How different
Let’s have a round of applause for the joys of tradition and folk medicine and spirituality.
Ramani had been bringing Sona up alone since her husband died from an unknown illness. Every day at 6am Ramani left home for her job as a labourer (painting the factories in an industrial area in the eastern Indian state of Jharkand), returning home 12 hours later. One night in January, Ramani and Sona were fast asleep when two neighbours broke down their rickety front door and dragged Ramani out of bed. As Sona fled to a neighbour’s hut, she saw one of the men’s hands cover her mother’s mouth and another close round her throat. Next morning, no one stopped Sona from seeing the pools of blood that had darkened on her doorstep. On the railway line 100m away, Ramani’s mutilated body had been dumped on the tracks. Her severed limbs pointed in opposite directions.
Ah, the good life. So much better than the empty consumerism that plagues the West, wouldn’t you say?
Police in Jharkand receive around five reports a month of women denounced as witches, but nationally the figure is believed to run to thousands. These incidents usually occur when a community faces misfortune such as disease, a child’s death or failing crops, and a woman is suddenly scapegoated. Those whose lives are spared face humiliation, torture and banishment from their village: some are forcibly stripped and paraded in public; some have their mouths crammed with human excreta or their eyes gouged out. The belief is that shaming a woman weakens her evil powers…Ramani was killed because she had been deemed a malignant force, wreaking death and misfortune on the hamlet. When a child fell ill in the slum, diagnosis and solutions were sought, as usual, from the resident medicine man or ojha…In this case, the ojha told the father of the sick child that Ramani was to blame, says Sona, and claimed that taking her life would lift the curse.
So complementary, so alternative. It’s presumably mere sweeping absolutism and deeply rooted prejudice that keeps benighted Westerners from trying it.
Always women.
I presume there ARE the equivalent of “warlocks” or “sorcerers”, but they never seem to be attacked, etc…
Odd that, isn’t it?
Nah, Mr. Tingey. Them folks are the ones pointing AT the warlocks and socrcerers. THEY are in charge.
Notice they are not women connected with rich and pwerful families too…
Daren’t criticise them, though. You’ll have the loony, lefty, woolly-liberal thought police on you. This is the wonderful cultural diversity we find and celebrate in our world, and see it seeping into this country (UK, that is) with children tortured and made to live a life of misery because they’re possessed. You’ve got to be relativistic. These things are fine carried out by them, over there. OK, we won’t tolerate it here, but if it’s there we don’t criticise too much. Like stoning to death, female genital mutilation, being pushed off a cliff for having sexual feelings that are natural, being threatened with death (or being killed) for leaving your ‘faith’. Leave ’em alone, for God’s sake. It’s just what they do, y’know?
“Notice they are not women connected with rich and powerful families too”
ChrisPer:
That is true, but, both the men/women, mostly men, who have the free rein to make judgment on ‘poor’ human beings lives, such as on the labouring Ramani – are ‘rich and powerful’.
Wiki sourced.
“The term “Ojha” is used for two purposes.
a) It’s the name given to the profession of an exorcist. b) Used as a surname for Brahmin castes, as per the old Indian cast classification, this class was considered as part of the top spectrum of the upper class. This surname have been derived from Sanskrit over time. Literal translations vary, but one such example is “he who controls the spirits on Earth”
“Ojha” {surname of teachers who used to teach “Sanskrit” about 5000 years before as claimed.} > Ojha (Modern surname)
The term Ojha is used in many modern Indian languages for a upper class Brahmin. The term is used amongst speakers of Hindi and Bengali, as well as amongst the Santals.
Most Ojhas in India today are men, but there are also women Ojhas. It is usually a high-caste profession[citation needed], associated with some ritual impurity.
I nearly passed out on first reading article. I had get a bit of a breather before commenting. The barbarity of it defies belief.
Yes…sorry about that, Marie-Therese.
