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Need to eliminate social malpractice
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KATHMANDU, June 26 : The need to challenge and monitor the social and religious norms of the country in order to eliminate the discriminatory laws and practices of the society was stressed by various legal experts at an interaction programme organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) here today. Pointing out the backwardness and ill practices like domestic violence and girl trafficking rampant in the country, legal experts and social workers highlighted legal and social consequences of such malpractice in the country.
Legal experts like advocates Sapana Pradhan Malla and Santosh Giri presented case studies of those women who are the victims of either traditional or superstitious beliefs like witchcraft and social malpractice like girl trafficking and domestic violence that have ruined not only their lives but also of their kith and kin.
“The problem today is that though such victimized women have come out to seek legal assistance, there are no clear provisions under which law we can file the case”, said advocate Santosh Giri. According to him, such superstitious beliefs like the witchcraft can be tackled only through medical training to traditional faith healers or Dhami Jhakris.
Lawyer Sapana Pradhan Malla said that with the on-going conflict and war in the country, women have become the victims of insecurity and poverty. “Women’s movement should be strengthened and the law and the society should go together in taking the initiatives,” she said.
The experts also discussed in detail the problem of girl trafficking despite government and non-governmental organisation’s initiative to curb trafficking in girls.
Mankind has always attempted to know the unknowable and control it by his own actions. At the same time, it was recognized that there were powers beyond his ability to control. Throughout history, certain people have been accepted as being better at controlling the powers that represent natural forces such as earthquake, wind, flood,fire and disease.
In some cases, these powers were named as gods or goddesses, at other times the forces themselves were named and summoned and controlled by the will of humans known as witches in modern day language. Over the years, they’ve also been known as shamans, medicine man or woman, sorcerers. The witch was seen as the conduit to the gods who ruled the world. Different cultures had different rituals and practices to learn the lessons which needed to be shared in order to make sure the harvests were good and the people were healthy.
The power possessed by a witch or shaman skilled in the art and working of witchcraft was assumed to be almost limitless. By saying certain words or power names in the correct manner and correct tone of voice, the witch could heal the ill, and cast out the evil spirits which caused pain and suffering in those who were diseased. The witch could restore the dead to life and call upon the powers of nature who acknowledged his might. Rain and wind, tempest and storm, sea and river and death and disease all attacked his enemies and the enemies of all those whom he helped with his knowledge of the words which were wrenched from the various gods of heaven and earth and the underworld as well.
Inanimate nature also obeyed the words of witchcraft and even the creation of the world itself was through a spoken word. The words could tear the earth apart and make water pile up in a heap and even the sun could be stopped in its course by a word uttered in witchcraft.
The gods, spirits, fiends or devils could not resist power words. The shaman used them to assist in the greatest and smallest happenings of their life. Witchcraft allowed them to know the future as well as the past. Neither distance nor time caused a limitation of the words of power. The practitioner of witchcraft knew secrets that ordinary mortals could not comprehend.
SEE: http://www.witchcraft-magick.com
SOURCE: http://letters2lily.blogspot.com/2007/02/92-why-not-believe-in-witches.html
People in the majority of human societies both today and in the past believe that much of the pain and trouble in the world is caused by witchcraft. The effects of the stars, of random chance or of God’s punishment, are less appealing as explanations largely because there is less we can do as a result of such beliefs. The stars are mindless and unapproachable, chance is uncontrollable and random, God is inscrutable and acts on a plan which often runs counter to our wishes. Yet witches are detectable and can be fought. They think like us, but with evil intentions. To find them we can turn to diviners.
Divination, using various kinds of oracle or shamanic ritual, is a technique to discover the cause for a misfortune. A sign in a mirror or glass ball, throwing of dice, bones or stones, footprints in ash or sand or the voice of a summoned spirit, points us to the offending witch. We can then take action and eradicate him or her. We can set up anti-witchcraft devices such as special substances or sacrifices to ward off the evil or treat the afflicted. All such divination uses devices which prevent it from being shown to be false. If a cure fails, it is because the witch was too strong or the counter-magic used against her was wrongly performed. If the wrong person is accused of witchcraft it is because the real witch has laid a false trail.
Witchcraft is a closed world. It is impossible to challenge its basic premises from within. In the past, almost everyone believed in the power of witchcraft. A sceptic, if such existed, would be accused of being a witch or in the power of one. It is very like many other closed systems which you will have heard about, for example communism. It explains much of the suffering in the world. Every new event adds to its strength. It is very attractive to human beings who live a pain-filled existence.
Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England. A Regional and Comparative Study. (First Edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970; Second Edition, Routledge, London 2000)
Links:
- http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/TEXTS/contentswitchcraft.pdf
- http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/TEXTS/nepal_bnac2003.pdf
- http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/FILES/Witchcraft_Larner.htm
Book Available for purchase at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Witchcraft-Tudor-Stuart-England-MacFarlane/dp/0415196124
BY PREM NEPALI
KASKI, April 14 – Accusing Kopila Bishwokarma, 23, of practicing witchcraft, locals of Sanodhari, Lekhnath municipality-13 forced her and her two children to leave their house, Friday.After the incident, Bishwokarma left with her seven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son to shelter at her maternal home at Begnas Lake. She was evicted from her house after some locals stormed in and vandalized the ‘tulsi muth’ (holy monument built in the premises of a house), threatening to completely demolish her dwelling.
Earlier, a local shaman had accused Bishwokarma of practicing witchcraft and incited the locals to send her away from the locality. “My neighbors forced me out of the house after the shaman accused me of displacing another local (through witchcraft),” Bishwokarma told the Post sobbing.
