“They claimed I was a witch.” There was incredulity in her voice as Sarojini Rabha repeated the words that had been flung at her 30 years ago. “They claimed I was a witch, and was making people in the village fall sick. The ojha told them a story, and they listened to him. Can you believe it?” she asked. The “they” in Rabha’s story are the people of the village of Panisali in Assam — the village where Rabha was born, where her family owned land, where everyone knew her; a place where she belonged, thanks to an intricately woven tapestry of neighbours, friends, relatives and tradition. All this was torn apart the day one man claimed she was a witch. That was all it took.

Three decades later, as Rabha remembered those dark days when Panisali cast her out, it was the absurdity of the charge that struck her. “If I really had any powers, couldn’t I have stopped them that night? Couldn’t I have saved my own land, and livelihood?” she asked, hand on her head.

Accused of witchcraft by her daughter’s estranged first husband, Rabha had to defend herself before a village council in Panisali. She was made to undergo a fire test, but couldn’t convince the people who had known her and her family for generations of her innocence. Overnight, Rabha, her husband and three sons were forced to leave Panisali. From the life of hardworking landowners, they were now destitute and excommunicated; tainted by the stigma of being a witch and her family.

Rabha’s is actually one of the less traumatising stories coming from Assam when it comes to cases of alleged witchcraft. Probably because she was from the influential landowning set, she did not pay with her life. She was not raped, paraded naked, tortured or forced to eat excrement either. She was merely robbed of her home and possessions. “I think we escaped with our lives that night, only because our family was respected and every household knew us,” Rabha told Newslaundry.

By the previous Assam government’s own admission, between January 2010 and February 2015, 77 persons — 35 of whom were women — were murdered after being branded as witches. The practice is most prevalent among the Rabhas, Hajongs, Mishings, Bodos, and the tea tribes, in the districts of Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baska, Sonitpur, Udalguri, Tinsukia and Dhemaji. The state has a long association with occult practices. Legend has it that back in the medieval era, Mughal general Raja Ram Singh was wary of invading Assam because he feared the locals’ black magic more than their army. In the 20^th century, faith in these practices and the powers associated hasn’t withered, fuelled by inequality and abysmal infrastructure.

Humayun Bokth, Associate Professor, Assam University, who specialises in the sociology of ethnic groups, said that the belief in and fear of witchcraft was brought to Assam from outsiders. “Adivasis from the Chota Nagpur region, who were brought in by the British to work at the tea estates, had their own cultural practices, which have remained over the years because of the socio-economic backwardness,” Bokth told Newslaundry. Over generations, however, those practices have absorbed elements from local folklore and mutated into a cruel practice with serious real-life consequences. “Certainly there is an element of occult involved in the evolution of the practice of witch hunting,” said Kishore Bhattacharjee, Head, Folklore Research Department, Gauhati University. “But, over the years, witch hunting has also developed an independent character. There is an elaborate process involved – the process of branding, the punishment – which has assumed its own character.”

Last year, the state government passed the Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Bill, 2015, considered the strictest such bill amongst Indian states. The new law mandates jail for three years to life for branding a person as a witch, and abetting suicide. The bill also seeks to heavily penalise witch doctors. However, some question the law’s focus. “It is not a ‘social legislation’, but focuses more on the post-crime scenario,” said Anjuman Ara Begum, South Asia Programme Officer, FORUM ASIA (Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development). “Witch-hunting is a social issue, and the focus should be on preventing the crime through education and awareness.”

Laws drafted in Dispur may not have the power to prevent a crime from happening in areas where education, awareness and infrastructure are missing, even if those areas are just a few hundred kilometres away from the state capital. Take Rabha’s story as an example. After being cast out of Panisali, Rabha went to the nearby Lakhipur police station and lodged a complaint against the villagers, accusing them of usurping her land. This was not only an unusual and brave act, it was also clever — instead of countering the deeply-rooted faith in witchcraft, Rabha focused on the pragmatic side of her ordeal. “We did not want to give up on everything we had just like that. Going to the police felt like the last resort,” she said.

In remote locations like Panisali, the long arm of the law is not very efficient. The police tried to broker a compromise with the village, but in some ways, it cemented Rabha’s excommunication because the villagers were furious that she’d dragged in law enforcement. Rabha and her family took refuge at her sister’s nearby home for a few days, but the news of Rabha’s ‘witchcraft’ spread quickly. They needed to go to a place where no one would know them and so the Rabhas trekked to Maoriya Than. It was more forest than village at the time, the Rabhas had to work as farm labourers and life was difficult, but Panisali’s village council couldn’t reach them here.