It is very painful reading – all the more so since one knows (the article itself makes clear) it’s just one example of many.
OB: When I took a break from evaluating to some extent the gruesome bloodthirsty minutiae of what occurred to the pitiable Ramani, I decided to read the newspaper, thinking that it would comprehensibly wipe the mind of sad thoughts. I was mistaken, as I became equally taken aback on reading within a bizarre incident. A man on an Internet web cam told chat-room readers that he was going to hang himself. Before their very eyes he literally demonstrated. Some, of the on-line readers unknowingly, [I think,] egged him on, as insulting people was part of the ethos of that specific site. One of the readers, though had the wit to dial 999. But It was perceptibly, too late.
Ritual killings are also a new observable fact here in Ireland. Is is therefore only only right and proper to be made aware of the background.
“Babarity” last post, but one. Will I ever learn to spell correctly?
You were right the first time, it’s barbarity – like the name Barbara – which does come from the first word, which is quite amusing.
It comes from the ancient Greeks, who (perhaps jokingly) referred to people who spoke foreign languages as saying “bar-bar-bar”. Rather rude of them if they weren’t joking.
“as insulting people was part of the ethos of that specific site”
And a lot of sites. Ick. I hate that ethos, even when it doesn’t lead to death.
RE: ANIMIST BELIEFS.
Wiki sourced, Gosh, I hope this is allowed. It is all ‘new’ knowledg.
“In some animistic worldviews found in hunter-gatherer cultures, the human being is often regarded as on a roughly equal footing with animals, plants, and natural forces. Therefore, it is morally imperative to treat these agents with respect. In this worldview, humans are considered a denizen, or part, of nature, rather than superior to or separate from it. In such societies, ritual is considered essential for survival as it wins the favour of the spirits of one’s source of food, shelter, and fertility and wards off malevolent spirits. In more elaborate animistic religions, such as Shinto, there is a greater sense of a special character to humans that sets them apart from the general run of animals and objects, while retaining the necessity of ritual to ensure good luck, favorable harvests, and so on.
“Most animistic belief systems hold that the spirit survives physical death. In some systems, the spirit is believed to pass to an easier world of abundant game or ever-ripe crops, while in other systems (e.g., the Navajo religion), the spirit remains on earth as a ghost, often malignant. Still other systems combine these two beliefs, holding that the soul must journey to the spirit world without becoming lost and thus wandering as a ghost. Funeral, mourning rituals, and ancestor worship performed by those surviving the deceased are often considered necessary for the successful completion of this journey”
“Ramani and her neighbours belong to one of the country’s many distinct tribes, who speak their own language and hold animist beliefs, insulating them from mainstream Indian society.
The country’s “tribals” are among its poorest people, often living without access to doctors, schools or electricity. People in the neighbourhood are predominantly of the Ho tribe, having migrated from their ancestral forests to the fringes of this part of urban India, carrying with them superstitions and a belief in the supernatural.
Although police have arrested three men in the hamlet for her murder, none of the locals condemns Ramani’s killing as a crime.
OB: Would Animist beliefs such as the above be the guiding force behind the mindset and brutal behaviour of the villagers?
“KNOWLEDGE”!< [correction]
“Bihar is among the least developed states of India and has a per capita income of $94 a year against India’s average of $255. A total of 42.6% live below the poverty line against India’s average of 26.1%. So that cancels out -“rich” in relation to the WICKED OJHA.
Marie-Therese, I don’t know – but it certainly sounds as if the animist beliefs are where the witch-beliefs come from in this particular case. I know pretty much nothing about animism – yet another subject I should learn more about…
“conscious”,< Last post.
It is frightening to say the least when one thinks about the negative power and energy Scapegoating creates in individuals. Let alone the massive, energy of that of village groups vs neighbouring village groups. Towns vs neighbouring towns; cities vs other cities; and countries vs strange countries. Raw energy all going to waste to the detriment of innocent homo-sapiens.