She fled the area at 9 pm and walked the four-hour distance to her maternal home.
According to Bishwokarma, locals from her neighborhood had been repeatedly accusing her of practicing witchcraft. However, she said that she suffers from an ailment which causes shivering, and that made locals suspect she was practicing witchcraft. She said the locals tortured her even if one of their cattle fell ill. “I tried reporting this to the police, but they would barricade the way to prevent me from going to the police post,” she said.
Posted on: 2007-04-14 21:20:43 (Server Time)
http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=106658
Submitted by admin on 1 February, 2004 – 11:52.
Nepal: The Power of Superstition
The hold of superstition in Nepal was confirmed by a shocking incident in December. Two women, aged 60 and 70, were brutally stabbed to death by a man who accused them of practising witchcraft.
The two women, Ratna Maya Subedi and Goma Maya Sindal, lived in the Sarlahi district of eastern Nepal. According to the report of the Humanist Association of Nepal (HUMAN), the perpetrator, Dik Bahadur Bhujel, had been feeling unwell for several weeks. Following traditional practice, he had been ‘treated’ by a Tantric healer, the husband of Ratna Maya, who had told him that he was possessed by an evil spirit.
To drive out the spirit, Dik Bahadur Bhujel sought the help of two relatives who were shamans. During the rituals, which involved a goat, a cock, and a pair of pigeons, the shamans ‘discovered’ that the two women were evil witches.
Early on the morning of 24 December, 2003, Dik Bahadur’s health worsened and he began to shake. Shouting that the two ‘witches’ had cast spells on him, he demanded to see Ratna Maya. When she arrived, he attacked her. His family managed to overpower him and lock him in a room but he broke down the door and killed Ratna Maya with a Khukuri, a traditional Nepalese weapon with an iron blade. He then headed for the house of the other ‘witch’, Goma Maya, and killed her too.
Dik Bahadur had been suffering from typhoid. Following pressure from HUMAN he has now been arrested and is awaiting trial.
Belief in witchcraft has been a social disease throughout the Hindu world since time immemorial. Irrational and inhuman superstitious practices deriving from Hinduism are deeply engrained in Nepalese society. Women have been accused of practising witchcraft, and humiliated and sometimes physically attacked. HUMAN is committed to raising public awareness about the issue and has launched a campaign against such barbaric, inhuman practices and the superstitions driving them. It has been involved in finding and highlighting crimes of this nature.
We appeal to Humanists worldwide to help support HUMAN’s activities against religious superstition and fundamentalism.
http://www.iheu.org/node/992
Ganga Prasad Subedi, Humanist Association of Nepal (HUMAN)
A teenage girl was paraded naked around the village market in Rasuwa district by her neighbors after alleging her of being a witch.Pasang Nurpu Tamang, Cheju Tamang, Ramkaji Tamang and Minjen Tamang had stripped 18-year-old Kuti Tamang (name changed) naked and paraded her around Ramchhe Bazaar accusing her of practicing witchcraft, Kantipur Daily reported.
The accusers had first taken Kuti a little away from her house saying that they needed to talk to her, but later accused her of practicing witchcraft and demanded Rs 300,000 from her. When she rejected their demand they tore her clothes apart, stripped her naked, and paraded her around the market.
Later police arrested Cheju and Minjen Tamang after the girl filed a complaint at the local police station. nepalnews.com ag June 19 08
http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2008/jun/jun19/news03.php
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Haunted by the Archaic Shaman critically engages the general discourse on shamanism by using ethnographic data gathered among different ethnic groups in the Nepal Himalayas to address several key conceptual issues and problems in the scholarly field of shamanic studies.
More details
Haunted by the Archaic Shaman: Himalayan Jhakris and the Discourse on Shamanism
By H. Sidky
Published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2008
ISBN 0739126210, 9780739126219
251 pages
http://books.google.com/books?id=gzIPSP_blC0C&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=WITCHCRAFT+IN+NEPAL&source=web&ots=Y4wEwyPywa&sig=1AYhqjdldulnHD6xlRtEso5swwg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result
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“We feel really bad about it, but we beat old women up, we blame, insult and humiliate them. We think of them as witches.”
The son of Dill Kumari Thakuri tells me why he’s supporting his supporting his mother to claim her rights by taking part in today’s HungerFREE rally and song competition.
Dill takes strength from the support of her son who is chair of the Sri Kalika Bagati youth club. She says that the most vulnerable are “women from rural areas who are illiterate, extremely poor, old and mostly dalit [untouchable lowest caste]. They’re the ones who are blamed and tortured for exercising witchcraft.”
Dill, her friends and family, are here to put an end to this violence against old women.
Dill is also concerned that “our farmland is no good, we have no irrigation. No one can depend on our farm products. We have two meals a day and when things get difficult we have to send our husbands and sons away to earn wages and food.”
Like so many other women here today, she says “I feel very good to be here.”
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http://www.kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=46576
BY TIKA BHATTA
MANTHALI, July 23 – Two women broke both the legs of Gori Maya Majhi, 42, of Bhaluwajor-2 on charge of practicing witchcraft. The perpetrators Dhanmaya Majhi and Junkiri Majhi are the relatives of the victim. The duo entered the house of Gori Maya Thursday morning and manhandled her. The victim was charged for killing the husband of Dhan Maya by practicing witchcraft. Gori lost consciousness after the incident and was taken to Manthali for treatment, but was referred to a hospital in Kathmandu.
Posted on: 2005-07-23 18:42:32 (Server Time)
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