Writer: Sahiba Tasnia Tanushree
It’s year 1962. Every Sunday morning, you wend your way to your local church, popular for more than just its religious values. Amid a tiny Swedish village, you grow up surrounded by theocracy that manifests itself around the community like fancifully coloured drapes. One of these days, you encounter two young boys guarding the entrance of the church.
Now, this story can go in several directions based on who you are. Are you an upper class citizen or someone in good terms with the priest? Then you pass right through the gate like most of the other attendees. But if you are a woman coming from a lower echelon, an outcast in the society, or happen to have beef with your puissant neighbour, chances are, as soon as you set foot into the sacred precinct, one of the young boys would yell at the top of his lungs, pointing his finger at some invisible “devil’s mark” on your forehead. And before you’re given any time to register the asininity of the accusations pelted from left and right, you are taken to a torture chamber where you would be physically, mentally and sexually assaulted abominably for days to come in the name of God, with hopes of a ‘confession’ from you – one stating that, you are a witch.
We know it makes for a spine-chilling myth to share with friends at sleepovers but unfortunately, it’s the same fate that inflamed mass hysteria and took the lives of hundreds of women and children of Europe and America from the 15th century to the 18th century.
During these times, a deep-rooted fear of the Antichrist resurfaced, stirring a tumult of distrust and resentment in the hearts of the population. Foreseeably, the section that had to bear most of the brunt were the disenfranchised, lower echeloned women and children, as the privileged conveniently scapegoated them to their interests; be it for land disputes, racism, classism, or simply due to the fact that they’re vulnerable and not taken a liking to. No matter the lack of logic of the accusation, these women would be taken to trial and they would have to go through painful and humiliating ‘tests’ to prove their innocence, which most usually failed to do.
Today, as a being with rationale and basic knowledge you might wonder why so many of these women eventually broke down under pressure and admitted to have practiced witchcraft, when in reality they did not. The answer becomes as clear as day when we read into some of the methods that were used to test the accused, such as stripping them publicly to speculate every inch of the person’s body for any unusual mark that could be categorised as ‘the devil’s mark’, and having their body mutilated with needles to the point of bleeding. Sometimes they would be tossed into a water body with their limbs bound, believing that the body of a witch would be rejected by the water and therefore float to the surface, to state a few. With the degree of pain and degradation that these tests inflicted upon these women, especially considering the ensuing ostracism, it is no doubt that some would resort to false admissions to end their sufferings. Needless to say, when witches were convicted, they were executed in some of the most inhumane ways possible to ‘sanctify the community from satanic influence’, including being publicly decapitated, burned alive and hanged.
Now I’m pretty sure whatever you read up till now is not entirely unprecedented to you, because for the most of you, it is not your first time reading about medieval witch-hunting. But what if I told you
Witch-hunt is not a thing of the past?
Even today, many countries of Africa and southern Asia believe in witchcraft and seek to eradicate anyone suspected of associating with it. In Tanzania, the state has legislations banning witchcraft, authorising vigilante groups to work at district-levels to persecute innocent women and children framed and shunned by the people around them. In 2017 alone, over 400 women were murdered and burned to ashes, convicted to being witches. Witch-killings are also prevalent in parts of India and Nepal, where superstitions cloud the judgement of people so deep that even the light of humanity fails to clear up.
Where communities turn against each other and loved ones become strangers, we invest ourselves so greatly in protecting ourselves from diabolical energy that we fail to see that the only Evil that stands is the one we let grow in our soul.
Illustrator: Abir Hossain
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