I am a witch. |
A book about witches. Like Ramani.
Almost a decade and a half ago, Ramani, an adivasi woman, was accused by villagers of practicing witchcraft and causing harm to neighborhood children. Ramani survived the horrific witch hunt and later, with the help of local women’s groups in her community, became an advocate of anti–witch hunt campaigns. An important part of her advocacy lay in retelling stories of how she acquired the label of daini, a label that she both disavowed and embraced as a survivor of violence. |
It is in Ramani's role as survivor, protector, activist, and nurturer that she displays her feminist agency at the fullest: devoid of fear from labels and empowered with the knowledge of survival. She uses the label of the witch as a counternarrative during community meetings for anti–witch hunts to stop future violence against community women: “You say I am a witch?! I am a witch. I can eat you, cut you into pieces . . . just test me. See what happens to you if you make one more accusation against another sister.” Ramani is always accompanied by another woman, Shamita, at these meetings. Shamita had given Ramani, a single childless woman, shelter after the hunt and employed her to look after Shamita’s children. Shamita sometimes brings her now adult children to the meetings as evidence that Ramani is not evil and that her children remained unharmed and well protected under her care.
Ramani is among a small handful of women in India who have embraced the label of witch in defiance, as a form of grassroots protest against patriarchal trauma. Women in the Global South continue to be harassed, tortured, and killed based simply on accusations (real or perceived) of practicing witchcraft. In this context, in communities where the label “witch” carries the risk of terrible violence, can Indigenous women afford to embrace this identity, let alone re-envision it as a source of empowerment? Inspired by Ramani, THE WITCH STUDIES READER explores spaces of possibility for global solidarities and healing; it offers a multitude of ways in which the label “witch” can be defied, embraced, and reinterpreted using a queer decolonial framework that refuses the racist and colonial legacy of studies in witches and witchcraft.
- Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward, editors
Ramani is among a small handful of women in India who have embraced the label of witch in defiance, as a form of grassroots protest against patriarchal trauma. Women in the Global South continue to be harassed, tortured, and killed based simply on accusations (real or perceived) of practicing witchcraft. In this context, in communities where the label “witch” carries the risk of terrible violence, can Indigenous women afford to embrace this identity, let alone re-envision it as a source of empowerment? Inspired by Ramani, THE WITCH STUDIES READER explores spaces of possibility for global solidarities and healing; it offers a multitude of ways in which the label “witch” can be defied, embraced, and reinterpreted using a queer decolonial framework that refuses the racist and colonial legacy of studies in witches and witchcraft.
- Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward, editors
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