Abstract
This chapter critically investigates the continuity and changes in tribal worldview pertaining to witchcraft belief. It also attempts to give a systematic understanding and a contextual theory for the Indian context keeping in perspective the current ethnographic research and findings on witchcraft especially with reference to Nagaland and Jharkhand. Significantly, the chapter studies phenomenological aspect of the practice, but not its rationality. At the core of the chapter lies the analysis of witchcraft in tandem with magic—both as belief system and theory, and a characteristic view of the world not an epiphenomenon seen through the lens of factors like rationality, gender, disenfranchisement, land alienation and so on.
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Notes
- 1.
The British administrator-ethnographers like J.H. Hutton, J.P. Mills and T.C. Hodson and American missionaries like E.W. Clark and B.I. Anderson had reported witchcraft beliefs among the tribes of North East India; meanwhile, colonial officials like Dalton and W.G. Archer and European missionaries like Boding and Hoffman had published reports on the prevalence of witchcraft among the tribes in central and eastern part of India.
- 2.
The phenomenon of witch-hunt is a controlling narrative in the sense that this variable is taken as the primary focus on which the research enquiry and description of witchcraft is attempted.
- 3.
Interview with Gunjal Ikir Munda, son of late Prof. Ram Dayal Munda, on 14 July 2016 in Brambe, Ranchi
- 4.
Peter Berger argues that humans need a structuring nomos, which provides them with predictability, social stability, and a coherent view of the world to live in. He calls this processes nomization, the function of which makes society indispensable to humans.
- 5.
Donyi-Poloism or Donyi-Polo literally meaning ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ is an indigenous religious revitalization movement in Arunachal Pradesh. Basing on my fieldwork in Nagaland, I have used the symbolism of sun as a cross-comparative analysis to argue my case, although the term ‘Donyi-Polo’ is understood more as a single concept.
- 6.
In most tribal societies, the ritual complex is directed toward the classes of spirits, which are categorized as benevolent and malevolent spirits. However, both the types of spirits are characterized by their capricious nature, since the so-called benevolent spirits can also turn rogue if they are not propitiated in the right time. Also in most tribal societies, the rituals and sacredness attributed to the creator god is not elaborated and well established.
- 7.
To establish how some people become witches and derive their supernatural power is contentious, because despite the belief in its prevalence, the epistemology of witchcraft is not well developed among the Naga tribes.
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Chophy, G.K. (2020). On Worldview and Witchcraft among the Tribes of India. In: Behera, M. (eds) Tribal Studies in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9026-6_14
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