“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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December 28, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Portia
Witches were the women who healed the poor for free, and the patriarchal religions demonised them hundreds of years ago- in order to take control over all things to do with women- like medicine, nursing, delivering babies etc.
It was and is all to do with patriarchal control over the sacred feminine.
Men and women are brainwashed into believing all the nonsense- like witches on broomsticks- now has anyone ever seen a witch on a broomstick?
Has anyone ever seen this “God” they speak of either who says women and girls are possessions of men to be used as cattle?