR against 20 people who were involved in molesting and torturing them, so did they get justice? Once again the answer is no, our slow judicial system has still kept them on hold. Out of those twenty, two are even dead by now.
If this is the case then how can I say that our system is doing enough to eradicate such bizarre practices, it clearly proves that we are still far behind. I don’t expect my nation to move forward as long as I see a bunch of people terming few women as ‘witches’, just because something went terribly wrong in their village.
I think now you can clearly imagine the mindset which some people still have in our country. They want to pin point a few soft targets, all women in this case and then drag them on the streets by their hair, assuming that this will bring an end to all the troubles of the village. This extremist religious ideology is bringing our country back to square one in terms of education and modernization. The mechanism which is being kept in place to keep a check on all this, is not dealing with the situation the way it should.
You cannot let such disgraceful acts exist in our society. Just think what kind of name it will bring to our country when all other nations find it out. On one hand we talk about advancement in technology and on the other hand we have a huge group a people with such orthodox mentality that they find witches inside women.
This incident is not only about the existence of weird beliefs and dhongi ojhas in our society but it also sheds light on the stature of women in India. They were being treated as objects, no one in the village tried to raise a voice against all this. Women were being given electric shocks, and beaten up by leather belts. They were left to suffer alone after going through all this, in complete isolation. Everything may sound completely insane to you and me but this is the actual truth, and we can’t help it.
India is always looked upon as a country with rich cultural heritage. This statement sounds funny after having an understanding of what our culture and religion has in store for us. Superstition is being magnified to such an extent by our religion that the word humanity has gone missing from all of it. If the government has given the power of secularism in the hands of the public then it’s also the duty of the government to teach these people, how to use this power.
If justice is being kept on delayed and superstition is given the drivers seat then witchcraft is all what we will be learning about in the coming few years. It’s time to teach everyone a lesson that they cannot do anything and everything in the name of faith and belief.
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