Witch Hunting as Gender Oppression in India

My colleague Meghna Dutta is working on a research project exploring gendered persecution in India, under the guise of “witch hunts,” legitimized through mysticism. Read a recent article from the Wayne State University Graduate School.

The practice [of witch hunting] had a kind of mysticism she understood to be rooted in superstition. It wasn’t until she began her undergraduate program in sociology at the University of Delhi that Dutta said she started to understand the institutions of inequality and patriarchal power dynamics that give the practice credence. 

Now a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Wayne State University, she chose witch hunting in Assam, India as her dissertation topic. 

Dutta said the practice was once the result of superstitions: failed crops, dry spells, ill family members—but today, motives are usually to grab land or to ostracize women who speak out; refuse to marry; attend school past the tenth grade; or practice herbal medicine. 

Wayne State University Graduate School