The Cult Of Jai Gurudev Sangh And Invention Of Witches In Jharkhand's Gumla

Sawal ye nahi ki bastiyan kisne jalai, sawal ye hai ki unke hath me machis kisne di

(The question isn’t one of who burned the town but one of who handed them the matches)

“Pale and bruised, she looked like a ghost walking towards me. Infectious wounds, broken teeth, unevenly shaved head. Marked to be ousted. Weak and hungry. Barely able to walk. I could not recognise her when I saw her. She made it because she was hospitalised immediately; she would have died otherwise”, recalled the woman who had rescued Gita Devi.

A resident of Bankir Liltiyatoli in Gumla district of Jharkhand, and over 60 years of age, Devi comes from the Ahir community and is married to Madan Gope. On that fateful day, December 6, 2021, during the first wave of Covid–19, as she was engrossed in the quotidian chores of her household, a mob attacked her and dragged her out of her house. The men in the family who tried to protect her were also beaten up by the mob.

Comprising both men and women from the village, the mob mercilessly beat Devi up. Treated inhumanely, she was violated as the mob tortured her and inserted a wooden stick in her private parts. They forced her to taste her own excreta and urine.

The women in the mob performed the ritual of ‘Kaansa Lota Thaali – Kiriya Kasam’ in which they banished Devi from the village and made her swear that she would never return. The mob initially intended to banish her naked from the village premises. It was when her sons pleaded with them, arguing that the cold might kill her that they relanted and let her go clothed.

Devi was discovered two months later, on the side of a road. She had been in hiding as she had faced death threats if she were to return home. She had escaped to a forest nearby where she had nothing to eat and eventually, had moved towards Gumla town. In those two months, she had had only 10 bowls of rice to eat.

During the fieldwork in Gumla, Saraikela Kharsawan and the Haidernagar Bhoot Mela in Palamau, we came across many people whose lived experiences echoed Devi’s own. Multiple women in the region were branded as witches and outcasts, left to die in misery. We witnessed beliefs of ‘spirit possession’ among different religions and sects in the Palamau area. The ojhas and bhaktains are the ones who guide these exorcisms. They enact a public performance that fuels the superstitious beliefs of the villagers.

Chutni Mahato, a Padma Shri awardee and activist based out of Saraikela says, “In 2017, during a Shiv Guru Charcha evening, during the spirit possession ritual, the ojha dramatically asked a person – ‘Ke boti bol’ (Who is the witch?) and then announced two names, Priya and Mukti.” Both of them were beaten up and boycotted until Mahato rescued them from death. Such rituals lead to a cycle of persecution of the most marginalised in the community who are vulnerable to violence. This cycle of persecution ends in ostracisation, torture, death and trauma for the remaining members of the families. When someone engages in such persecution, they also receive social sanction. When a man killed a woman in Namkum, Ranchi, after having branded her a witch, his wife defended him, saying, “What wrong did he do? He only murdered a dayan (witch).”

A pertinent question to ask is what motivates people who live together to mark women as witches and then carry out such a brutal hunt. When I interviewed Devi, she shared that women were marked based on their facial features and that she had had four protruding teeth, which were now chipped.

The influence that a certain Jai Gurudev Sangh had in her village also played a crucial role in what happened to Devi. The Sangh (organisation) was a cult that had found its way into the small hamlets of Gumla. If someone did not participate in the rites and rituals conducted by the Sangh, they were branded as witches. Whoever did not worship an imposed God became a deviant. Devi’s family was poor and could barely put together two meals a day; they could not afford to participate in the Sangh’s rituals and therefore, kept away from it. Things got worse during the Covid-19 pandemic. When people died due to the disease, the villagers started visiting the bhagats and totos (terms used to refer to the ojhas of Gumla) who pointed at Devi for being responsible for the deaths. Her son pointed out the Sangh further solidified this belief and instigated violence against Devi. Earlier, there had been mere accusations but with the Sangh’s support the mob carried out violence with impunity.

No FIR was filed and the case did not go to the police. In the panchayat (village council), the male members of Devi’s family arrived at a settlement and did not pursue the matter further. There were 17 people involved in Devi’s persecution who move freely to this day.

Gita Devi is back in her village with the support of a few activists and is currently working at a brick kiln. She does not receive the money she is entitled to through the Old Age Pension Scheme because of a misprint in her age on her Aadhaar card and Voter ID. Speaking to Outlook, Devi revealed that she lost her mother at an early age. She also married and had children early in life. She could not go to school or pursue education. Her husband, Madan Gope, is a daily wage labourer. Her entire family works on other people’s land as batai (sharecroppers). They have a tiny plot of land upon which they cannot rely for survival. They also work as daily wage labourers in construction sites to sustain their living.

Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, in The Invention of Tradition, argue that ‘deviant’ women are ‘manufactured’ to maintain the status quo in society. Devi’s ordeal is a case in point where the trauma of the horrors she had to endure passes on generationally to her daughter as rumours about her being a witch, like her mother, have already started to permeate the village.

(This appeared in the print edition as "The Invention of Deviance")

Jyoti Kumari is an independent researcher & a research grantee at IAWS, Delhi

Pallavi Pratibha is a writer and poet, presently based in Ranchi, Jharkhand