Fifteen years after Rabha had approached the police, in 2001, the decision to turn to the law ended up working in Rabha’s favour. Her charge that her estranged son-in-law had tried to usurp her land was accepted in court and Rabha was allowed to reclaim a part of the land her family had once owned. It’s a rare victory and offers Rabha a chance to return to Panisali as the victor, but neither she nor her three sons are interested in returning to the village. “Muk baaghe khaok, bhaaluke khaok, bhoote khaok, kintu moi aru ghuri najao,” said Rabha. (“I don’t care if a tiger eats me here, or a bear mauls me, or if I am haunted by ghosts, but I am not going back.”)

This decision may sound paranoid or stubborn, but it’s actually sensible. Natyabir Das, Project Coordinator of Mission Birubala, an NGO known for its work against witch-hunting, explained the wisdom in Rabha’s thinking. “It is good that they did not return,” said Das. “Had they gone back, it would have been easy for the villagers to target Sarojini’s family every time something went wrong in the village. Getting brides for her sons would have been a hard task as no one would want to marry their daughters into a family of dainis.” (Daini means witch.)

Here’s the real burn. When asked if witches are real, Rabha replied, “Yes, they do.”

Faith in black magic is nurtured by factors like lack of infrastructure and education. Rabha’s life in Maoriya Than is a case in point. Of her three grandchildren, one studies at the Maoriya Than Prathamik Vidyalaya, a government-run school, but it’s an education merely in name. “Ek din jaye, dos din najaye schoolot. Master naahe,” said Rabha. (“She goes one day and then skips 10. The schoolmaster does not turn up often.”) There is no electricity in the village. The nearest health centre is 15 kilometres away and even though a quack was responsible for the family’s misfortune, she would still trust an ojha in times of illness. Western medicine isn’t just far away — the ojhas, witch doctors and other quacks claim a tradition of healing that locals understand, believe and can easily afford.

Yet, it is possible to change how people think. Birubala Rabha, the 65-year-old after whom Mission Birubala is named, is proof of this. “I have stood in front of hundreds of angry villagers bent upon killing a daini, and somehow managed to persuade them not to do so. I have had to plead, angrily shout, or at times, take the help of the police,” she said. Birubala is a towering figure in Assam and an acclaimed voice against the practice of witch-hunting.The Northeast Network, a women’s rights organisation, had nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate degree by Gauhati University in 2015.

One of the reasons Birubala is persuasive is because she understands intimately the circumstances in which the belief in witchcraft thrives. Born into a poor farming family, in the remote village of Thakurbhila in Goalpara district, Birubala’s formal education stopped after the fifth standard. She was married off when she was 15 and like everyone else in her village, she too believed in the existence of witches and spirits. That’s why she turned to the local witch doctor when in 1985, her eldest son Dharmeshwar went into a state of delirium after a bout of malaria. The witch doctor told Birubala that her son had impregnated a fairy and would die in three days as soon as she delivered their child.

Dharmeshwar is still alive, but he suffered on the day he was declared possessed. “All that my son needed was proper medical care,” said Birubala. “But he was tied up in a cowshed, just because he was delirious. He asked to be set free, he asked for food. But I could not help him. I cried a lot that day.”

The incident left a lasting impact on Birubala. That same year, she became the secretary of Thakurbhila Mahila Samiti, and started going from village to village to spread awareness about the falsity of quacks’ claims. Whenever she got news of someone being branded a witch, she would rush there. “They [ojhas] know as much about medical conditions as any normal villager,” said Birubala. “Yet, such is their sway that when they brand a poor woman as a ‘witch’, the entire village believes them.”

In 2000, when the activists of the NGO Assam Mahila Samata Samiti (AMSS) took note of Birubala, she got a larger platform and recognition to carry on her work against witch-hunting. At around the same time, she was at an awareness camp held by the NGO at a temple in the Dadan Gram Panchayat. The women gathered from different villages were asked if they believed witches were real. “I was the only one who stood up and answered in the negative, when all others dare not speak a word,” remembered Birubala.

Back in Thakurbhila, however, hackles were raised. A meeting was convened in the village and Birubala was verbally abused, and threatened with a public thrashing. The village elders asked her to give in writing that she believed in witches and that the villagers were correct in driving witches out of villages. “I refused and my family was penalised with a social boycott for three years,” Birubala told Newslaundry. This didn’t dampen her enthusiasm for reform and dialogue.  “To convince those who still believe in witches and spells, we have to organise awareness meetings,” said Birubala. “We have to assign responsibility to the gaon budha (village chief) to make sure such incidents do not take place under his watch. Also, health, education, and general infrastructure have to improve.”

Simple words, but Birubala knows how uphill this struggle is. You can see it in the firmly-set lines of her lips and her gritted jaw.

The most powerful antidote to cure Assam of its faith in witchcraft may well lie in the work done by those working for AMSS and other such awareness initiatives. Considering how the tag of “witch” has often been used to victimise women who were seen as too strong for a patriarchal society’s comfort, there’s a poetic symmetry in the fact that its antidote is made up of the determination and strength of women like Birubala.